Page 90 of Bad Blood
As I lower back down into my chair, my father holds his glass at his lips. “I do have one question for you…”
I grit my teeth.
“How philanthropic will your wife be when another shipment of dead trafficked women is dumped on your dock?”
You bastard.
“Trafficked women?” Thalia recites the words as a whisper—as if refusing to give them a voice will make it untrue.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
Only then does my father pick up his knife and fork and begin vigorously sawing at the now cold duck on his plate. “Dios mío, did he not tell you?” Pausing, he points his knife across the table. “Communication is the key to lasting marriage, Santi… Deception after only a few days isn’t a good sign.”
I clench my fists. “Don’t…”
“Danger…” my mother cautions, trying to diffuse him with a soft but stern whisper of the name only she calls him.
He ignores both of us. “Then allow me,señora. This morning, your childhood friend Edier Grayson intercepted a Carrera shipment arriving from Guadalajara. Recreational goods, of course. However, in exchange, he left us a present. A forty-foot shipping container filled with seventeen dead naked women. Trafficked women.”
“No…” She shakes her head vehemently, her hands white-knuckling the table. “You’re wrong. Edier would never do that.” Her breathing is erratic, her pupils dilated and wild as she turns to me. “His mother is the one who runs the women’s shelter in Colombia. His motherwasa victim herself. He’s grown up with his father’s hatred for the business all his life. My own father abhors it. He would never sanction this. Tell him, Santi!” she says desperately, turning to me. Though what the fuck she wants me to do about it is anyone’s guess. “Tell him Edier wouldn’t do that!”
The strange clamp around my chest is back… squeezing harder and harder. But I can’t tell her what she wants to hear just to spare her feelings.
Before was personal, this is business.
“There’s no other explanation,” I state bluntly. “He’s right. Revenge changes people, Thalia. It’s changed us all.”Me and you, included.“It makes them do things they never thought themselves capable of doing.”
Glancing at my father’s callous stare, I deliver the final blow. “You of all people should know that.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Thalia
It wasn’teasy for me to walk away from that fight, and I can’t deny that it hurt my heart to do so.
My damn Santiago heart.
Ella was right. Iamsimilar to my father in some respects, no matter how much I argue to the contrary. Our shared stubbornness is what drove me to Santi’s casino in the first place. I made the problem, so there was only one person who was going to fix it.
It’s this same stubbornness that keeps me playing along with Santi Carrera’s mind games.
Swinging my legs out of bed, I check my phone on the nightstand.
Still no call from Ella.
Still no message from Bardi.
Still no closer to morning.
Three a.m. is a dead time—the worst time—shipwrecked between night and dawn. Still, I need a drink of water and a pee so another day in captivity is going to have to start extra early for me today.
Pulling a hoodie over my old gray sleeping tee, I follow a long black hallway all the way to the kitchen. Part of me hopes that I’ll run into Svetlana again, just in case she has another message from my father, but when I hit the lights, the place is sterile and empty.
I pour myself a chilled glass from the bottle in the fridge and lean against the island to survey the scene of our food fight explosion the other night. Turns out, it was just the beginning because we haven’t stopped exploding since. Every day, every minute, every hour brings with it a new bomb—the latest being the table of doom last night.
I came straight back to the penthouse after the meal. I didn’t expect him to come and find me because he’d made his feelings clear. When all is said and done, Santi will never trust me. I will always be the enemy. My words and opinions mean less than nothing to him.
I shouldn’t care, but I do.
