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“Enforcer,” Omar finished for me. “I know. Which means that he was perfectly aware that your father sent two of his men to gun down my brother.”
The words were a slap to the face. “Is Angel dead?” If he was, it would mean war, true war, with a lot of death on both sides.What was Apá thinking?Sure, the Castillos and the Rojas were enemies, and minor members of each family were lost from time to time, but then Apá went after Angel at his club. Then, he went after Angel’s wife. Now this.
My father had always been an impulsive man. He was driven by his baser desires more often than was dignified for a man of his position. But he wasn’t outright stupid....though his decisions lately seemed to indicate otherwise.
“Not yet,” Omar answered after too long a pause. “But even if he lives, it won’t save them. Or you.” The threat was timed with a wave that splashed over the wall of the boat. I yelped; a shiver ran down my spine. Omar laughed again, and this time, he soundeddelighted. It was even worse than his ugly laugh. “Are you afraid,conejita?” he taunted. “Afraid you won’t get to have that big white wedding after all?”
I whipped around to look at him. “I can’tswim, you insufferablependejo!” I snapped. “I’m not afraid of you!”
Omar’s nasty smile vanished, and something cool and deadly took its place. “You’re not afraid of me?”
He cut the engine, and we were suddenly adrift. He came around the steering column, unblinking as he stared me down. He wrapped his hands around my upper arms and yanked me out of my seat. My fingers fell away from the rail that I had a death grip on like they were made of sodden paper. A low moan of fear leaked from my throat. “I thought you weren’t afraid,conejita,” he tsked.
“I’m not,” I lied.
Did he have to be so…big? Omar was the largest man I’d ever seen, tall and broad. His hands were huge, and although his muscles were barely flexed, my feet were barely brushing the deck of the boat. He held me like it was nothing. Something hot and sharp zinged through my veins. My breath came out in a shudder.
Omar’s eyes, dark and fathomless, dipped to look at my mouth for a split-second, and I considered spitting on him. Then he swung me out. My toes scraped the top of the boat wall, and then there was nothing beneath me but thick, wet blackness.
I couldn’t stop the scream that filled my lungs. “Please!” I shrieked, trying to get a grip on his arms and failing. “Please, no!” I could already imagine the suffocating darkness filling my lungs until there was nothing to do but succumb to it all.
Out of all the ways to die, drowning had always frightened me the most, because I had never learned how to prevent it besides avoiding water at all costs. I wanted to beg him to shoot me; it would be a mercy to do that before he dumped me. But I couldn’t do anything besides sob and try to cling to him.
Instead of dropping me, however, Omar hauled me back over the side of the boat and dumped me onto the deck. I curled into a ball, making myself as small as I possibly could, looking every bit the scared bunny he’d called me before.
“Remember,” he growled, “if I wanted you dead, you would be.”
I swallowed hard. “Why don’t you?”
Omar returned to his place behind the steering wheel, and the boat roared to life again. He adjusted the boat to counteract the drift, and then we pressed on into the night. I kept waiting for Omar to answer me, but it didn’t take me long to realize that he wasn’t going to.
It didn’t matter anyway. I was alive at his sufferance; he had made that perfectly clear. I stayed huddled in the bottom of the boat, not looking at him or anything else. It was the only way to keep myself together. I had always felt alone within my large family, but until now, I had no concept of what it meant to be truly alone.
On my own and trapped with my enemy.Give me a way to survive, I begged the universe.
CHAPTER5
Omar
The darkness had stretched on forever, but finally, I saw the familiar dock’s light. Even from a distance, I could make out two dark figures waiting for us. Pascal and Efrain didn’t stay on the island full-time, but they lived on a close enough Key that they could get there in less than an hour.
Gracias, Liliana, I thought, near delirious. The blood loss was starting to make my vision swim, and while it still didn’t hurt much more than a beating from Padre, my clothes were growing tacky now. The bleeding had gotten worse after I picked Lyse up. I maneuvered the boat next to the dock, and Efrain jumped to tie it off for us.
“Jefe! You look bad,” Pascal called.
I didn’t reply. Instead, I pulled Lyse from where she was still crouched on the deck. “Get moving,” I told her. She resolutely didn’t say anything, but she followed my instructions, wincing when Efrain took her hand to help her down.
“Put the boat in the dry dock,” I told Pascal. “No one can know that I’m here.”
Both men nodded, instantly more alert than before, and as they went about their work, I pushed Lyse up the dock. “We’re going to the house,” I told her.
The pathway up the dock was lit, and I watched as Lyse limped along the center of the dock, as if she were trying to walk on a tightrope. As if the dock was going to suddenly shrink on both sides. The dress that she was wearing dipped low on her back, and despite myself, my eyes followed the line of exposed skin. When she moved just right, the dress would show the beginning of the swell of her ass.What kind of man puts his woman in a dress like that in public?
I shook the thought away. It didn’t matter if Felix Suarez wanted to broadcast his and Lyse’s wedding night for Only Fans so long as he was desperate enough to do whatever I needed to get her back. I doubted there was any love between the pair — seriously, the man looked like her goddamn grandfather — but I was betting that Felix liked that she was shiny and new and just for him.
I was counting on him wanting to keep her that way, too.
The house sat farther uphill than the dock, and while it was slight and barely noticeable on a normal visit, I was puffing by the time we reached the massive porch. The lights were on in the house, and the door was unlocked. Everything was ready for us.
