Across the table, Roberto chuckled. “The Garcías never thought we would see the day when we made peace with the Lòpez family, but as they say, all wars must come to an eventual end, right?”
“That’s what they say,” the man next to Roberto muttered.
Samuel.
The other Lòpez son.
No one paid him any mind.
Valeria was a little distracted by trying to ignore the hand that came to rest behind her chair. Jorge’s fingers curved around her shoulder, his fingers digging in painfully. Still, she managed a smile across their daughter between them, just enough to make him assume she was fine with his touch.
She wanted to puke.
Still, Jorge’s hand flexed against her shoulder again when his father smiled at the man who was now arranged to be his future son-in-law because of the upcoming marriage to Abril. Even if she didn’t sense that tension in her husband’s hand, she would know the truth. In private, Jorge didn’t shut up.
His father had taken a step down from running the cartel a while back. Jorge was the one who had the major control of the operation, but that didn’t stop his father from stepping in occasionally, to remind everyone that the king wasn’t truly dead.
Like this deal with their enemy.
This marriage.
Jorge despised it all.
“Good things are happening to us all,” Jorge murmured to the table, lifting a glass of red wine for the others to follow his lead. He tipped his glass toward his father, “To power, Papá, by whatever means we can get it, no?”
Martín smiled and raised his own glass. “To power.”
Jorge tipped his drink back and swallowed it in one gulp. Valeria knew if he kept that up, by the time they got up to their room later, he would be drunk and unpleasant. To say the least ... more like violent and wanting her.
Something else to make her sick.
“And we have more things to look forward to,” Jorge added, setting his glass down to the table hard. “More business—starting next week. Everyone will benefit if it goes right.”
Across the table, Roberto asked, “Everyone?”
He meant their side of things, too. Because now, if the two cartels merged, even if Jorge didn’t like it, what benefitted them should also benefit Roberto’s father’s organization. That was how it should work, but Valeria didn’t believe for a second Jorge would agree.
Jorge didn’t reply.
Valeria doubted the other man missed it.
• • •
Valeria tightened the silk robe around her body, using the ties to cinch the fabric at the trim curve of her waist. She sensed his presence the moment he opened the bedroom door.
Jorge had that effect.
“Why would you dress in that?” he asked.
It was by his tone she knew he had polished off the bottle of red wine from the table after dinner finished. Great. He was always worse when he was a little too drunk, and his lips were loose.
Not only did she have to deal with his pawing in bed but also his fucking mouth which never shut the hell up. It was a losing battle.
“Val,” he mumbled.
She turned around to face him, only to find him circling the foot of the bed to come closer to her. Maybe her attention should have been on the door because she always found it easier to handle him when she could see him coming.
Valeria hated being surprised.
Like now.
As she assumed, he was drunk. Thoroughly. Bloodshot eyes, a slack mouth, and a sheen of perspiration dotting the lines in his forehead as his gaze narrowed in on her. Not that she had much time to react because she didn’t.
He reached for her before she might refuse him—lie and say she was on her cycle, which turned him off like nothing else. Pulling the robe she had just tightened away from her body with his rough hand, it allowed him access to the silk short and camisole set she wore underneath.
He picked her clothes, too.
“Jorge,” she started to say.
His hand found her breast, sliding under the silk before clamping down tight enough to take her breath and words away as he muttered, “Next week, when the Canadians come down to make that deal, we won’t need the fucking Garcías for anything. And then my father will understand that I can do this without merging. Smart, aren’t I?”
Valeria swallowed hard, ignoring the bile rising in her throat as his hand slid from one of her breasts to the other, and then climbed higher on her neck to rest against her throat. If she flinched, he would become rough. She didn’t need more bruises to hide with makeup.
It never worked, anyway.
“Of course, you are,” she lied. “But might he be mad?”
“I don’t care what he’ll be!”
She flinched.
Except, the high level of his shout made their daughter wake up in the room she used across the hall from theirs inside the mansion.
Maria’s tired cries were muffled, but Valeria still heard them. She fixed her sleep clothes, but Jorge didn’t remove his hand from her body.
“She’s six,” he snapped, “and is fine—she’ll go back to sleep on her own.”
“It’s a new place, and it might scare her.”
“You can’t baby her forever.”
No, but she would right now.
Maria needed her.
And she needed to get away from Jorge.
Win-win.
“Please,” Valeria whispered, “I’ll just get her back to sleep, and then I’ll come to bed.”
Jorge sighed, and rolled his eyes, letting his hand drop from her throat as he took a step back. “Fine. Whatever. Go.”
She didn’t need to be told again. Hopefully, by the time she got back to bed, he would be passed out. Sometimes the universe worked for her, and other times, it only seemed to want to laugh in her face.
Valeria didn’t glance back as she exited the bedroom and crossed the hall. Once she was inside her daughter’s room, Maria reached for her from the sheets that were nothing like the ones she had loved so much in her pink bed back in New York.
Nothing here was like New York.
“Mamá,” Maria breathed, “someone yelled.”
“It’s okay,” Valeria murmured, slipping under the blankets with her daughter, and holding her tight. “Mamá’s here, bebita. I love you.”
4.
Chris checked the watch on his wrist as the jet jumped when the landing gear first touched down on the ground. He found that was the most nerve-wracking part of flying. He didn’t mind takeoff, or even being in the air. It was landing that always had his heart jumping into his damn throat.
Their flight was on time, according to his watch. Across the aisle from his seat on the private jet, his father cleared his throat as the pressure in the cabin became bearable, and their voices didn’t sound like an echo to each other’s ears.
“Not anymore settled about this, are you?” Gian asked.
In a tailored suit, unbothered and relaxed sitting in the white leather seat, Gian smirked in Chris’s direction, like he had known the whole time what was running through his quiet son’s mind. His father always seemed to have a good grasp on the complexities of his boys although Chris never understood why.
Sometimes, it felt like a curse.
Others, a gift.