Page 25 of Branches of Betrayal

A rush of panic—mixed with adrenaline, because yes, Hadina Adis really was that fucked up—seized Hadina as she realized the only thing left to grab was one of her daggers. Peyton, in her blind and jealous rage, hadn’t realized what she’d picked up. She pulled her arm back, ready to throw, and Hadina did the only thing she could think of; she lurched forward, grabbing Peyton by the shoulders and smacking her hard against the wall, the dagger clattering on the floor between them. Using her body as a prison, Hadina pressed herself against Peyton, sliding her thigh between Peyton’s legs to trap her in place.

“Yo ah pasado por ríos de sangre! He hecho tantas cosas que no podías comprender. ¡No eres una niña estúpida, así que deja de actuar como tal!” Hadina kept her face pressed close to Peyton’s as she ranted in Spanish, her natural impulse taking over. “¡Déjame explicarte antes de juzgar la situación!”

Peyton straightened her back and stared at Hadina, her face devoid of emotion. She shoved against Hadina’s unmoving frame. “I don’t speak Spanish so have some respect and speak to me in a language I’ll understand. And for the record, even if I can’t understand what you’re saying, I still know when you’re calling me stupid!”

“Terca!I was saying you’renotstupid!” Hadina said, stepping back to let Peyton move away if she wanted to.

“Well, maybe I’d have known that if you weren’t speaking in Spanish!”

“I can’t help it! It’s natural for me to speak my first language when my girlfriend is acting like a crazy bitch!”

“Crazy, huh?” Peyton countered, stepping back into Hadina’s space. “I wasn’t crazy before I met you, so what does that say?”

Hadina smiled sardonically and nodded her head once. “It says that you were just waiting for me to unleash thatcrazyhot, insane part of you.”

Peyton glared at Hadina, though the tiny beginning of a smirk twitched at her lips. “God, you’re frustrating as hell.”

“And you really are crazy, but it doesn’t mean I don’t love it.” Hadina laughed and tilted her head as she looked at the woman before her. “Are you sure you’re not Latina? Cause damn, you’re sure as fuck hot-tempered like us.”

Sighing, Peyton ran her hands through her hair and sat on the edge of the sofa, defeated. “I’m not gonna apologize for what just happened because you totally deserved it, but Hadi…I need to know the truth. I love you and I don’t want to lose you, but keeping secrets will be the death of us and I can’t take that.”

Hadina sat beside Peyton and took her hands in her own, bringing them to her lips to kiss softly. “No more secrets. I’ll tell you what you want to know, but I need you to promise you won’t tell anyone.”

Peyton frowned. “You don’t trust me?”

“Actually, it’s the opposite,” Hadina said, smiling softly. “You’re theonlyperson I trust. Nobody—not evenPapi—knows about this. It’s a secret…sheis a secret I promised never to share with anyone. It’s why I haven’t told you before; I wanted to wait until I was sure that you felt the same way about me as I do about you, that you wouldn’t run for the hills when you found out.”

“I promise, Hadi. Just please, tell me what’s going on.”

Hadina stood and began to pace her bedroom floor. It helped her think if she kept moving. “One of my first proper cases with the business was to find out more about a trafficking ring happening in Mexico.Papiwas already buried in so much work and Zellie figured I needed to be thrown in at the deep end, so when the case came up, she made sure it was given straight to me.”

“What the fuck? What age were you?”

“Nineteen or twenty, I suppose.” Hadina shrugged. “Old enough.”

Peyton stared at her, worry etched in her brows as Hadina continued to pace. “So, you went to Mexico?”

Hadina nodded. “Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, to be exact. Beautiful place, but the heart of many warring cartels. One of which ended up being who I was investigating. The Puerto Vallarta cartel. Ruthless and unhinged, they were involved in so much shady shit and it felt like I was being fed to the lions. Every informant I spoke to ended up dead the next day, or seemingly vanished out of thin air.”

“Oh, Hadi, that’s terrifying. You must have been so scared.”

“I was. But the fucked up part of me was excited by the thrill of it, knowing I was in the middle of so much danger. I was young and naive to think that I’d be able to stop the trafficking that was going on. But the one thing that came out of my time there was meeting Darío, the cartel prince.”

Hadina stopped pacing and sat beside Peyton again, their thighs pressing together and sending a comforting warmth through her. Peyton placed her hand over Hadina’s thigh, tracing light circles along the inside of her pant leg with her thumb.

“Darío was heir to the Puerto Vallartacartel but his father…there aren’t enough words to describe what a vile, evil piece of shit he was. He treated his son like a degenerate and a slave, showing him not a single ounce of love or affection. It’s common for cartel Dons to treat their sons like seasoned, glorified assassins, but the way he treated Darío was even worse. It was a new level of cruelty I had never seen before and after meeting Darío, I knew he was nothing like thatputo.

“I’m almost positive—not that he would ever admit it—that it was Darío who kept me from turning up dead while I was down there. He loathed everything his father stood for, but he was good at playing the game. Darío knew that he had to bide his time if he wanted to eradicate the tainted legacy his father had built.”

Peyton paused her gentle petting and tilted her head as she looked at Hadina. “But how does that connect to Itza?”

Hadina’s lips tugged into a small smile. “Because Itza is Darío’s daughter.”

“What!?” Peyton gasped.

“She was just a baby when I met Darío and was the sweetest little thing. But Darío’s life was so crazy and he knew she was going to be in danger if she stayed in Puerto Vallarta. I recognized his need to be better than his father—for Itza, and for himself—and he saw in return my need to be good, to save the lives of innocent kids. So, he asked me for my help.”

Hadina could remember her time in Puerto Vallarta vividly. She had been so young and scared, but she was renewed with purpose that she was learning the skills she needed to one daylead Adis & Co. When Darío had asked her to help him and his daughter, it had struck fear so deep into her heart that she wasn’t sure she’d ever get over it. It had been almost fifteen years and yet she still remembered exactly how she felt.

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