Page 136 of The Devil Can Be Kind

Like why would her father promise her hand to a member of the cartel in the first place? It was unconventional…abhorrent. Mexican drug lord or not, he was a nobody to major players like us. So, why did thisRicardothink he had any right to her at all? He sure as shit didn’t.

And on top of that, why would a father hand his only daughter over to a man he deemed a brutal savage? It didn’t make any goddamn sense.

The moment the door slammed shut behind the miserable scumbags, my gaze flicked to Ada. She looked exhausted and pale, slumped in her seat. She refused to meet my stare, preferring to look at her hands lying idly on her lap and even from this distance, I could tell she was trembling.

Something is wrong.

She wasn’t just upset about the callousness of her father or the cutting tongue of her idiot cousin—there was something else. Something else was going on that I wasn’t aware of…and it was putting me in a piss-poor mood.

There were too many damn questions and nofucking answers.

“Are you alright?” I asked her, hating myself for sounding so rough and cold. It wasn’t easy for me to drop my mask of indifference so quickly.

She didn’t answer, too lost in her own thoughts. I doubted she even heard me.

My jaw tightened in frustration as Benny approached, and I reached to pour myself a drink as Benny did the same.

“That went as well as could be expected,” He murmured.

“He doesn’t want peace. He wants her back,” I muttered in reply.

“We assumed as much.” The older man nodded. “Whoever this Lopez is has him running scared, which is…interesting.”

It certainly was.

“I want to know who he is, and I want him fucking dead.”

Benny nodded once before the doors flew open again, announcing Jesse’s return. Meeting the familiar eyes of my oldest friend I could sense an unease stirring within him.

“They’re gone.” He shot a concerned look in Ada’s direction. “And I might know something about thisRicardo Lopezhe was talking about.”

Ada flinched.Again.

In fact, she had flinched every time that prick’s name has been mentioned. Her face morphed from white to pale green. There was definitely something going on that I was missing, and I had every intention of finding out what that was…but I had to speak with Jesse first to get some fucking answers.

“Alonso. Tom. Take Ada to the penthouse and get her something to eat,” I ordered.

The men quickly moved toward her, Alonso offering his hand to help her from the chair. She looked at him somewhat dazed before taking it, allowing him to help support some of her weightas she left. She looked so weak and docile, my blood boiled. I had never seen her look so…breakable.

My fists clenched as I fought against the primal urge to throw her over my shoulder and rip out the throat of any man that came near her.

Jesse cleared his throat the second the doors clicked shut, drawing my attention back into the room.

“I didn’t recognize the name at first, but then I remembered a story one of our smugglers was telling me, about this lunatic from a cartel in Tijuana. Lopez, he’d said his name was, but he’s better known asThrasher.” Jesse looked troubled by the name.

Thrasher.

Deep in the recesses of my mind the name rang a hollow, disturbing bell. I knew that name, or rather I knew the reputation that followed it.

Thrasherwas a strangler of men, beater of women and an enslaver of children. The only word I could associated with men like him was simplyevil. A monster.

The son of a prolific Mexican drug lord whose territories spread all through Tijuana. They were the largest in the area and the most dangerous, with a reputation spanning the entirety of Mexico.

Not that I gave a shit about any of that.

What troubled me the most is why thisThrasherorLopez—or whoever the fuck he was—thought he had any right to Adalyn.

To what was mine.

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