I threw my arms around his neck, our wet, naked bodies flush. “Hay un tiempo señalado para todo,” I whispered, quoting from the bible. “Un tiempo de matar, y un tiempo de sanar.”
There’s a time for everything. A time to kill, and a time to heal.
“You didn’t make these decisions alone. Max knew what he was getting into,” I said. “He can handle it. He would never expect you to save his life at the expense of everyone else’s. He’s strong.”
He shuddered. “What do I do?”
I had one of the most ruthless, foreboding crime lords in my arms, asking for my help. It wasn’t the first time. My advice to him in the upstairs bedroom of his nightclub had been wrong. If I hadn’t told him to go, maybe he would’ve stayed and neither of us would’ve faced death.
Then again, we wouldn’t be here now.
He’d returned to me. Not just physically, but emotionally. He came back to me for help.
In the possible event of his death, I’d known I’d have to step up. Why should that change since he’d lived? More than ever, I could be the woman he thought I was. The queen he’d chosen for his bride.
I smoothed my cheek against his bristly chin, while all six-foot-five inches of him stood powerful—and naked. Emboldened by the juxtaposition of his masculinity and vulnerability, I drew back and said, “You make a plan. You assemble a team. But you don’t rush. Max is tough and stubborn. He will hold on until your men can get to him.”
Cristiano rested his forehead against mine. “We,” he said. “We will make a plan. We will assemble a team. We will get him out.”
I was in it now. I had been for a while. With a few words, Cristiano told me I was no longer here against my will. And I accepted that.
I let Cristiano in. I stepped into the role he’d been pushing me toward. I stood by his side in the ivory tower.
We were Calavera royalty.
6
Natalia
News of Cristiano’s latest brush with death had spread through the Badlands, and in the following week, it became a full-time job receiving well wishes in the forms of home-cooked meals and handmade goods such as pottery, candles, and tequila. It was a celebration of his good fortune rather than what could’ve been, and I was grateful for the distraction.
But as I came in from the town square one evening, I was reminded that I still had other, more personal matters to deal with. I peeled off gloves dirty with soil from planting trees and left them in the entryway as I followed voices to the dining area.
The last two voices I wanted to hear—Tasha and Cristiano.
Regardless of where in the house Tasha was, she was becoming a more unwelcome presence each day, but more maddening was Cristiano’s aversion to rest.
I strode in and found them chatting at the far end of the long table, where nobody ever sat. “Do you have wings now?” I asked, satisfied with how my voice carried and my sandals slapped the tile.
Cristiano stopped mid-sentence to turn his gaze on me. “¿De qué estás hablando?”
He wanted to know what I was talking about? Pfft. I slapped a cordial smile on my face. “I know you didn’t walk downstairs since the doctor explicitly ordered you not to. And the elevator’s out of service while it undergoes security upgrades. So did you fly? Or is there a slide from the top floor I’m not aware of?”
“I’ve been in bed for two fucking weeks,” he said.
“It’s been eleven days—don’t exaggerate.”
“Doctor Sosa was just upstairs with us,” Tasha said, “and she told us it was fine.”
Us? I turned my glare on Cristiano. I shouldn’t need to forbid him from being alone in our bedroom with a woman who wasn’t Jaz or Doctor Sosa, but apparently I did. And to make matters worse, not only had he used the stairs, but he’d gotten dressed—and he looked infuriatingly handsome in a pressed, white dress shirt and slacks. It was the first time he’d been out of loungewear since he’d been delivered home to me bloody and half-dead. Did he think he was going somewhere?
“Lighten up, Natalia,” Tasha added. “Cristiano heals at a superhuman rate.”
“No, he doesn’t.” I walked to stand by his chair. “Because he’s not superhuman. He’s a man, and he was stabbed three times.”
“I’m still struggling to understand why you care.” Her narrowed eyes stayed trained on me. “What did you call your marriage, Cristiano? An alliance between you and Costa? Nothing more.”
I hated the idea of Tasha thinking this was all for show. She’d been intimate with Cristiano. She knew what he liked, and—considering they’d been spending time together without me—how to get his ear. Not to mention she was a beautiful woman who likely knew her way around a man as experienced as my husband—where I was still a girl in many ways, especially when it came to sex.