Page 1 of Savage Assassin

Elena

In all the years I’ve known him, my father has rarely ever raised his voice.

It’s terrifying to hear him raise it now. Especially to my mother.

I’m crouched outside the heavy wooden double doors that lead into his office, listening as they argue. It feels even worse than a normal argument because they’re arguing about me.

“This is real danger, Lupé,” I hear my father say, his voice low and urgent. “Diego isn’t going to stop. He’s notevergoing to stop, not until he’s dealt with or we give him what he wants. We’re on the verge of all-out war–and I refuse to give him my daughter.”

“Ourdaughter,” my mother hisses. “This is Isabella’s fault. The match was perfectly suitable; it just wasn’t what she wanted. She ran off with that Irishman, all because of her selfish decisions, and now we’re left to pick up the pieces.Elenais left to pick up the pieces.”

A jolt of fear pierces through me. I don’t fully understand what she means, but I can feel the tension in the air, seeping out from the room until my stomach feels like a series of cold knots, my heart beating hard in my chest.

“You are right about that,” I hear my father say tiredly. “Diego wants her to make up for losing Isabella. But I’m not giving in to those fucking demands. He can’t have her. It’s not an option, no matter what he threatens–”

“You might consider that it’s possible to make it work.” My mother’s voice is taut and haughty, the tone I’ve always heard her use when she’s insistent that she be listened to. But I can hear a thread of fear in it too, and I know she’s scared.

We’reallscared. Ever since Isabella left, it’s been nothing but fear. We all heard how Diego sent her to the bride-tamer for her insolence, for how she’d refused to give in to him. It had only been a few days later when my father had received the first threat from him, and we’d found out that she’d escaped.

The communication from the Kings had come a little while later, and we’d known then that the Irishman had saved her and taken her to Boston. She’s safe now, far away from here.

We’re anything but.

“He could make assurances that he won’t hurt her,” my mother insists, her voice carrying louder now. “Make that a term of the deal. Her safety. That he treats her the way a husband should treat his wife.”

“You’re out of your mind, Lupé.” My father’s voice is rougher now, angrier. “What will we do if we make that deal, and he goes back on it? How would we enforce that? How would we protect her? He’ll have her then, and we’ll still be where we are now–weaker than ever, because he’ll have the threat of her life to hold over us.”

There’s a moment of silence, and I can see in my mind’s eye the way my father must be shaking his head, his arms crossed stubbornly over his chest. I’ve seen it before, when I’ve caught sight of them arguing.

“I’m not going to throw her to the wolves like that,” he says, so quietly that I almost don’t hear it. “It’s not going to happen. We’ll find another way.”

“He’s going to kill us,” my mother murmurs, and this time I can hear the panic clearly in her voice. “You have todosomething, Ricardo. We can’t rely on the Irish–”

The same panic floods through me, and I clench my fists against my stomach as I crouch there, listening, my blood turning to ice.

I miss Isabella. I miss her so much. She would know what to do, what to say–

It might be objectively true that she’s the reason we’re in this position, but I don’t blame her, not like our mother does. How could I? She had always been the wilder one, the braver one, not much older than me, but enough for me to look up to her. To want to be as brave as she was.

As sheis.

She’d gotten everything that she wanted, everything that we’d both been too afraid to dream of for our future. She’d gone out and claimed it for her own, seduced the Irishman, and he’d fallen in love with her. He saved her and took her far away from here, like some kind of fairytale. It was exactly the kind of adventure, the kind of romance that we’d whispered about once upon a time, a story that had never ever seemed like it could come true.

I want my own happy ending now. But I can see that it’s not going to happen.

The best I can hope for is that somehow, my father will keep me out of Diego Gonzalez’s clutches. That he’ll keep him from claiming me as restitution for Isabella–for his lost bride.

I can’t help wondering, as I listen to my parents fight over my fate, if Isabella knows what’s happening. If she would have done things differently if she’d known that Diego would come for me next.

I hope that she wouldn’t. I want her to be happy–and I want my own happiness, too.

The right-side door to the office flings open suddenly, so quickly that I jump and tumble backward onto my ass, letting out what my mother would term a very unladylike squeak of shock.

It’s my mother who is storming out of the office, and she pauses, her face tight with anger as she looks down at me sprawled on the stone tile floor.

“I see you were eavesdropping,” she says icily, her eyes narrowing. “What did I do, to be cursed with no sons and two such rebellious daughters who–”

“Lupé, that’s enough.” My father’s voice booms past her as he pushes open the other door, stepping around my mother as he reaches out to help me up from the floor. “Elena is scared. We all are. There’s no need to make that worse.”

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