“Just my puta secretary who doesn’t know how to fucking knock.”
My pulse pounded in my ears, and all the air rushed out of my chest in one breath. The minute I picked up that phone, Leo Pinellas was a man living on borrowed time, and when Adriana walked into my cantina, it was as judge, jury, and executioner.
Since becoming entangled in cartel life, I’d memorized Marisol Muñoz’s playbook. Although merciless and at times, brutal, her methods were formulaic. Once she needled through her enemy’s defenses, she openly exploited their weaknesses until they caved to her demands. But Adriana Carrera’s innate Machiavellian nature rewrote the rules of the game.
Not only had I met my match, but I might also have met my undoing.
“That was your voice I heard in Leo’s office. The door slamming…he let you in. That’s how you knew.”
I didn’t have to elaborate. The truth stared me in the face and shrugged.
“As I’ve already told you, the man has been on the take for a while now. He’d sell out his own mother if the price was right.”
“Where is he?”
“If the whereabouts of a traitor is your main concern, we have bigger problems, counselor.”
She was right. I shouldn’t give a fuck about Leo. He sold me out, and now she had me backed against the wall.
But if I was going down, I was going down swinging.
“You wouldn’t risk the fallout.”
Of course, she would.
“Admittedly, I’d prefer to avoid a scene.” She shrugged, and for the first time, I saw indecision on her face as worried lines darted across her forehead. “Ratting out his trusted lieutenant isn’t exactly the way to endear myself to my brother.” As soon as the brief moment of weakness broke through her shell, it disappeared. “But if you force my hand, Brody, I won’t hesitate to go to Mexico City myself and serve your head on a platter. Don’t think I forgot you were about to serve mine up for your Chicago bullshit.”
“Then why come for me in the first place?”
“Didn’t you just hear me? You’re his trusted lieutenant. If you bring me there and convince him I’m worthy of that same trust, things will go a lot faster.” She turned her back to me, walking away as she bit out her confession. “If I have to do it on my own, the walls I’ll have to tear down will take a lifetime.”
“And blackmailing me is just an added perk, I suppose.”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” she tossed out over her shoulder. “You’re just an insurance policy. I had a feeling you’d be resistant to my attempts at a reconciliation, so, as someone I know once said, ‘I haven’t survived this long without having a backup plan.’”
“Throwing my own words back in my face, huh?”
“Listening is a useful skill.” She winked. “You should try it sometime.”
She had me by the balls. She didn’t have to say the words to confirm it. I didn’t want to hear them anyway. Especially from her. There was no point in denying it now. The only thing left to do was figure out a way to turn this around and beat her at her own game.
Besides, if I was good at one thing, it was causing women to self-destruct.
I scrubbed my hands down my face. “They weren’t together, you know.”
Adriana glanced down at the shattered scotch bottle in front of her feet and sighed. “Does it matter? It was a selfish, risky gamble with low odds, Brody. One that an attorney such as yourself should know better than to attempt.” The shitty blue carpet squished under her high heels as she kicked a large piece of glass.
“Well, obviously, my gamble, as you call it, didn’t pay out, so why turn Val’s life upside down over a bad roll of the dice? You wouldn’t be his savior. You’d be his destroyer. Would selling me out be worth the wrath that might come with that title?”
Crossing her arms over her chest, she whirled around and glared at me. “A bad roll of the dice?”
“That’s what you got out of all that?” I pressed, trying to ignore the way her crossed arms exaggerated her already displayed breasts. “Were you even listening?”
“To every word.” The cords in her neck tightened, venom dripping from the forced pause between every word.
“And?”
Adriana took a calculated step, her stare hardening as broken glass crunched under the toe of her high heel. “And why not? I seem to have acquired a nasty little habit of reinventing myself these days.”
One more step. Crunch. Two more steps. Crunch.
Darting her tongue out, she licked her bottom lip while curling a finger around my tie. “Plus, no risk, no reward—and whatever wrath comes either of our ways, I’ll just chalk it up to a bad roll of the dice.” She gave my tie a hard tug. “At least this time, it’ll be on my terms.”
“You’re insane.”
“And you’ve been drinking since I left. What are you up to now, Brody? Half a bottle a day? More? I mean, you’re a bountiful mixed bag of sin. What are you trying to forget?”
“The fact that you’re here.”
“Maybe it’s the fact that you love the power of pulling that trigger a little too much. Quite possibly, it’s that your little rebellious phase caused you to go against a direct order and align with the Northside Sinners anyway.”
“Don’t push me, Adriana. I’m warning you.”
“There could even be a tiny part of you hidden away in whatever’s left of your conscience that’s haunted by what the roll of your dice did to me. But what you’re really trying to numb is buried deep within the dark and twisted layers of that ‘don’t give a fuck’ exterior. That’s where the real fear lives.”
“Shut up!”
“The fear that the all-powerful Valentin Carrera will one day find out the truth. That when you rolled the dice, you bet everything on the fact that her hatred for me would outweigh any love she had left for him.”
“That’s quite a story.”
“Yes, and quite cliched, if I’m honest. Even if you lost in the end, as long as Val lost too, that’s all that mattered, right?”
Son of a bitch.
This game of wits had turned into a battle to the death and sensing impending defeat, I flipped my middle finger in the air and headed for the door. “I’m out of here.”
“Stop!”
And like an idiot, I paused mid-stride, my hands clenched by my side with one foot in front of the other.
The room went silent.
“You’re running because I’m right. Because to look me in the eye would force you to see yourself. Not the man you pretend to be every morning, but the one you drown every night.”
I closed my eyes, my jaw clenching so hard my teeth cracked. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“Don’t I?” she said, the jagged rawness in her voice tearing at my skin. “You don’t think I know what it’s like to crave escape from your own darkness? To want something to stop the voice in your head that whispers it all would end if you turned that gun around?”
I snapped. Suppressed rage erupted, hotter than lava and twice as destructive. Twisting around, I reached underneath my shirt, drew my gun from its holster, and pulled back the slide.