“It was fine,” she said, but her body language told a different story. Her shoulders rose nearly to her ears. “Alejandro made me feel safe.”
Safer than I did. I ignored the jab and continued my thought. “I think about that day a lot. Especially lately. What it must’ve been like for Bianca. For Costa, when he got home. And for you.”
Had she talked through it with her father or a therapist? With Diego? All of it—every last detail? It was a heavy burden to carry, watching a parent die.
“Why were you so cruel that day?” she asked, her posture easing with her tone. “I was covered in my mother’s blood. I was in shock. And you had no sympathy.” She picked up her water again, and I noticed she’d pushed her wine away. “You made me think you were going to kill me,” she said, glancing into the glass. “Or worse, take me with you.”
I needed no reminder of the things I’d said. I didn’t regret any of them. It’d contributed to getting her out of there and off to California. I only regretted that I hadn’t scared her off Diego. “My life was on the line, Natalia. You and Diego were accusing me of murder. I was scared, too. But I was also angry. You ferociously defended Diego, but not me.”
“I was nine,” she said. “All I knew was what I saw.”
“I wanted to frighten you,” I added quietly.
She took a breath. “You succeeded.”
“I don’t think I did.” But given the night I had planned, I might. “I’ve been watching you closely ever since my return—as closely as I did when you were young.”
“You watched me then?”
“Of course. I was responsible for your life. And in a world as grim as ours, a child like you was a ray of sunshine in the dark.” She’d had a laugh that’d made murder and mayhem bearable. And Bianca had trusted me around her kid. Nobody else would’ve back then. Now, I was responsible for rays of sunshine all over the Badlands. “If anything had happened to your parents, I was supposed to get you out of the house and take you somewhere safe.”
“She told me once to go to you in an emergency,” Natalia said, slackening against her chair. “But you didn’t take me. You left me in the dark.”
“I couldn’t take you where I was going. Not as a fugitive. It would’ve been kidnapping.” My chest tightened. In the seconds before I’d left her down there, she wouldn’t let go of my neck. I’d scared her so badly, she’d actually wanted the monster. “At least in the tunnel, you were stowed away until Costa could get to you.”
“Like a doll on a shelf.”
An action figure maybe, though she had yet to own the role. “I don’t see a timid girl who was broken by her mother’s death,” I said. “I don’t see a porcelain doll who needs to be shelved for her own protection.”
She took her entire bottom lip into her mouth, seemed to think as she bit down, then released it. “What do you see?”
“A woman trying to break through the restraints placed on her—including the ones of her own making. I understand why you went to California—I’m glad you did. You needed the distance and protection from this world. But you’re not a girl anymore. Losing your mother the way you did is no longer an excuse to run away from the life you were destined to lead. I have forced your hand, but in time, if you’re the woman I think you are, you’ll come to see that you’re right where you belong.”
She blinked her gaze around the main room, her eyes drifting from the still fireplace to the pottery above it. But she understood I was talking beyond the literal. I could practically see the wheels turning in her head.
My chest tightened. I was getting through to her.
“And where do I belong?” she asked.
A sense of pride gathered inside me, tinged with a lust for the devotion I’d always wanted from her. “Next to me,” I said. “At the head of the Cruz-de la Rosa empire.”
“What if . . .” She glanced at her hands fidgeting in her lap. “What happens if I’m not the woman you think I am?”
“The same thing that happens to anyone who’s not cut out to rule. You’ll fall in line, or you’ll perish.”
“Then I’ll perish,” she said without inflection but raised her eyes to look upon me with renewed fire. “If you think for one moment I will rule a cartel responsible for bringing horror to human lives, then you will learn what I’m capable of.”
I couldn’t help my smile. That was exactly the woman I thought she was, and I looked forward to bringing out this ferocious, protective side of her. “I hope I do.”