“Get your Nazi hands off me.” Adelita spoke slowly and quietly. “My guards are about to come around the corner. And if they see you touching me they will shoot you.” I opened my mouth to tell her that I didn’t care. That I wasn’t scared by the guards who held guns and pretended they were someone in this clusterfuck of a world, but she beat me to it. “Papa wants this deal to go through. I suggest you—” she put her lips closer to my ear “—get the fuck off me, Prince Ayers.” The smell of roses sailed past my nose from the perfume on her neck.
Hearing Vincente’s voice getting louder, I rolled back off Adelita and sat down on the lounger. Vincente and three other guards re-entered the pool area seconds later. Vincente instantly looked to Adelita. He spoke to her in Spanish, and she replied. She was holding her book again, a smile on her face and lipstick righted from where it had smudged. At least most of it was.
Almost back to the perfect princess she pretended to be, but I knew she wasn’t. I saw the cracks.
As Vincente glared at me, then walked away, I leaned over and said, “Your lipstick’s smudged, princess.” I smirked as her rabid dark eyes slammed to mine. “You look like a whore.” I jumped to my feet and stormed across the poolside until I was in the guest suites. I slammed the door shut and practically ran to the shower. I squeezed my eyes shut as I let the water wash away the coconut from my skin, the mint and rose scent. Wash Adelita’s touch, her fucking impure touch, off my body . . . and her taste from my mouth. The mint and sweetness and the fucking feel of her whorish tongue sliding next to mine. The feel of her tits against my chest and her between my legs. Releasing the rage that had been building since she’d walked out to the pool . . . fuck—since I’d arrived in this piece of Mexican hell—I curled my hand into a fist and sent it sailing into the wall. Blue tile smashed and fell to the floor with my blood. I stayed there until the water above me ran cold, the hatred not fading away . . . though this time it wasn’t for Adelita. Instead it was with myself. My cock was still hard as granite. It only got harder the more I recalled her mouth on mine, her tongue, her tits . . . her motherfucking taste. So I punched the wall again. I punched and punched until I knew there were fractures in my knuckles and the skin on them was gone and nothing remained but raw flesh.
But it didn’t help. That bitch was all up in my head. A motherfucking witch, that’s what she was.
Nothing but a fucking witch.
Getting out of the shower, I sat on the bed, but the room felt like it was closing in. I needed air. Throwing on my shirt, boots and jeans, I walked out of the guest suite . . . and right into my father. Before I knew it I was slammed against the wall in the hallway. His eyes were livid. “Why am I hearing from guards that you’ve been touching the daughter? Fucking snarling in her face and slamming her on loungers?” I didn’t answer him. What was the fucking point? It was the truth. My silence riled my father more than any answer. And I braced for the punch. The many punches that started plowing into my face. I tasted blood in my mouth, felt it trickling down my chin from my lip and nose.
And I took it. I stood there and fucking took it, never striking back.
My father paused to add, “The guards are everywhere. If you fuck up this deal, you’re done. You hear me? Fucking done.” His hands wrapped around my throat—a warning. “Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. My father dropped his hands and righted his suit. “Now get cleaned up. You look like a fucking redneck who has been in a bar fight.” He walked off. I didn’t move from my spot against the wall. I still warred with the urge to track him down and beat his fucking face to nothing. But I wouldn’t. Like a good little son, I wouldn’t.
I caught movement from across the hall, and my stomach dropped when I saw Adelita. Her pale face told me she’d seen it all. I wanted to tell her to fuck off. To leave me the hell alone when she came toward me. Her brown eyes searched over me—the cuts and blood—then she handed me a tissue.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
I glared. I fucking glared at the bitch. But then I saw something shift in her eyes. It wasn’t pity. She wasn’t gloating.
It looked like understanding.
Adelita started walking away. I looked out of the window nearby. At the darkening sky. “You ever feel like your life isn’t your own?”
In my peripheral, I saw Adelita turn. When I met her eyes, the tears in them made my heart fucking stop. “Yes,” she whispered, that whisper slicing right through my fucking chest. “I know exactly how that feels.”
I stared at her. She stared at me. Bumps started breaking out along my skin, and I turned away. I forced myself off the wall and stormed back into the room. I slammed the door, then stood against the wood.
I ignored the pounding of my heart.
I pushed her tears out of my mind.
I refused to move until I had.
The sun came up, “I know exactly how that feels” still running through my mind, her tissue still in my hand.
Chapter Four
Adelita
Two years ago . . .
The air in the car was so thick I found it hard to breathe.
I was too aware of Tanner. Too attuned to every move he was making. Before seeing him last night, hate toward him governed my every thought. My every movement. Yesterday’s confrontation played on a loop in my mind. Him hovering above me. The taste of him in my mouth: tobacco and smoke. But seeing his father attack him last night in the hallway . . . seeing Tanner standing there, refusing to fight back, had done something to that hate. It had dulled it somehow. Started twisting it into something that felt like sympathy.
Sympathy for the Nazi prince.
But it clearly had done nothing to dilute Tanner’s hatred for me. From the minute I had seen him this morning, more contempt than usual seemed to radiate off him toward me. His eyes were glacial as they met mine. His body was more rigid when he was close to where I stood. And his lips were tighter, like he was fighting back wicked words he wanted to throw my way.
And now I was trapped in this car with him, thanks to my father . . .
“Take Tanner with you tomorrow, Adela. Show him the people we provide for, who have jobs because of us. The local people who make us who we are.” My heart beat a staccato rhythm as my father and William Ayers nodded to one another like it was a good idea. The factory workers. I was to meet with the factory workers tomorrow, and the children in the village’s school.
I didn’t look at Tanne
r, even though he was right across from me. I hadn’t looked at him once since our presence had been requested at dinner. We’d been left alone for most of the weeks they’d been here. It was pure bad luck that tonight, after what had happened beside the pool and then in the hallway, had been the night my papa wanted us all together. Everyone was simply ignoring the state of Tanner’s face. Like he wasn’t sat with a bruised and wounded face and bandaged hands. It seemed Papa and Governor Ayers’s deal was almost complete, so there was no need to acknowledge anything that would put the deal in jeopardy.
But they’d be back. And they’d be back soon. The deal was going to take a lot longer to hash out.
I opened my mouth to speak, but Tanner spoke first. “I think it’s time I sat in with you, Father. I want in on the meetings. I should be. Enough of leaving me out.”
Governor Ayers’s jaw clenched at Tanner’s request. I was surprised Tanner was being so confrontational, especially since his bust lip and nose were only a couple of hours old. “Nonsense,” he said curtly. “The deal is almost done.” He glared at Tanner for a few awkward seconds, as if he was giving his son a warning with his eyes. “Go with Adelita tomorrow. See the workers.” I could tell by his tone that it wasn’t a request.
Tanner’s eyes dropped from his father to the chicken on his plate, but anger seeped from his taut muscles . . . muscles that, only hours ago, had kept me trapped beneath him.
“Then it’s settled,” Papa said. “Tanner will accompany you tomorrow before he and his father leave. It will be good for you to see the people our businesses help, Tanner. It will show you why we do what we do.”
The sound of a car horn broke me from the memory of last night. My hand was gripping my thigh so hard that I knew there would be a bruise underneath my purple dress.