“Since you.” My eyes snapped to Diego. He was watching me with a smug smirk. And I was sure he caught the blood draining from my face. My mouth opened, ready to speak, but no words came . . . me? What the hell was he talking about? Diego saw my confusion. “You were the first, Adelita.” Diego looked to my father, who had turned just as white. “That’s right, isn’t it, Alfonso? She was the first?”
“What?” I whispered, my heart kicking into a sprint. My father moved quickly and lifted a gun from under his desk. I instinctively stepped back, thinking he was raising it at me, but instead, he aimed it at Diego. Before my father could fire, Diego pulled a gun from his jacket and shot my father through the head. I screamed as blood spattered the wall behind my father and his body slumped in the chair. His forehead hit the desk with a thud. Blood started to flood from his wound.
Heartbeat thudding in my ears, I barely registered Diego calling someone on his cell, until I heard the sound of gunshots thundering in and around the house. Panicked, I turned in the direction of the door. All I could hear were screams and shouts, and bullet after bullet leaving the barrel of guns.
“The house is mine,” Diego stated, making me turn his way. My knees were weak. Fear was all I could feel. Diego straightened his suit jacket, like he hadn’t just killed my father and all his men in the hacienda.
“Carmen . . .” I whispered.
“No one loyal to your father can be kept alive.” Instant sorrow burrowed in my chest. Diego’s arrogance shone through in his tall stance. “It has taken me years to sway enough men to my side, Adelita. Years. Your father was a weak leader. Too concerned with women and acting the perfect cartel boss.” He shrugged. “I have plans for this cartel. Plans that exclude your father and the dead weight he calls his best men.”
“No!” I shook my head and tried to comprehend what was happening. “You,” I said and focused my anger on Diego. “You are involved in the trafficking, aren’t you? You are as much a part of that shitshow as my father! Is that your big plan? Slaves?”
Diego kept his cool. “They couldn’t have children.” I froze, confused by his stark change in topic. “Your mother and father.” He paused, allowing me catch up. “At least those you believed were your parents.” My eyes widened, and I tried to keep my cool. But I didn’t know how. What was he saying? Diego sat down on the seat opposite my father—my dead father. I couldn’t look at the body. Neither could I move. I was rooted to the spot. “He killed her, Adelita. Your father. He killed your mother when she found out what he’d done.”
“The trafficking?” I whispered. “She found out about his business?”
He slowly shook his head. His eyes were cruel and cold. “When she found out you’d been stolen from your birth mother—a woman who had never wanted to let you go.” The pain in my chest was so great I couldn’t breathe. The air seemed too thick to inhale, and my lungs were fighting against it. My hand came to my chest. “You were the resolution to a deal gone wrong.” He shrugged as if my life was nothing. “I don’t know the full story. But I know your biological father owed Quintana a lot of money. Your father—Quintana—was about to ruin him and his organization.” He met my eyes. “You were the solution. You for the organization to survive.”
“I don’t believe you,” I replied, but my gut told me he was telling the truth.
“Your mother—Quintana’s wife—discovered where you came from. And she couldn’t live with it. She wanted to return you to the woman you were ripped from. Stolen from. But, by then, Quintana had become too attached. So he killed her.”
“No . . .” I said, but everything started to make sense. The lack of pictures. The fact he wouldn’t talk of my mother. “But Carmen,” I said. “Carmen told me I looked like her.”
Diego laughed and shook his head. “You’re so naïve, Adelita.” My stomach fell. “Everyone who worked for your father was paid to say whatever he wanted them to say. To ignore whatever he wanted them to ignore.” Diego got to his feet and came toward me. He picked up a piece of my dark hair and ran it through his fingers. “You were the first child he trafficked.” He dropped my hair. “Adelita, you inspired the business that followed.” He flicked his wrist in dismissal. “It’s simply import and export. Of what was never an issue. You proved selling humans would be lucrative. Women and children, at least.” Diego’s hand lay on my cheek, softly, as gentle as a lover’s touch. “This empire . . . all the money . . . it would not have happened if not for you.”
My head was spinning, too full with information. I was stolen from my real mother. Who she was, I had no idea. And my father . . . was not my father.
I was payment to him for a debt? I was nothing more than a pet? A thing he bought and raised, crafted to be his perfect cartel daughter?
I could see the happiness on Diego’s face. The satisfaction that he had been the one to tell me this secret. And he had shot my father . . . removing the only person who could have given me answers. The only person able to tell me the person I really was, who my parents were.
“I hate you,” I spat out, and pushed him from me with my hands on his chest. Diego fell back a few steps, and his smug smile melted away. He struck out and sliced his hand across my face. My head snapped back with the force of the blow. Before I even had a chance to recover, he slammed me back against the wall, knocking the air from my lungs. “You think I don’t know you’ve spread your legs for the Nazi?” His words quickly cleared my head. I met his eyes. They were furious. “You think I don’t know the great White Prince of the Ku Klux Klan killed Vincente?” My pulse and heart raced in one fast beat.
But this time it was my turn to smile. Diego would kill me. I knew that. I had nothing left to lose. “I love him,” I said boldly, and felt myself calm as those words came from my mouth. I leaned in close. “He is everything to me, and no one, not a single person, could ever compare.”
“He’s dead,” Diego threatened. I rejoiced that my words had hit their intended target. The triumph was short lived. “The Klan are here in Mexico. We are readying to destroy the Hangmen. And I’ll be the one to take that cunt out.”
Instant fear for Tanner suffocated my heart. “You are no match for him.” I looked him up and down, seeing him for the wicked man he was. “In any way.”
Diego’s fist flew out, and he punched me. He hit me over and over until my ears rang and the world tilted. I could taste nothing but blood in my mouth. Diego gripped my hair and dragged me through the hacienda. I tried to take in what was happening. Bodies littered the floor. I saw Carmen’s lifeless body on the mezzanine outside my rooms. Diego opened the door and threw me inside. I hit the floor with a thud. “I’ll be back for you,” Diego promised. “And I’ll enjoy every minute of killing you, princesa. Every last fucking minute.” His threat washed over me as he headed to the door.
“Where is Charley?” I demanded to know. “Where is her father? He won’t tolerate this! He will come for you, Diego!”
Diego turned around. “Bennett is dead by my own hand. The kill ordered by your father weeks ago. He was no longer effective as a distributor. We gave another Californian outlet the contract.” I stopped breathing. “And as for your best friend . . . she is long gone.”
“Dead?” I asked, breathlessly.
“No. But she’ll wish she was.” The door slammed and the lock turned. I was left alone. I let the tears flow. I let the choking grief and pain tear me apart, until I shook with hurt and my chest was raw from too many hitched breaths. My face throbbed from Diego’s fists, but I crawled to the tapestry that hid the underground tunnel. When I pulled back the tapestry, nothing but brick wall greeted me.
A dark kind of acceptance settled over me as the last hope of freedom was ripped from my hands. Pulling myself to my feet, I staggered across my room until I reached my bed. The sheets were fresh. Carmen had prepared my room for my return. Sitting on the edge of my bed, I opened my drawer and took out my secret box. I opened it, and warmth filled my empty heart when I brought out the cott
on ring Tanner had given me.
As I lay on the bed, I slipped the ring on my finger and pictured his smiling face. Diego could come and take me. He could kill me as slowly and as painfully as he wanted. But I would die with Tanner’s ring on my finger and my promise to him in my heart. So that if we ever met in the afterlife, he would know I’d been with him until the end. Dying with the hope of marrying him still firmly in my heart.
Somehow.
Someday.
I would see him again.
Chapter Thirteen
Tanner
My head ached like I had a hangover. My mind was foggy, too full of a thick mist I couldn’t clear. My mouth was dry; my tongue felt swollen. I moved my legs and arms, but they were numb and lethargic. And the minute I tried to get up, something held me in place. My heart started racing, like it knew what was wrong before my mind could catch up. I opened my eyes, the light from outside slicing through my head like a blade.
“Fuck!” I hissed, my words slurring. My heart was a fucking drum as I fought to push the rest of the fog from my brain. I thrashed against whatever held me trapped. Cable ties. I was tied to a bed . . . my bed . . . in the compound. I fought against the light stabbing my eyes and noticed a needle on the table beside the bed.
A needle . . .
Images started barreling into my brain. I dream that one day, in another life, we might find one another again . . . I dream that we meet each other in some distant future and recognize one another’s souls. And we’ll be found . . .
I felt like a crowbar had been taken to my chest, remembering everything she’d said. Every fucking thing she’d said before she’d left. “Adelita . . .” I rasped, and pulled against the ties. My pulse pounded in my neck. “Adelita!” I hissed as my eyes searched the room. It was empty. I saw the sun again and tried to think if it was light or dark the last time I’d seen her.
I shook my head when I couldn’t piece it together. I pulled harder at the ties. The plastic only tightened, ripping into my flesh. I didn’t give a fuck as the blood ran down my skin. I pulled and pulled, but the fuckers wouldn’t give.
“Adelita!” I shouted, dread cutting me down to my bones. She wouldn’t have gone. She couldn’t have gone. But then I froze as I remembered the tears in her eyes.
It’s a suicide mission . . .