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I know better than to refuse him outright. I do what I’ve excelled at doing—I play along.
“Even my son?”
“Even your son,” he echoes, but his voice isn’t what I expect. It’s not the gallant, suave boast of a savior. It’s harsh. The promise of a man who intends to back it up with bloodshed. “But I demand loyalty in return, Tiena. Not the bullshit arrangement you had with Braulio—”
“Braulio didn’t deserve my trust. Do you?”
He tilts his head, meeting my stare directly. “I don’t think you’d be here if you didn’t believe that I do,” he replies. “You don’t strike me as a fool,Tiena. Considering that you attempted to demonstrate so vividly that you aren’t afraid of dying to get your way.”
Ah, he didn’t like that. Not one damn bit. I took his fun away by claiming the spotlight. Unlike Diego, he doesn’t seem inclined to punish me for the insolence. On second thought, he’s more intrigued than enraged. I’ve drawn his interest.
“I’m sure you can imagine the benefits of having me on your side. Take those fantasies of yours and times them by two. I can be a very, very good friend to you,” he says.
As dazed and exhausted as I am, I still know there’s a catch.
“And what do you want?”
“Tell me everything you know about Braulio.”
As he himself groused,again with Braulio. He has yet to mention Diego’s name. Could it be that he truly isn’t aware of the specter even his enemy seems to fear?
I take a risk and hope that he isn’t.
“No more than you do, I’m sure,” I lie. “He must be taking his marching orders from someone big.”
“If you don’t know anything, Tiena, I have to admit that I don’t know why else he’d want to kill you.”
He’s right. Braulio wouldn’t give a damn about one of his girls fucking someone else. He’d just move on. So, I don’t draw on him for a frame of reference. Jaguar may know the man peripherally, but a woman involved with a man learns him intimately. Secrets no one else would discern, and to some men, that nearness is lethal. It’s poisonous.
“I belong to him. There is no better reason,” I say. God, I mean that in the worst possible way. Diego drove that belief into me through years of terror and violence. “How could he let me go to someone else?”
“Well…” Jaguar withdraws his rag, and I note a few smears of scarlet staining the once-white material. “I don’t share what’s mine, chica. You have nothing to fear from Braulio as long as you’re with me.”
The promise resonates with the long-suppressed part of me that scoffs in response. He can’t own what has already been destroyed and claimed by someone else.
But if it protects Franco in the long run, I can let him believe that.
“I want my son safe. Somewhere far away—”
“I can do better than that, Lupe,” Jaguar says, rising to his feet. He extends a hand toward me, and warily I take it. When he tugs me upright, I struggle to regain my balance. In the end, I wind up gripping him too tightly, practically leaning on him for support. I wonder if the shirt I’m wearing is his—it’s black, his preferred color.
Without clarifying, he guides me to a window that overlooks the pool, but it’s strikingly similar to the one glimpsed from his suite. This room must be beside it.
That suspicion is confirmed when he guides me into the hallway and the familiar suite. I hadn’t noticed before, but there are small, personal touches that mark this space as his, one where I suspect few of his posse are allowed inside.
He has me sit on a leather chair beside a desk in an adjoining room. This must be his office.
“We can hammer out the details later,” he says, gesturing toward his desk. “There is some work I need to get through first. Can you be a good girl and wait for me?”
My head hurts too badly to argue. As he claims the seat behind his desk, I stand—but I don’t go far. I wind up circling around to the window. It’s daylight out. I must have been unconscious for hours, but I’m not brave enough to ask exactly how long. This high up, it’s even more apparent how reckless and dangerous a stunt jumping was. The scary part?
In my gut, I know that I hadn’t been aiming for the pool.
Anger replaces self-pity. After all this time, the mere mention of Diego’s name shouldn’t have been such a tipping point. He is no longer the center of my universe. Franco is.
“You said you can reunite me with my son,” I say softly, shirking Jaguar’s request.
He sighs amid the sound of ruffling papers. “Patience, Lupe. Those in my harem like to go play dress-up in the closets. You’re free to do so if you can’t entertain yourself in my presence.”
