Brody
All I could do was stare at her outstretched hand as if it had fangs just waiting to sink into an exposed vein and inject retribution and penance.
It couldn’t be.
But it was.
Adriana fucking Carrera.
Speak of the devil, and she walks in your bar.
I remembered seeing the blurry college photos of her Leo managed to scrounge up when I first contacted him, but the woman in front of me looked completely different. Her hair was shorter, and the way she was dressed made it damn hard for a man to look her in the eye.
Back then, I had no idea the shitstorm I was about to unleash.
After the dust settled, Val sent men looking for her, but no one could find her. Not a damn thing. That’s what made her so dangerous. It was hard to fight an invisible enemy.
But here she stood, dressed in a tight pencil-thin black skirt, a white blouse a few sizes too small, and the highest fuck-me-heels I’d ever seen, claiming to be the missing heiress to the Carrera empire.
I didn’t have to know what Marisol—or Adriana—or whatever the hell she wanted to be called, looked like to realize my past had caught up with me. Paybacks were a bitch.
And so was the woman standing in front of me.
Curling my lip at her offered hand, I turned my back to her. “You’ve got a lot of fucking nerve showing your face here.”
I felt Adriana’s eyes boring into me as I drained the piss warm beer left in my mug. I knew she still had her arm extended, seething as she waited for me to kiss her ass, so instead, I lifted an eyebrow and waved the glass at bar bitch. Like the dutiful half-wit she was, my employee raced around the bar like her ass was on fire, sorting through chilled glasses until she found the perfect one then busied herself at the tap.
“Neat trick, Pavlov.” Adriana’s sultry voice trailed over my shoulder. “You might want to think about spaying her, so she’ll stop humping your leg.”
As much shit as she’d caused, an unwelcome smile still tugged at the corners of my mouth as bar bitch shot Adriana a glare, muttering a slew of curses as my beer overflowed onto her shoes. Wiping the sides down, she slammed the mug in front of me and stomped off to the corner, huffing as she tapped away on her ever-present phone.
Lifting the new mug, I took a slow drink and shot her a look out of the corner of my eye. She glared back, with eyes identical to my boss’s. A dark chocolate color with gold flecks that burned like fire when he was pissed.
Kind of like she was now.
“Something wrong?”
“How anyone didn’t realize you were a damn Carrera before I blew the whistle is beyond me,” I muttered around another huge drink. “You have the same condescending stare as your brother.”
“I thought you two were friends.”
“Respect doesn’t make us friends, princesa.”
“Yes, well, the eyes are the window to the soul.” Tilting her chin, she held my gaze. “But the heart is the doorway to sin.”
Tou-fucking-ché.
I raised my glass in a toast. “I’ll drink to that.”
“It appears you’ll drink to anything these days.”
I held her stare while taking my time drinking long and slow just to piss her off. From the way her lips pursed tighter than an asshole, I succeeded. Adriana stood there as if waiting for me to offer the seat she just vacated and invite her to join me. If she thought I still subscribed to that kind of chivalrous bullshit, she had a lot to learn. I didn’t give a shit if she stood there until her fucking legs fell off.
Normally, I would’ve egged her on, but she’d come to me for a reason, and I was tired of dancing around the seventeen-million-dollar elephant in the room. “So, you want your revenge. Is that what stealing my shipments and this pathetic reorganization attempt is about?”
I could feel the anger rolling off her in waves, but that didn’t stop her from jerking out the stool beside me and sitting down. “Not very skilled in small talk, are you?”
“I’m getting bored, Miss Carrera. You want to cut to the chase?” I lifted the mug to my mouth again, glancing out of the corner of my eye to find an angry flush rushing up that sexy, slim neck. Thankfully, my cheeks were full of beer and unable to give in to the smirk begging to break free.
She groaned, digging her palm into her forehead. “Would you stop talking and listen? I didn’t steal anything, and I’m not reorganizing shit. I’m being set up.”
“Right.”
“You’re burning the wrong person at the stake.”
“And you’re fucking with the wrong Carrera,” I growled, leaning forward. “I’m not stupid. Shipments go missing, the Muñoz Cartel is involved, your name is given as the leader, and now here you are.”
“Your point?”
“If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then guess what, sweetheart? It’s not a fucking chicken.”
Adriana rolled her eyes. “Who wouldn’t want revenge,” she admitted, some of the bite leaving her voice. “You ruined my life. Why would you do that? What was so important about me that you had to do that?”
I stared at her, momentarily taken aback by her sudden and unexpected burst of vulnerability.
Nothing.
Not a damn thing was important about her.
It had to do with a different woman. One who’d already chosen another man, but who I still couldn’t seem to let go. I did it to protect my ex-girlfriend.
Okay, that was a lie.
I wanted to prove a point. I wanted her to open her eyes and see that the man who had her heart lived in a savage world. A world where men slaughtered entire families and brainwashed children. If she had left everything she knew to be with him, it would’ve been the biggest mistake of her life.
Eden would’ve been nothing but a pawn.
Disposable collateral.
Just like one-year-old Adriana Carrera had been.
But I said none of that. Instead, I shrugged like the asshole I’d become. “It wasn’t personal. I’m a lawyer. It was my job to pick out the pieces of a puzzle that don’t fit. It made no sense why your body was never found. Esteban Muñoz threw your birth mother and aunt away like trash. He would’ve done the same to Val if he hadn’t gotten away. But you? Not a trace of your blood or DNA was found at the crime scene. It didn’t add up.”
“It wasn’t personal?” She threw her head back and laughed so loudly the few patrons left in the bar turned a curious eye our way.
Gritting her teeth, she leaned in close enough that a sweet and spicy scent drifted past my nose, leaving a hint of licorice in its wake. A scent so complex and unique, I involuntarily tilted my head to chase it before it faded.
“Let me tell you how personal this is, Brody.” Ripping the button off the cuff of her blouse, she jerked her sleeve up her arm and held it up between us, instantly breaking the spell I was under.
I blinked twice before the jagged and distorted light pink line came into focus. It ran across her wrist, marring what was otherwise perfectly flawless bronze skin. My heart seized as flashes of my sister ran through my head.
“This is where I almost bled to death from the cut of a knife,” she hissed. “This?” Moving her finger from her arm, she trailed it just above the dip in her collarbone. “This is where they tried to slit my throat and missed. So, don’t you sit there and tell me it wasn’t personal.”