Page 1 of Pulse

PROLOGUE

THEY WERE EARLY.

Not by much—only fifteen minutes before he expected them, but it was enough to devastate everything.

Everything.

“Yo, you in here, man?” Enrique pounded on the door with his heavy fist.

How did Max know the power that fist wielded? Well, he’d been on the receiving end of that fist a time or two. It hurt like a bitch when it made contact and left massive bruises as a parting gift.

“I’m here,” Max called out. “It’s open. Come on in.”

“You fucking decent?” Enrique asked as he always did. “I walk in on your scrawny ass doing unspeakable shit to my sister, and I’ll fucking die on the spot.”

Chuckling, Max strode to the door. He opened it and gestured into the empty room with a flourish. “How long have I known you? Have you ever once caught me and Camila getting busy?”

Enrique shuddered. He wasn’t the biggest man at only five-eight, but he made up for that height with his bulky width and massive personality. “Nah, but you can never be too careful.” He strolled into the room, hiking up his sagging jeans. He wore his jet-black hair slicked back, showing off his tanned face with the strong jaw women went nuts over. His dark eyes and thick eyelashes didn’t hurt. Enrique raked in women like no one Maxhad ever met. They flocked to him. Two, sometimes three a night. The man couldn’t get enough of them either.

“Lucky for you, I respect her too much to risk anyone catching a glimpse of her. She is for my eyes only.”

Enrique grunted. “Lucky for you, you mean.” He plopped into Max’s desk chair and pushed aside a pile of paper, leaving a smooth, blank expanse of wood in front of him. “The only reason the old man and I let you near her was cuz you’re a respectful motherfucker.” He drew a vial from his pocket and began tapping a few lines onto the table. Cocaine was Enrique’s drug of choice, probably in his top three favorite things. “If you were any other man, we’da cut your nuts off for how hard you went after her. Ya know?”

Oh yeah, he knew—two years of carefully earning Enrique and his father’s trust while making his interest in Camila obvious. More than once, he’d feared for his life after a night spent heavily flirting with the very pampered and protected cartel princess.

But he’d had nothing but success. Max had not only worked his way deep into the cartel’s circle of trust but also into the heart and bed of the revered Camila, daughter of the most powerful cartel leader in recent history.

They’d been together ever since Enrique’s father gave his blessing—nearly a year and a half.

While he didn’t love her and never would, they’d built a bond he would mourn the loss of once this assignment ended, not to mention the weighted guilt that would live on his shoulders for the rest of his life for ruining her family and her life.

“Want some?” Enrique asked, staring up at Max, who stood by the open door.

“Nah.” He shut the door and strode to the empty chair on the opposite side of his desk. Enrique often spent time in Max’s office eating, snorting coke, fucking, and doing whateverthe fuck he wanted. What was Max’s was Enrique’s—well, the cartel’s.

“Don’t know why I bother offering to share.” His dark head bent over the desk as he inhaled his first line. “Damn, that’s good shit.” He wiped his nose and went for a second line. “You’re so fucking straitlaced,” he said with a laugh as he came up, blinking and brushing the excess powder from beneath his nose.

“You know that’s not true.” Max had participated more times than he liked to admit. He’d had to. Sampling the merchandise was part of the game, and he knew how to play it well. But he hated coke. He spent ninety percent of his life an anxious mess of hypervigilance, worried the cartel would find out he was an undercover DEA agent. Living in that heightened state was hard on the body and mind, but he’d accepted that fate when he accepted the job. Coke made it worse. He didn’t need anything to increase his heart rate or make him sweat more. It was only a matter of time before he dropped dead of a heart attack—coke would only speed up his demise.

Unless the cartel discovered who he was and put a bullet in his brain. Nothing he’d done the last few years would matter in that case.

Enrique’s grin turned mischievous. “True. You can be a wild motherfucker when you want to be. So, you set for tonight?”

Ah, tonight. Max had been both dreading and anticipating this moment since he went undercover almost four years ago. He’d finally be able to rejoin the world and shed the crooked persona he’d played every day for years. Leaving this assignment behind was a monumental relief but also terrifying.

He’d done things as the third in command for the Del Rios Cartel. Hell, he’d been promised to slide into the number two position when Enrique eventually took over, a powerful station he’d receive over Enrique’s brother, Tomás. Tomás was young and soft, a kid who would struggle to make it in his family’sworld but would have been given the title of number three when he came of age if Max hadn’t arrived. However, Enrique’s father viewed Max as invaluable to their operation and much better suited for the position than the book-loving Tomás. Becoming vital to the cartel didn’t happen by accident. And it didn’t happen without great personal sacrifice and a long leash from the US Department of Justice.

Late at night, while the woman who loved him slept by his side, Max wondered what would happen to him when this job ended. It was easy to compartmentalize the vile things he’d seen and done in the thick of it. But once he returned to his shoebox apartment in New Mexico, would his conscience flare to life and destroy him?

He’d find out soon.

“Of course I’m ready,” he said with the exaggerated confidence Enrique had come to expect from him. “Could do this shit in my sleep.”

Laughing, Enrique bent over his final line. “Always such a cocky fucker,” he said before snorting the last of his coke. “Any last details to be sorted? This one’s bigger than most.”

That was the understatement of the year. Tonight, their most significant shipment to date would arrive from Colombia on multiple small boats. Max would oversee the crew meeting the boats, supervise the unloading, and then see it safely delivered to one of the cartel’s many secret warehouses around the city.

It never ceased to amaze him how much of the cartel’s operation happened right under the noses of unsuspecting citizens and oblivious law enforcement.

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