Page 55 of Beautiful Dangerous

“Alright. I’ll tidy things up this end.”

I shove my phone back in my pocket and throw back my head, sighing heavily. If Javier’s gone to the house… No if. Of course he’s gone to the house! But this – it wasn’t the way we’d planned for this to happen. We were going to wait, get everything in order, make sure everything was in place, our new border territories, new clients, new business deals, so I have no fucking clue what he’s doing here. But I guess I should go and find out, for Olivia.

Mi reina.

Mine...

Twelve

Olivia

It wasn’t a dream. My mind isn’t playing tricks on me, this is real.Heis real. I touched him. Smelt him. Kissed him. I rained frustrated blows against his chest and let the rage and the pain and the confusion flood out of me, and he let me. He accepted the onslaught of screams, the barrage of fists against his body, he knew they were coming. A by-product of his return from the dead.

Javier Delgado is alive. And I prayed for that, every night. Every morning, for a long, long time. I prayed for a miracle, and now my prayers have been answered, and yet, all I’m feeling is numbness and a creeping anger I can’t control.

He lied to me.

Lucca lied to me. Because Lucca knew, Javier told me. Which meant Lucca let me grieve for a man who had never died, and all along he fucking knew.

The two men I loved most in the world.

The only people I could trust. Thought I could trust. They both lied to me.

“I can’t believe it, Señora Delgado, it truly is a miracle!”

Celine is like a kid at Christmas, crossing herself constantly every time she glances in Javier’s direction. Her master is home, risen from the ashes like a phoenix, re-born and ready to take over a business that was never really mine. Was he running it all along, from his haven in Sinaloa, pulling the strings, controlling everything?

“It must have been such a shock for you, when you saw him, no?”

I nod at that understatement, reaching for a mug from the counter and filling it with strong, black coffee. It still feels like a dream when I look at him, sitting in his chair underneath the tree out there on the terrace. Like I’m still just seeing a vision of him, the one I’ve carried around in my head for so long, but this time he’s really there. He’s alive. My dead husband is alive.

So why aren’t you happy?

Why aren’t you celebrating?

Why…?

“But this is a time for celebration!” Celine claps her hands together, the biggest smile covering her face, she’s elated that Javier is back. She doesn’t even question what twisted reasons there might be behind his reappearance, or why he had to go in the first place; why he had to put me through hell, it’s all something he has yet to explain to me, too. His being here, it really is a full-blown miracle in Celine’s eyes, and I envy her that feeling. Because I’m still feeling nothing but numb. “I need to start getting everything prepared for the party tonight.”

A party. To celebrate Javier’s return.

A party to let people know that I’m no longer in charge, that I was only looking after things until the time was right for him to come home and retake his position as the head of this cartel, relegating me back down to being nothing more than his loyal and faithful wife.

A party I don’t want to be a part of, it’s too soon, I’m still trying to get my head around it all. But it would appear that I have no say in this, not anymore, and I watch as Celine flits around the spacious kitchen issuing orders to her staff, sending them out to buy ingredients while she starts to gather together everything she needs to bake Javier his favourite cake. Date and walnut with cream cheese frosting. I lean back against the counter and sip my coffee, and as I continue to watch everything going on around me, it feels as if this is something I’m not even close to being a part of. Like it’s happening, but I’m watching it all playing out on a TV screen, it still doesn’t feel real.

Because you don’t want it to be…?

Someone else coming into the kitchen forces my attention toward the door, and my stomach twists into a painful knot at the sight of Lucca. I didn’t get to talk to him yesterday. As soon as he’d arrived back at the house he and Javier had disappeared into Javier’s office for I don’t know how long. It felt like hours, and it was obvious they were never going to include me so I’d gone upstairs; holed myself up in my – our – room, took a long bath and lay there, staring at the ceiling, trying to process it all. Lucca hadn’t seemed shocked at Javier’s sudden re-appearance, because he’d known all along that he’d never really gone away. How the lies had dripped from his mouth over the years, and I think that’s what hurt more than anything. That Lucca lied to me, so freely. He’d known all along what the plan was; how Javier had been preparing to come back from the very second he’d disappeared. And the numbness spreads further…

“Hey.”

I look up at him as he stands across the kitchen from me, the huge wood and marble island in the center of the room separating us, forming a barrier that he so obviously thinks we need.

“You okay?”

I stare at him over the rim of my mug, but I let a few beats pass before I answer him. “I’m fine.”

I’m not, and he knows that. Javier knows that. I’m just not sure either of them care.

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