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As I thought of Father Charlie, I touched the gold cross hanging around my neck. I never parted with it, though I’d been sure to wash it off after taking it from that Greenback asshole. If I could change things, I would do it in a heartbeat. If someone should’ve been killed… it shouldn’t have been him. I could easily name at least two other men who should’ve met their end before that priest.
He took a step into my bedroom, and my eyes refocused on him, sharp and narrowed, which caused him to freeze. His back straightened, and he made a big show of taking a step back, no longer standing in my room. “You’re used to being the queen of the castle.”
I struggled not to roll my eyes at that; that couldn’t be further from the truth, but I supposed there were key details of my life Zander did not know—and I sure as hell wasn’t going to tell him.He’d been my shadow went I went out and about sometimes, but before now, I didn’t really have a life. Minus going to the church and Father Charlie, of course. My life, until Cypress, had involved school.
Not anymore, thankfully.
“But here, in Cypress? Your father is going against a lot of other people who want that spot on the Hand. You’re the easiest thing to take out. Without you, he has no heir. Keeping you safe, even if you don’t think so, is the most important thing I can do,” he told me, sounding… well, sounding far too sincere.
I kind of hated it.
Walking across the length of the bedroom, I stopped when I stood before him. He was maybe ten inches taller than me. When you got close to him, his eyes almost looked blue instead of their usual green. A pretty color.
“I appreciate everything you’ve done for my family,” I said, and by that, I meant my father. And by appreciated, I meant… anything but that. “I don’t know where we’d be if you wouldn’t have come forward with the rat’s name three years ago. But you have to understand, having you with me constantly, it’s like I don’t have any freedom. It’s like I’m nothing but a puppet for my father to use however he wants.”
Zander’s voice was hardly a whisper when he said, “You’re not a puppet.”
My lips curled into a smile, and I held that smile for a few seconds, unblinking as I gazed up at him. How adorably naive he was, if that’s what he really thought. Just because I was a Santos, just because I was my father’s only daughter, did not mean I was not another puppet for him to pull the strings to.
We were all puppets in his world, and I had grown so tired of it. Everything his business had cost us, what it had cost me… the things I’d done for my father over the years—I was at the point where I wanted to walk away from it all.
But when you were a Santos, you didn’t get to just walk away. You stayed with family. That much had been instilled in my head since I was a baby. Family above all else. Loyalty was the only thing that mattered. Not love.
Never love.
And the things my father had asked me to do? No loving father would ever ask those things of their daughter.
And so the smile eventually fell away, replaced by an expression I often wore when I paraded myself around this house, in front of my father’s men. Because, mark my words, Zander was his man. He wasn’t mine, even if he pretended to be.
“I wish you were right,” I murmured, and then I turned away from him. I lay on my bed, my phone in my hands, and I threw a look his way, lifting my eyebrows.
Zander got the hint, and in a second, he had the door closed, finally out of my sight.
A full lungful of air escaped me, and I stared at the ceiling for a while, wishing things were different. Wishing for a different family. Like the ones on TV. Sure, the kids might get into trouble every now and then, make some mistakes, but at the end of the episode, they always made up with their families. Hugs and apologies all around.
A family that loved one another. How crazy that sounded to me, and yet how desperately I ached for something remotely like it. I couldn’t remember my mother, and I sure as hell didn’t get any love from my father.
Miguel Santos did not love. He was a businessman, the king of the Santos empire. He was rich as hell, charming when he wanted to be, handsome enough he could use his looks to get better deals out of the women he dealt with. He was ruthless, conniving, and masterfully manipulative. He always had a plan.
Oh, he wasn’t going to play fair here. As far as he was concerned, he already had the Black Hand position in the bag, so he would use any dirty tricks he could to get it.
That included me.
