CHAPTER3
LUCIA
Ipark my car on the driveway of my parents’ huge mansion and climb out before helping Matthias out of his seat. He looks up at me, his huge brown eyes shining and I ruffle his thick dark hair. This kid is my whole world. Thankfully he looks nothing like his father, Blake.
Blake Fielding was a friend of my older brother, Luca. I hated Luca, and most of his friends were assholes just like him, but Blake had always been kind of sweet. So, at the age of fourteen, when I had to flee my home after watching the man I thought was my father, and my two older brothers murdered, I turned to him for help.
I soon learned he was an even bigger asshole than my brothers. He was six years older than me but that didn’t stop him from taking advantage of me in every way. He took every single cent I had.
Of course, he pretended to be all concerned and caring at first and he was even smart enough to wait until I was sixteen before he had sex with me. I even believed that I loved him, that was until the day I found out I was pregnant and came home from my shift at the diner early to find him screwing one of the other waitresses, all while he was telling her how stupid and naïve I was and how my name was the only thing that had any value to him.
Back in Chicago, I was a Ramos, and that name once had some meaning there, before Miguel Ramos upset some very bad people, anyway. At the time, I had no clue why Blake had thought the Ramos name could be any use to him, but now I wonder if he had discovered that Miguel wasn’t my biological father and I was actually a Montoya.
I jumped on the first bus I saw, which happened to be headed to LA, and fate, or something else, brought me to the shelter where my mom worked. The rest is history.
“Are we having Nana’s burgers, Momma?” Matthias snaps me from my thoughts of his father.
“I sure hope so,” I say with a grin as I take hold of his hand. My mom makes the best bacon cheeseburgers ever.
The door is opened before we reach it by my parents’ housekeeper, Magda, who ushers us inside. She presses a piece of candy into Matthias’ hand and he squirrels it away in his pocket as though I won’t see. It’s a ritual the two of them have and it makes me smile every time. Magda is a woman of few words and she can come across as stern, but she actually has a heart of gold and is one of the kindest women I’ve ever known. She says that having Matthias and my twin brothers around makes her feel young again and she spoils all three of them.
“The boys are with your papa in the garden,” she says to him as she cups his chin in her hand. “They have been waiting for you all day.”
“Can I go play, Momma?” he asks me.
“Of course, munchkin. I’ll be right out,” I say and watch as he scampers off down the hallway.
“My father is home?” I ask.
Magda nods. “Jackson is here too.”
I wonder why she says that with a smile on her face and then I remember that Magda sees and knows all.
“And Mom?”
“In the kitchen fussing over dinner,” she says with a roll of her eyes. “As if I cannot be trusted to make some burgers.”
I laugh because Magda and my mom have a wonderful relationship. My mom doesn’t speak to her own parents for many reasons, and Magda has taken on something of a maternal figure in her life. She has worked for the Montoya family since my father was a child and she is much a part of the family as Jax is.
“I’ll go find her. Are you joining us for dinner?”
“Not tonight.” She shakes her head. “I’m going to watch a movie with Jacob.”
“Oh?” I waggle my eyebrows at her. Jacob works here too. He operates the gate and sometimes drives my father.
“It’s nothing like that,” she admonishes me, but I see the twinkle in her eye. “We simply need a break before you move back home for a week.”
I open my mouth in feigned indignation and she walks away, chuckling to herself.
I walk down the hallway to the kitchen to find my mom. She is drying her hands on a towel when I walk into the room, having just finished prepping dinner.
“Hey, sweetheart,” she says with a huge smile as she crosses the floor and wraps me in a warm hug.
I lean into her and feel the weight of guilt overwhelming me because I am about to break her heart. I wrap my arms around her and hold onto her a little longer than usual. She always smells so beautiful and she gives the best hugs ever. She is without a doubt the best person I know and I should be honored to work by her side in her organization. I know that’s what she wants and what she’s hoping for, particularly as I once needed one of those women’s shelters myself, but that life just doesn’t feel right to me. I am a Montoya through and through.
“Is everything okay, sweetheart?” she asks as I hold her tight.
“Sure. I’m going to miss you is all,” I say.