Page 58 of Forbidden Hearts

“What happened to her?” Alex asks in a hesitant voice. She rests her hand on the side of my face and tilts it downward until our eyes meet.

I grab her hand and sit with her on the edge of the bed.

“Esmeralda passed away a few years ago. It was my fault. I wasn’t there to protect her.”

Alex looks at me like she wants to ask me something but remains quiet and attentive.

“It was a house break-in. I was away at work when it happened. They came and—” I pause, trying to put the words together. After all these years, it’s still hard to talk about her and what those fucking Romero brothers did to her. I take a deep breath and continue, “They killed her, and I wasn’t there to stop it.”

They did more than just kill her, but I can’t tell that to Alex without scaring her. And I sure as hell can’t tell her the Romero’s specifically targeted Esmeralda because I worked forNuestra Casa. Alex would freak out and leave me.

“You were at work,” Alex says. “How is that your fault? You couldn’t have known.”

It’s true. There’s no way to predict what’s going to happen in this line of work, but you can get a pretty damn good idea. If you poke a hornet’s nest, you can damn well be sure the hornets will strike back, and that’s precisely what happened. I fucked with a drug operation that belonged to the Romeros, and they hit back.

Of course, I never expected them to go after Esmeralda. There is an unspoken agreement between the different crime syndicates in Texas that our families, as long as they’re not in the game, are off-limits. The Romeros didn’t give a shit. That’s why I had to wipe them off the Earth. Scum like them make me sick.

“I should have been by her side,” I say. If I had quit like Esmeralda had asked me to on multiple occasions, she would still be alive today. But then I never would have met Alex.

Alex.

What is it about this girl that keeps drawing me closer to her? I would have moved on by now if she was any other student, but I can’t peel myself away from her for some reason.

When I first met her, I felt as though she could see the real me. Is that it? Is that what’s keeping me by her side?

Whatever it is, I can’t allow it to continue for too long. The longer she’s with me, the more likely she’ll be in danger, especially if I slide into my old ways. Helping Jacob is probably my first step back into the crime world. I cannot allow history to repeat itself with Alex.

“Let’s go to bed,” I say, wondering how many more times I’ll get to say that to her.

Chapter 28

Alex

Within a week, I’m settled into Alonzo’s private study. The room is smaller than I expected, with a large desk in the center surrounded by shelves full of books on either side and the back.

Alonzo cleared out most of his paperwork from the desk and placed it in a locked drawer by the door, giving me plenty of space to set my textbooks and notebooks on the desk.

He keeps the door to the study open when I’m using it, and he walks by the room on his way to and from the kitchen. Sometimes, he will pop his head in and ask me if I need brain food or snacks.

It doesn’t feel like he’s worried I’ll be snooping or spying on his stuff. In fact, he’s been more open about his cabin since the night I found Esmeralda’s paintings in the guest room.

I appreciate that Alonzo is trying to make sure I’m comfortable while I study, but it’s making it difficult to snoop in the small room when he’s always around.

After a few days of using his study, I finally gather the courage to look at the books on the shelf while he cooks dinner. I imagine I’ll find a secret compartment behind a shelf, but itturns out all his books are real books. Most of them are business books, with a few art books hidden between the larger tomes.

I page through an art book, wondering if Alonzo’s first art pieces were as bad as mine.

“You can borrow the business books if you’d like,” he says, startling me.

“Sorry,” I say, returning the art book back on the shelf. “I was just curious about what you read.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” he says. “You’re free to read and borrow any of these books. In fact, you are free to borrow anything from this study. If you can see it, you can borrow it.”

“Thanks,” I say.

As soon as he returns to the kitchen, I get up to check the cabinets, but they’re all locked. Same with the shelves above them.

The keys to open these shelves and cabinets have to be here somewhere around here,I think to myself as I search the unlocked drawers under the desk.

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