Page 113 of Corrupted Deception

I swiped the phones screen, but nothing happened. It was dead.

Shit.

I retrieved the charger from its designated spot beneath the coffee table. Everything had a designated spot in any place we lived and usually labels to ‘remind’ me—one of those little things that helped keep my dad sane.

But as I leaned down to plug the charger into the wall, a door creaked. Not just any creak. That slow, drawn-out sound that only seemed to happen in horror movies?—that was the one.

Great. I’m a bad actress in a shittyhorror flick again.This day kept getting better and better.

I turned around slowly, but my gut was telling me that reaching for my gun would be the wrong move. There were eyes on me already; I’d never get a shot off.

It was Aiden, standing in the half-open basement doorway. He had his hands at his sides, shoulders relaxed, but my gut was talking again, telling me something wasn’t quite right here.

In case that feeling in the pit of my stomach wasn’t enough, the tank of a man who came up behind Aiden was pretty much a dead giveaway.

The tank was holding a gun, the barrel pressed into Aiden’s back. His features look squished—eyes too close together and not enough distance between his mouth and nose. But what stood out more than his face was his shiny, shaved head covered in a tattoo of a rosary winding all over it.

Oh good, a religious guy.No reason to worry then.‘Do unto others…’ and all that shit.

“If I’d known you were showing up with company, I would have cooked,” I joked, waiting for Aiden’s eyes to tell me what was going on. An explanation about what he’d been doing in the basement wouldn’t have gone amiss either.

“There is no need,amiga.We won’t be staying long.”

Oh shit.

The sound of her voice hit like a physical blow, leaving me breathless. Betrayal, that deep and gnawing sense of trust shattered, clawed at my insides, making it hard to swallow.

She appeared at the top of the stairs as the tank forced Aiden down the hallway, into the dining room, and less than kindly offered him a seat.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I forced out the words, keeping my voice calm and even. It was a role, an act, one I’d rehearsed a thousand times. Still, I was kind of hoping I was reading the scene wrong—trouble with social cues, and all that shit.

“I’m afraid not,” Val said, shaking her head. She had a gun in her hand, aimed right at me.

Nope, pretty sure this isn’t me misinterpreting the social cues.

Damn.

“There are very few points where those lines cross,”Cielo had said.“Morales. Julio. Val Rojas…”

We’d dismissed the wrong point.

Now would have been a great time for Cielo to figure that puzzle out and come running back. Either way, though, I was fairly certainthisgave me the upper hand in any conversation we had in the future about babysitters and staying put.

Assuming there was a future.

Well, of course, there’d be a future. Whether I would be in it was up for debate at the moment.

“Do not look at me like that,amiga,” Val said as she motioned for me to follow the tank into the dining room.

“Do you think you brought enough muscle?” I asked her, getting a look at the guy’s steroid-enhanced arms. I swear, his biceps were bigger than my head.

Maybe if I stuck a pin in them, they’d deflate.Pop.

Val shrugged. “I don’t like to travel light.”

I exchanged a glance with Aiden as I stepped into the dining room. There was a light sheen of sweat across his brow, but his expression was neutral, even his pupils looked normal.

“Why are you doing this, Val?” I asked as she walked around me, keeping the gun on me the whole time. “You know this ends with you dead, any way you slice it.”

---