Page 46 of Bound to the Crime Lord

Her eyes wandered slightly to my left at the nightstand and she paused. I looked back to see what she was staring at and found the picture of my mother, father, and me when I was about four or five years old.

“Is that her? Your mom?”

I reached behind me and plucked the frame out. I stared at the picture that was taken in Mexico. I was originally born in Guadalajara, but my father wanted to move us to the United States to expand.

I didn’t remember much of that time, but from what my father had told me, it had been beautiful. He always felt most at home in Mexico.

“Those are my parents.'' I looked from my mother's face to my father’s. “I don’t remember much from my time with them, but from what I do remember, they were happy. They loved each other, and my father doted on my mother.”

Love. It was such a fickle and weak thing, at least in the view of the world I lived in. Love made you weak and vulnerable to your enemies. I could never afford the luxury of something like this in my life.

Juliette kept her eyes on the picture. I could practically hear the wheels in her head turning.

“What?”

“When did you say your mother died?”

“Almost twenty years ago now.”

She blinked, her eyebrows pulling together in a frown. “I don’t know how to tell you this, Manny, but… I think your mother is alive.”

My heart thudded clumsily in my chest. “What?”

She turned her head in my direction, our gazes locked firmly. “I did a medical tour five years ago when I was in my second year of residency, in Mexico. Your mother worked in the very same clinic I worked in.”

No, that couldn’t be possible. My mother was assassinated after her affair went public and my father left her in Mexico. We had buried her body, and I had thrown a white rose over her coffin at the tender age of 8.

“She’s alive, Manuel. I remember her well. She was always so kind and warm to me. She said her name was Rosaline, but she liked everyone to call her Rosa.”

My heart stopped in the middle of my chest. “That’s the name my father gave her. He always said she was as beautiful and as lethal as a rose.”

My mother was alive.

A million and one thoughts were racing in my mind, but the loudest one was the fact that I needed to find her, no matter the cost.

Chapter Twenty-One

Juliette POV

It had been a full week since the bombshell revelation of his mother. It was so crazy to think just how interconnected our worlds had been before we had even met.

Rosa was one of the many people who impacted my medical journey. She wasn’t a qualified healthcare professional, but her kindness and warmth had always healed the people around her in some way.

To think that this woman who had played such a pivotal role in Manuel’s life had touched mine in such a significant way was… mind-blowing.

I knew her being alive had not just been happy news. It had flipped the entire script of his life. Not only were those psychopathic rebels after him, but they were connected to his mother's fake assassination. The pieces were all coming together, but the full picture was not yet clear. I wished I could help him solve it all as fast as we could, because I feared these people were going to strike again, and when they did, he would be their target.

I didn’t want to think the worst ,but in his world, life meant nothing to them. They could easily take it away at the press of a trigger.

I stared at the TV, but my mind had not been focused on the reality show I had put on an hour ago in the slightest.

My phone buzzed beside me, and when I stared at the screen, I smiled.

“So you remember you have an older sister, after all!” I answered Ethan’s call.

“Are you being needy, big sister? It’s truly unbecoming.”

It felt so nice to hear his voice again. “I wouldn’t be needy if you answered my calls instead of just replying to me through gifs. I get worried, you know. You’re all alone on that side of the world.”

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