Page 132 of Heart of a Villain

“I’m going to give you a number. I want you to call it and let the person know that Gano is on vacation in Verde, and that I just spoke to Cinda. Also, I have business to tend to in the city, and I want to make sure, while I’m there, I’m not stepping on any toes.”

Dragon-tattoo tapped his chest. “Bruno.”

“Carlos,” Flamengo-cap added. “Are you really him?”

“You were talking to me about taking up time because I was speaking to one of your women,” Adrían went on. “But now, you’re wasting mine. I have at least four weapons on me. If you don’t verify who I am in the next five minutes, I will kill your mothers, uncles, brothers, grandmothers. Whoever I need to. Whoever I want to.”

They both took a large step back, Carlos stumbling over his own foot. Adrían found the nearest wall section and leaned against it, arms folded. In truth, he had five weapons, but he didn’t know these men. Honesty wasn’t required when dealing with strangers.

Bruno removed a phone from his pocket and brought it to his ear, hand trembling. Adrían gave him the number and then waited, watching as cars passed by, some pausing to let a woman in or back out onto the sidewalk. A silver, newer-looking sedan stopped, and Cinda, the toffee woman with the curly hair, walked up to the passenger window. Her laughter pealed through the air, then the door opened, and she slipped inside.

As the car passed them, no doubt headed for some motel, hotel, or the back of a business district closed for the night, she looked over at him. And she didn’t stop staring until the car turned right at the end of the long street.

In many ways, he felt sorry for her.

There was little chance a John had ever offered to make love to her. Hell, even the man who’d loved her mother had only offered sex and a protective detail that had failed her numerous times.

The country hadn’t changed much since the sixteenth century, when it transitioned from attempting to prostitute enslaved Indians to importing black Africans for sexual favors from overseers, merchants, and all sorts of tradesmen. These women weren’t seen as people. They were barely seen as human. They were things—orifices, receptacles, servants. Things didn’t need passion, compassion, or consideration. Things were like a wadded-up piece of tissue filled with crusty semen, whose only purpose was to be used up and tossed.

Bruno lowered the phone from his ear.

Adrían pushed up off the wall.

“T-that was Chefe,” Bruno said.

“I’m aware.”

Chefe might have been a powerful crime lord, but he was still a man of his generation. Getting through directly to him was exactly the same as when he’d been an enforcer.

“Well, Chefe had a question. One time, you went to the coast with Chefe and Rainha. There was a colorful lady who acted as your entertainment for the night. What was the woman’s name?”

They’d taken him to a family-owned restaurant overlooking the Madeira River. It was the first time they brought up that they hoped he would marry Alessandra once she was done with school. At the time, he’d secretly been a virgin who’d assumed that he would have been fine with a life without passion. A life where Alessandra, who he never felt drawn to, would have made love to him while he bit his tongue to keep his dick hard and his trauma from squeezing out like a tub of toothpaste.

“Mellie,” he answered. “And it wasn’t a woman. It was a parrot.”

Bruno raised the phone again, and Chefe laughed so hard that he heard it through the speaker.

“He wants you to meet him tonight,” Bruno said.

“No.”

Bruno relayed the message.

Chefe laughed again.

Then, the call ended.

“We are very sorry,” Carlos offered. “Please, Gano, spare my grandmother. She’s ill, and to end her life at this point would be cruel.”

“Are you telling me what to do?” Adrían asked.

“No! No, of course not.”

The silver sedan returned, and Cinda stepped out, brushing something from her clothing. Her hair was flattened in the back, and she carried one of her heels as she limped across the warm asphalt.

Without offering a word to either man, he headed in the opposite direction.

If all went well, and he saw no reason that it shouldn’t, things would go into motion soon. Then, he could return to Sweden with Sayeda safe in his arms and continue to build their life there, uninterrupted. Never again would he return to the days when heartbreak had consumed him to the point that he barely had room to care about anything else but getting through it.

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