Page 56 of Twin Deception

At first.

I reared back, clinging to the thread of common sense I still possessed. “At first?”

He cupped my cheek, staring at me like he’d burn the world down for me. Adoration. Admiration. All those things that made me want to swoon.

“Yeah. At first,” he admitted, watching my lips with such hunger.

“What… else?”

“I was hired to kill you, sweetheart.” He uttered it a breath away from my mouth before he laid his lips on them and kissed me until I forgot my damn name.

He had been stalking me tokillme.

A murderer.

A hitman, probably from the Cartel.

“And now?” I dared to ask, panting hard when he released me. I swallowed hard as I clutched the front of his shirt, unable to let go.

I didn’t have to ask if he was still intending to follow those orders. He couldn’t be if he’d gone out of his way—more than once—to keep me alive.

“And now I’ll kill anyone who dares to think of hurting you. Ever.”

He sealed the heady, sinister promise with a brutal kiss that spoke of deep need and unyielding desire.

21

MIGUEL

Isabel sighed against my lips as I broke the kiss, and that simple sign of her understanding soothed me. She didn’t balk at the idea of my being a hitman. She wasn’t freaking out at my vow to kill anyone who’d try to hurt her. She accepted it—she accepted me—in a way not many others could have.

Perhaps growing up as Louis Flores’s daughter had hardened her. Being near such a corrupt businessman had taught her how low some people could go. She hadn’t grown up as a sheltered person, oblivious and naïve of all the bad things that happened in life.

“Come on, let’s find somewhere to crash. It’s only going to get hotter, and I need to sleep.”

This time, she took my hand and led me to walk. “Can I get some things from my last room, first?”

“Yeah.” I wasn’t going near that dead man I’d left at my last hotel. Besides, I had more clothes and essentials in my car that I’d parked in a garage when I arrived. I could get them later.

“I appreciate your telling me, um, where you are coming from on all of this, but do you know what’s going on? Why anyone would’ve thought I’d be a vital part in this?” She peered at me with curiosity, not hostility.

I shook my head, focusing on the perfect fit of her fingers between mine. How she slotted against me, shorter and just the right height that I didn’t have to adjust how I walked to meet her in the middle. She was a curvy, short thing, made just to match me, to fit with me like she’d been made for me. “No. I really don’t know what’s going on. Nothing is adding up like it should be.” Glancing at her, I wondered what she could contribute. Even if she thought she knew nothing, maybe something was lurking in her mind that would shed light on this situation. “What do you know about Louis’s dealings with the Cartel?”

She frowned. “Nothing. I know I sound like a broken record, but I really don’t know anything about what my father used to deal with or what he currently does.”

“Nothing about the Gulf Cartel? Or the Carmello?”

“No. Why?”

“Because I work mostly for the Gulf Cartel. My contact is more of a general in-between, so it’s often hard to know for sure where a specific hit is ordered from. But the man who snuck into my last room, the one who shot me before I could kill him, he was from the Carmello Cartel. He was a Cartel member. I recognized the tattoos on his neck.”

She shook her head slowly, lowering her gaze. “I really have no clue, Miguel. I cut ties with Louis years ago. I filed for emancipation when I was sixteen.”

I knew I was reaching and grasping for anything right now, but I was desperate for something, some nugget of intel that I could work with to figure this out.

“But I’m not surprised if he’s pissed off the Cartels. As a corporate conman, he’s dealt with all kinds of criminal organizations before. And the Cartel does have some significance in his life. I don’t know which Cartel she was from, but I know that my mother was given to Louis as a bride from one of them.”

That was news. I was limited with my knowledge about Esmeralda Flores. “Your mother was from a Cartel?”

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