Page 91 of The Perfect Stranger

Chapter Thirty

Luis Santos was everything I expected him to be.

Well dressed in designer clothes with a head of thick white hair and a beard to match. He also carried an air of arrogance that had kept him alive this long.

He’d stepped out of his helicopter and walked toward both Gabriel and I with a casual gait that seemed incongruous to the situation. There was nothing casual about what was happening. There was nothing casual about having an FBI agent abducted across the border. And there certainly was nothing casual about the transfer of millions of US dollars from an FBI frozen account.

But this was Luis Santos, and this was the first time in two years he’d bothered to grace us with his presence.

And now reality and expectation collided.

It had been the first time I’d ever seen him.

This was the man who destroyed an entire town.

This was the man who ordered the rape, pillage, and murders of the La Balsa people.

This was the man who ordered the death of my father.

And he saw through me like I didn’t exist to him. Like he would never consider me to be his killer.

At the time, I reasoned that to be a good thing.

Luis Santos would never see it coming.

He taunted.

He lured her into his dark world.

He worked her up until she was red in the face, tears of anger prickling her cheeks.

He brought up a piece of her past that would always cut deep.

Her father.

“You killed someone’s husband, someone’s father. My father!” Nina yelled when he admitted to be being responsible for her father’s murder.

“And he killed hundreds of children, husbands, and wives. He helped drive a wedge between families.”

“And what of your role? You don’t feel as though you should claim responsibility for it since you produce it?”

“I lost my conscience a long time ago, my dear,” he replied, indifferent.

“That’s your excuse? That’s your motherfucking excuse?”

“This is business, and this is how business works.”

And that was as far as the explanation went.

Nina and I had both lost our fathers at the hands of this man.

Nina, the woman I cared about, didn’t just share the same grief as me. She shared the same desire for vengeance.

“Who brought this bitch here?” Luis Santos looked around the room at all the men who averted eye contact.

“Our man, Hunter,” Gabriel said with a knowing smile.

“Show me.”

Gabriel pulled my shirt neckline over my shoulder where the tattoo of the Virgin Mary sat tarnishing my ski

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