Page 5 of Dark Witch: Entangled Fates

His features were chiseled, his eyes a piercing blue, and his presence seemed to fill the room with tangible energy.

"Jasmine, this is my brother Kian," Amanda said. "Kian, this is Jasmine."

Jasmine pushed to her feet, but her knees refused to lock, and her heart fluttered in her chest. Could this be him? The prince the tarot cards had promised, the one who would sweep her off her feet?

Except, unlike most men, Kian seemed indifferent to her charms. His gaze was cool and reserved, and as he inclined his head in greeting, there was no spark of interest and no flicker of attraction in his eyes.

Confused and a little hurt, Jasmine tried to mask her disappointment.

She really should stop relying on the damn tarot. They had either lost their potency, or all their prior successes had been flukes.

As if reading her mind, Amanda smiled knowingly. "Kian is Syssi's husband. They have the most adorable little girl named Allegra." She opened her purse and pulled out her phone. "I have to show you her picture."

Jasmine felt like knocking on her own head to check if anything was loose in there. She'd been so stupefied by Kian's looks that she'd forgotten that Amanda had introduced Syssi as her sister-in-law.

Then again, Amanda could have more than one brother, right?

"Here is the little princess." Amanda thrust the screen in front of Jasmine's face.

"Absolutely adorable." Jaz smiled at Amanda, silently thanking her for the reprieve she'd given her by showing her the picture. She then turned her smile on Kian. "She is a mixture of you and your wife." She pushed aside the foolish notions of princes and destiny. "But I'm sure that you didn't come down here to show me pictures of your daughter."

"I did not. Let's sit down." Kian waved a hand toward the couch and then lowered himself to a sitting position with more grace than a man his size should have been capable of. "As you know, Julio Modana was convinced by my associate to abandon his evil ways and embrace God."

She chuckled. "Kevin's hypnotic ability is mind-boggling."

"It is." Kian offered her a tight smile. "Julio's brother Carlos was obviously not happy about the one-eighty pivot his brother had made, and he paid him a visit. Fortunately, we'd planted listening devices around the estate, and we heard two of Carlos's goons talking about Margo and you. They even knew that Margo's family was under the impression that she was in the witness protection program."

Jasmine's eyes widened. "Why would they think that? Margo was supposed to board this ship, and her family knew her plans. They wouldn't have wondered where she was."

Kian looked at her as if she was dimwitted. "Margo was reported missing from her hotel room by her sister-in-law, and all of her things remained there. Her family was not informed of her finally being able to board the ship, and they also didn't know which ship she was supposed to board because we kept those details confidential on purpose." Kian turned to his sister with a smile tugging on his lips. "This time, you have to agree that my paranoia had merit."

Amanda winced. "I'm not sure that Mia kept the name of the ship from her friends. I just hope that Frankie and Margo didn't repeat it to their families."

Letting out a long-suffering sigh, Kian briefly closed his eyes. "I should never have agreed to allow Frankie and Margo on the ship. Evidently, I'm not paranoid enough."

Jasmine listened to the exchange, waiting for a break so she could ask what was going on. The level of secrecy Kian insisted on implied something more serious than protecting the identities of famous guests.

"Why was it important to keep the name of the ship a secret? Is something illegal going on here?"

Suddenly, Jaz remembered the poor women in the other cabins and wondered whether they really had been rescued from traffickers. What if they were being trafficked?

"Don't worry." Amanda leaned over and patted her thigh. "Our unfortunate entanglement with the cartel is all Margo's fault and has nothing to do with why we needed to keep the ship and its guests secret. We need to keep the paparazzi off our trail. You have no idea how resourceful they can be, how tenacious, and how low they are willing to stoop to get a story." She smiled. "But then, if Margo hadn't tried to help you, we would have never known that you were trafficked, and no one would have come to your rescue, so it's all good, right?"

"Now I feel guilty." Jasmine sighed. "If I hadn't gotten involved with Alberto, none of this would have happened. It's all my fault, not Margo's."

Kian lifted his hand. "Let's not play the blame game. Since the thugs mentioned you, we are concerned that they might go after your family as well as Margo's. They know how to locate Margo's family because her brother's fiancée filed a missing person's report, and they can find all the information they need by following her trail. We got her parents, brother, and future sister-in-law to a safe location. How easy will it be for them to locate your folks?"

"Why would they go after our families?" Jasmine asked. "What do they hope to gain by that?"

"Leverage," Kian said. "That's the cartel's mode of operation. They take hostages to pressure family members to give them what they want, whether it's money or information."

"I see." Jaz tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. "I'm not too worried about them finding my family. I use a stage name and I legally changed my last name years ago. My father and stepmother live in New Jersey, and we rarely see each other or even talk on the phone. If the cartel people check my records, they will see that most of my calls are to my agent, my acting coach, and my friends."

Jaz didn't have many friends, and she rarely talked with them on the phone, but it would have sounded pitiful if she'd only mentioned her agent and her coach.

"What about your brothers?" Kian asked. "Margo told me that you have two stepbrothers."

Jasmine snorted. "I see them once a year on Christmas at our parents' house, and we never call each other. There isn't much love lost between us."

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