Page 111 of Sin With Me

I pulled on my left arm but that one was tied to the chair.

“I’m not untying you,” Mike grinned.

“Mikey, honey, this isn’t you. You’re a good man, I know you are,” I heard my mother say. I still couldn’t believe that she was talking.

“Are you fucking kidding me? You don’t know anything aboutme.”

“They stole you from me. They took you away from us. I held your cold body in my arms, baby, and I don’t know how you did it, Mateo, but I’ll never forgive you. I’ll never forgive any of you for stealing mybaby.”

“You kept a child away from his father. You deserved it.” I turned my head a little to the side. That made my neck hurt like hell, but I needed to see the man with the deep voice, and when I saw him, I recognized Mateo Cortez.

Shit, this isn’tgood.

“He was just a child. He didn’t deserve this. Michael, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I couldn’t protectyou.”

I watched Mike shift in discomfort, as if my mother’s plea had reached a piece of his soul; and then just as quickly, it vanished.

“You stole me from my father’s arms. You gave me Atropa belladonna. You drugged me, and my father thought I wasdead.”

“That’s not true, Michael. It was the other way around. I would never have given you poison! I lovedyou.”

“Did you keep me away from my father?” he asked.

“Benjamin was a ruthless man. He hurt so many people. John was your father.”

“I did a DNA test. I know my real family.”

“And I know that you’re a good man. I know that God put you on this path for a reason. No matter what your uncle has told you, you were a good child, and you were loved. We both loved you from the bottom of our hearts.”

“You kept a child away from his father, and then you murdered his father. I was there. I saw everything.” Mateo Cortez, Ben’s brother and Aaron’s uncle, replied.

“Mikey was ours, Mateo,” my mother said, with conviction in her voice. “Mine and John’s.” The man walked closer to my mother. I tried to keep them both in focus with the one eye. It took all my concentration to keep them both on the opposite ends of my peripheral vision.

“That’s bullshit. You tried to keep Mikey away from his family, burned Ben’s house down, and stole our money. And if that wasn’t enough, your friend killed my brother. Was Xavier too scared to come tonight? Where the fuck ishe?”

He couldn’t be talking about my mother, could he? She wasn’t violent; but then again, she’d been ecstatic when she learned that I would be a detective. But in that one moment, when I saw determination in my mother’s eyes, I realized that I barely knew her at all. She was one of the strongest women I’d ever known, but I hadn’t been aware that she had so many secrets. I never realized that my mother had such a huge price on her head. If Mike Donaldson was truly her son, she would have never placed him in harm’s way. My mother gave me a normal upbringing and she would have done the same for him. Until recently, I hadn’t been aware of the danger that had been part of my life. I never knew that my mother and father were trying to keep me safe from a cartel.

“He’s dead,” my mother replied, but her eyes said that was a lie. Either she knew that he wasn’t dead or she didn’t believe that he was. I turned my aching body some more, and that’s when I saw Father John, my biological father, sitting beside my mother. His arm was around her, and he was holding onto his left side. Blood seeped between his fingers.

Ohno!

“Karma’s a bitch, isn’t it?” Mateo asked. “Good. Now if Kate here would only tell us where the fifty million is, we could all end the day on a good note.” He then came up to me and yanked my head back by the ponytail.

Fucker!

“Looks like they want you to suffer some more, chiquita.”

“Stop it!” my mother screamed. “Haven’t you done enough already?”

“You want to talk, Anna? Let’s hearit.”

But my mother kept her lips sealed. She knew as well as I did that the moment she told them about the money, we were alldead.

I prayed to feel one spark of energy, but even breathing was difficult. I prayed for anything to get out of here. Mateo lowered the gun in his hand and shoved it underneath my chin, “I’m not fooling around, Anna! This is it. You know we don’t give second warnings.”

“She doesn’t know anything about the money,” my mother said. “You let her go and let Father John go, and I’ll take you toit.”

What?

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