Page 82 of Violent Attraction

“Did he say how long he’s known?”

“Apparently from the very beginning.”

I still can’t figure out how he knew for that long.

Did he see us together?

I don’t see how that would be possible since we spent ninety percent of our time in Austin. If we were in San Pedro, we could act like we would when we were teenagers, before my hopes were up, and Santos was still speaking to me.

Did he have someone following us? That would seem more likely but why would he need to have someone following his own daughter?

Besides, Santos is one of my father’s loyalist men next to my brother, why wouldn’t he want him to be with his daughter?

Nothing makes sense.

“Camila knows too.”

That takes my mind off my father.

My sister knows?

“How do you know that?”

“She told me tonight. Apparently, she noticed the way we looked at each other, whatever the fuck that means.”

I can’t believe that Camila knew about us and didn’t tell me.

That bitch.

If I would have known that she knew about me and Santos, I would have gone to her when I needed to talk and not held everything in.

“I’m not worried about Camila. The one that has my mind working overtime is Ronaldo. He’s not the type of man to stand back with something like this.”

“What are you thinking?” I ask.

I know the man well enough to know when his mind is spinning. And right now, with a murderous glare in his eyes, I know that it’s spinning out of control.

“There’s a deeper reason as to why he is taking over the Castro cartel and why he wants you to marry Emilio so badly.”

He’s right.

This all can’t be about the money and power that this arrangement is going to bring to the Muertos. There has to be something else. Something bigger and my father is using me to get it. But what is it?

Thinking about all this takes me back to the day of the walk with my father and what he said about Santos being right next to Cristiano.

He needs to know.

“This may be nothing but that same day that he told me about knowing about us, he said that if you do anything to stop this, you’ll be in a box next to your father. I think,” I stop. Can I say the words? Can I put this thought process out there? “I think my father has something to do with Cristiano’s death.”

This is something that I thought about for a while. And the more I think of it, the more it makes sense.

But how do the Castros’ tie into all of this and how does it come back to my father?

The room is still for a few seconds, with Santos just standing before me, until he finally nods.

“I’ve thought the same thing.”

Four years ago, I never would have put Cristiano’s death on the man that brought me into this world. Now, I can’t help but think that it’s true.

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