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“It seems the life I wish to leave behind has other intentions.”
Her features darkened. All I could think about was how I’d done the very thing I’d never wanted to do. Put them in harm’s way.
“Your partner found you?” She put air quotes around the word “partner”.
Yet another person bound to catch up with me. I sighed. “No. Worse.”
Her hand automatically touched her necklace. I loved the gesture and hated it at once. This nervousness wasn’t the kind I ever wanted to cause.
“While you were with Gabriel?” she whispered, leaning against the center island. “You promised.”
Briefly, I closed my eyes. I would keep them safe. Whatever it took.
“Carlos. Oh my God.” She wrapped her fist around the cross.
“I’ve put extra security in place, but you’ll understand why I won’t be leaving the two of you alone.” I’d spoken with Donato and Daniel about security and how best to handle the Rosca situation. While I trusted their security detail, Holly and Gabriel were my responsibility.
When her eyes met mine, it was as if she were seeing her worst nightmare come to life. “I don’t know if we’re safer with you or without you.”
I’d been stabbed. Shot. Punched. Kicked. None of it had held the impact those words did. Because the truth was, I wasn’t sure either.
“You’ll work from home. I’ll have eyes on Gabriel at school at all times.” Logistics. Those I could do. It was normal and made me feel like I wasn’t a sitting duck doing nothing.
“Excuse me?”
“This isn’t the time to argue. If it’s a necessity you go to the office, I’ll take you.” This was one battle she wouldn’t win.
She nodded once. And then something snapped. She rounded the counter and pummeled me in the chest. “You promised. You promised.” I let her hit me until she grew tired.
“You promised.”
One last blow to my heart before I caught her wrists. There were no tears in those green eyes. The anguish swimming in her pools was worse.
She sagged against me, and even though it was wrong, I felt whole again with her in my arms. I stroked her hair and kissed the top of her head. Her angel scent eased me in a way nothing else could. She wasn’t mine, and yet, she always would be. She’d given me a reason to fight, a reason to live, when I’d otherwise had none.
After she’d calmed, she sat on a barstool. She was still visibly shaken, but she’d collected herself.How often did she have to put up this brave front? How did she get so strong?
“Who is this man? What are we up against and how do we fight him?”
I blanched. Those words were the last I’d expected. I knew she was doing this for Gabriel, but it felt like she was fighting for me too.
I didn’t want to tell her who he was. It was ugly and painful, something I didn’t care to think about, yet it constantly haunted me.
“The only way I know how to make you understand exactly who he is means telling you things I never want to taint your beautiful mind.”
“I can’t fight what I don’t know. Isn’t that what you told me?” There was no bitterness or anger behind the statement, just courage.
I waited until our eyes locked. She needed to see the truth of everything I was. “I needed to earn Nicanor Rosca’s trust. To do that meant going through his initiation.” The wooden back of the barstool cracked under my grip. “I tortured and killed a man to get into his fold.”
She paled. This was it. The moment she’d never look at me the same. Being a cartel prince was one thing. Willingly killing another human being was on another level. No one could know what it was like to torture another human being without experiencing it for themselves. I regretted she had to have the image in her mind.
She twisted her fingers in her lap, staring at them. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking, but I knew it was some mix of horror and disgust.
“Why?”
It was a question I’d never given much thought to, just something that had to be done as a means to an end. “My father wanted to do business with him.” She didn’t appear impressed with that. “I wanted to take him down.”
She seemed to consider that a moment. “He wasn’t the first that you . . .”
