Rubbing my chin, I stared at her and waited. I really hoped she grabbed the hook and ran with it from here because that was all I had. Anything else out of my mouth would be complete bullshit.
Finally, she let out a reluctant sigh. “I told him it was a mistake to keep it from you.”
Jackpot.
“Then why did he?”
Groaning, she propped her elbow up on the nightstand and dug the heel of her palm into her forehead. “You know how Val reacted when Santi was born. He almost shot the entire surgical staff just because he was breech. He has been like an overwound Jack-in-the-box ever since he found out about the human trafficking ring caveat.”
Forcing a neutral expression was hard when it felt like I just took a cheap right hook across the face. I swallowed hard, but despite every effort to reel in a visible reaction, my voice betrayed me. “I’m sorry... the what?”
Her jaw tightened. “I thought you said he told you?”
Son of a bitch.
He should have.
And he’d regret the decision not to in a little over three hours.
Val was a deadly man. A killer who was able to turn his conscience on and off like a leaky faucet. The same bloodstained hands that slit countless throats during the day, came home and rocked our son to sleep at night. I’d never turned a blind eye to the monster lurking beneath the man I married.
But this killer, this monster, even he had limits, and human sex trafficking ranked at the very top. Val’s father made his fortune in the flesh trade, a vile atrocity he was forced to partake in as a young boy.
So, to blatantly lie about something so personal felt like a slap in the face.
“He did,” I jumped in, trying not to sound rattled. “He just made it sound like he’d already taken care of it.”
Please work. Please work. Please work.
“Not yet, but he will,” she said, and a thousand sighs lay buried within my slow exhale. “We still have two days until the girls are being shipped out of Corpus Christi, according to the Russians.”
I nodded along, still pretending I knew what the hell she was talking about, when my brain backtracked to something she said. A word that didn’t register until now. “And the ‘caveat’?” Lifting both hands, I drew air quotes around the word and hoped like hell my intuition didn’t fail me now.
People always said nothing in life came for free. It was true. However, in cartel life, the price tag usually dripped with blood.
Adriana’s face darkened as if I’d mentioned the devil himself. Letting one white stiletto slip off her heel, she dangled it on her toe for a moment before flinging it across the room. After watching it clear an impressive distance into the bathroom, her lips curled into a victorious smirk. “Let’s hope he drinks his drink, eats his cake, and then puts himself, his wife, and his bitch squad on those three overpriced death traps and flies his ass back to the lost city of Atlantis.” Rolling her eyes, she waved a hand in the air. “Or wherever the fuck he came from.”
I decided to let the obvious hostility slide and focus on draining this intel well dry. I huffed out a fake, sardonic laugh and kept my eyes averted. “All roads lead back to Dante Santiago.”
“Hijo de su putra madre,” she spat out with sudden venom. “Brody put a year and a half of work into that port, and we almost had it. We were this close.” Lifting her hand, she held her thumb and index finger only centimeters apart, then balled her hand into a fist and punched the mattress. “Fucking stupid idiota. Fucking Feds...” She didn’t finish her sentence; instead, she shook her head, and let her silence speak for itself.
Again with the goddamn silence.
Then every muscle in my body stiffened. Brody’s main focus in the last year and a half had been making a deal with the Italians to open up the New York port to the Carreras. If something happened to ruin it that involved the Feds, the idiota at the root of it had to be their crime boss, Don Ricci.
Which left New York free for the taking.
A territory Dante Santiago used to have a stronghold over.
Caveat.
My mind spun backward even further.
As for the Russians…
“Will Ava be attending as well?”
Adriana nodded. “Last I heard, she was.” She pinned me with an icy smile. “Of course, I’m not the one in charge of my own guest list. You’d have to ask your husband.”
So, the wedding was a cover for some type of tit-for-tat deal with the Colombians, and my jackass of a husband was going to let me play the clueless, happy hostess, filling drinks and making toasts while two ruthless empires sat around a table planning world domination?
Fuck that.
No, fuck him and fuck that.
Right then, I made a mental note to corner the head of the Miami Bratva at the reception. However, right now, I needed to get the attention off me and back onto her by any means possible.
“Hey, Adriana?” When she glanced up, I placed a hand on her shoulder, risking having it bitten off with my next words. “Are you really okay with all this going down at your wedding?”
Her pinched expression faded, and she gave a half-hearted shrug. “I grew up in a cartel, Eden. Esteban invited a Romanian arms dealer to my fifth birthday party and then shot him while I blew out the candles. I’d be more surprised if there wasn’t a meeting.”
“I’ll make sure to keep you away from any open flame.”
Two dark eyes snapped to mine, guarded with a resurging suspicion.
Okay, maybe it wasn’t the best swerve, but fuck it; time was ticking. I had to clear her head and do some creative damage control. Eloquence wasn’t exactly my friend at the moment.
Another silence fell between us. It was comfortable but still thick with tension. Lines still creased Adriana’s forehead, and fear seemed to darken her eyes. However, it had nothing to do with visiting Colombians, trafficking rings, or imploding trade deals. They were just shields to a brewing tempest.
Whatever still bothered her went much deeper.
“There’s something else,” I said, shattering the stillness. “Are you having second thoughts?”
I thought it was a valid question, but her dark eyebrows shot up as she twisted around. “In marrying Brody? No. I love him. He’s the only man I want to be with.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“The problem is that there is no problem.”
I leaned forward because obviously, I heard her wrong. “I’m sorry, what?”
As if someone let the air out of a balloon, Adriana’s rigid posture deflated, her shoulders sagging in defeat. “Nothing has ever come easy for me. I’ve fought for everything I have. Growing up, it was Esteban’s attention and Manuel’s respect. Then after the truth came out, it became so much more. I fought for my name, my life, my family, and eventually love. I fought my own demons to let Brody in. I fought every damn day against the fear of everything being taken away—of the bottom falling out and fate laughing in my face.” Narrowing her eyes, she lowered her voice in a mocking tone. “‘You fool. Happily ever after doesn’t exist. You were born into brewing chaos, and you’ll die in the eye of the storm.’”
“Oh, Adriana…”
“Things are too perfect.” Gripping the glass like a lifeline, she shifted her gaze toward the nightstand again. “In an hour and forty-nine minutes, I’ll walk out of this house and down the aisle where the man I’ve fought for waits to marry me.”