Acartelprincess.
I’m the eldest daughter of Ricardo Santiago, and that has always offered me protection.Toomuch protection, even, for my liking.
I let myself look at José for just a second, curiously. He’s one of the younger men in my father’s employ, probably not much older than me, and one of the most handsome. It’s clear he spends most of his free time in the gym—his arms are huge, and even his fatigues that are meant to be loose-fitting cling to his thighs in a way that suggests the size that fits his waist can barely contain the muscles lower down. And as for anything else—
I don’t actually know what a naked man looks like. I know some of the terms—cock, for one, picked up from filched Harlequin romances that my mother and grandmother read, the ones with shirtless pirates or rakish lords and bodice-ripped women on the covers. I’ve eagerly read the descriptions of what men and women do together in bed. Still, I have no idea what a cock might look like outside of a diagram in a biology book that didn’t look all that attractive. But those women in the books are always going on about how desperately they want all thatstraining, throbbingflesh, so there must be something to it.
One day, not too far in the future, I’m going to be required to hand over the oh-so-precious virginity that my parents have prattled on about all these years. And it won’t be to a ravishing pirate or a handsome lord. It’ll be to some man who benefits my family, probably a son of another cartel, maybe even Diego Gonzalez’s son, as much as that idea horrifies me. But itwouldcreate an alliance that my family very much needs.
The most I can hope for is that the man I’m handed over to won’t be too old or too ugly or too offensive or cruel. But for just a moment, as I let my gaze linger on José for an instant too long, I let myself imagine what it would be like to give my virginity to a man like him instead. Someone young, gorgeous, fit—probably passionate, too. I imagine myself teasing him over a matter of days, flirting, pushing him to the edge until one night he snuck into my bedroom, unable to control his desire any longer—
“Miss Isabella.” His voice cuts through my thoughts, thick and accented, sending a shiver down my spine—unsurprising, considering what I was just picturing. There’s an unusual flush to his cheeks and a tightness to his jaw that makes me think he’s not entirely unaware of what I was envisioning, and it sends a small thrill of excitement through me. That flicker of danger gives me a rush of adrenaline, something I’m wholly unfamiliar with feeling and already crave more of.
“You’re not supposed to be out here right now, and neither is your sister. Miss Elena!” He calls out her name loudly enough for her to stop mid-skip halfway down the path to the greenhouse, turning around to face us with a guilty flush on her cheeks. “Your father is in a meeting with some very important and very dangerous people. It would not do for them to see his prized daughters at all, let alone running around like this.” He pins me with a disapproving gaze, which seems faintly ridiculous to me, considering that he can’t be more than two or three years older than I am. “This is not appropriate.”
I let out a long, huffing sigh. I’m sotiredof being told what’sappropriate.I feel like my entire life has been bookended by that one stupid word. But I don’t really have any option but to obey. José wouldn’t take me back bodily to my room—he wouldn’t dare—but he could go get my mother…or worse, my father. I can’t imagine my father’s rage if he were interrupted in the middle of an important meeting because I’m being disobedient—a thing that I’m usually very careful not to be.
Rebellion has no place in my life. But lately, with the specter of marriage looming, I’ve felt more trapped and restless than ever. I can hear the clock ticking, warning me that time is running out, that all my chances for anything other than exactly the life that was planned for me are growing thin.
“Fine,” I snap, tossing my long black hair back with an attitude I don’t really feel. What I feel is defeated—but I don’t want to let it show. If this is how my life is here with my family, how much more trapped will I feel when I’m with my husband? How much less freedom will I be given?
“Come on, Elena,” I call out, seeing my sister’s disappointed face. “We’ll hang out in my room until Papá is done with his meeting. I’ll show you the new book I got.”
She purses her lips, but nods, pushing past José to join me as we head back towards the glass double doors that will lead us back into the mansion. She doesn’t look at him the way I did, and I wonder how my sister feels about her own marriage prospects in the future. We don’t ever talk about it, in the same way we don’t talk about ourAbuelapassing away or the danger of the neighboring cartels. Some things are too upsetting to talk about, so we pretend they’ll never happen. I handled my future nuptials much the same way for a long time.
But it’s rapidly becoming impossiblenotto think about. Elena and I pass the next few hours in my room, reading and chatting and looking out the window, wondering when we’ll be allowed to roam around the house and grounds again. It feels like forever, and I wonder what onearthcould take so long in any meeting.
Until finally, there’s a heavy knock on my door, and I open it to see José standing there.
“Miss Isabella,” he says, his voice cool and flat. “Your parents would like to see you downstairs.”
2
NIALL
Ifuckin’ hate hospitals.
The last time I was in one was when my father was dying of cancer, years after my mother passed on. It was one of the most excruciating experiences of my life. I’d been lucky to have a good relationship with my father, a grizzled, practical old man who’d spent his whole life working in the background for the Irish Kings, and done well enough for himself as a result of it. He’d willed me a house after his death--the old two-story, grey-shingled home I’d grown up in as a kid, complete with about a half-acre of land and the swing still hanging in the tree out front. The kind of house you raise a family in, which is exactly why I’d kept my apartment downtown instead of moving in. It felt wrong to rattle around in it as a bachelor, exactly the opposite of what my parents had wanted for me. They’d often urged me to settle down, find a nice woman, and have a couple grandkids for them. Even after my mother died, my father kept encouraging the same.
But I’m not the kind of man who settles down, and I’ve never been good at attractingnicewomen, which my recent track record especially shows. A wife and kids aren’t in the cards for me. I’m a rough man, a fighter, and the enforcer for one of the two brothers who lead the chapter of the Irish Kings here in Boston, and that’s not the kind of man who makes a life that belongs in that old grey-sided house.
Which is why I feel entirely out of place in this hospital waiting room, sitting with Liam McGregor, my best friend since we were both children, me a few years older than him. He’s more than a friend, really. More than my employer. We’re brothers in every way but blood, and for a long time, I was all he had. Then he met Anastasia Ivanova, a ballerina with a rough past and an even rougher present who needed saving, and he did just that. He fell in love with her, risked everything for her, and that got us here—to a sterile hospital waiting room while she’s going into labor with their first child.
“I should be in there.” Liam squeezes his knees with his hands, his knuckles turning white. “I shouldn’t have left her. What if something happens? What if—”
“Easy, man.” I pat his shoulder, doing my best to reassure him despite how uncomfortable all of this—hospitals, babies—makes me. “The docs said she needed to rest for a bit. It’s not an easy labor, but they said she’s not in danger. She just needs a little rest, and then they’ll call you back in.”
Liam presses his lips together until they turn white, too. “I can’t lose her,” he mutters. “Not after—not after everything that’s happened. She’s so fragile—”
He’s not wrong. Although she’s got a core of steel—she’d have to, to have survived everything that happened to her—Ana is fragile both physically and emotionally. No one blames her a whit for it, but pregnancy was never going to be easy for her. It only makes matters worse that the baby she’s delivering isn’t even Liam’s by blood, but the child of the man who bought her and kept her as a pet for months before Liam was able to track her down.
Liam swears he doesn’t care. But in this particular moment, I’m sure it’s not easy not to hate the man who did this to her.
“I’ll go straight to Paris and kill that fucker if a single hair on her head is damaged after this—” Liam growls under his breath, confirming exactly what I was thinking.
“He deserves it. But she’s going to be fine,” I tell him again, glancing sideways. Liam looks like he’s being tortured, his ginger-red hair and beard standing out in stark contrast to his bone-white, taut face, his hands clenched so tightly together now that the sinew in his tattooed arms stands out like ropes. “Just—calm the fuck down, man. You can’t help your wife if you’re a right fucking mess yourself.”
Liam glares at me, but lets out a heavy breath, nodding as he rubs one hand over his mouth. “You’re right, of course. But goddamn, I wish this could be over so we could just go home with our child.”