Total pages in book: 767
Estimated words: 732023 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 3660(@200wpm)___ 2928(@250wpm)___ 2440(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 732023 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 3660(@200wpm)___ 2928(@250wpm)___ 2440(@300wpm)
“How can I not?” His anguished eyes met mine. “I’m a dead man. I’ll never have you. Not now.”
“Don’t talk like that.” My throat thickened again. “You’ll find a way out of this, and then my father will understand—”
“Your father? He’s the least of our worries.” Diego unzipped his hoodie, balled it up, and tossed it on my reading chair. It slipped over the arm onto the floor. “It’s over, Tali—don’t you see?” He strode back and forth, his muscles straining his black t-shirt each time he thrust his hands in his hair. “Even if I found a way out of this, Costa would never forgive a failure of this magnitude.”
“Then there’s nothing keeping us here,” I said, reaching for him. “We have to go.”
He avoided my eyes as if it was easier to pretend I wasn’t here. “They’ll find us, and when they do, they’ll kill us both. I can’t put you in that position.” Finally, he stopped moving and pinched the inside corners of his eyes. “I’m as good as dead. The only peace I can have now is knowing you’re safe.”
My chest stuttered with a panicked breath. Fear crept into every part of my body. I had known it was bad, but seeing Diego come apart in front of me made everything even more real. He’d never expressed anything close to this level of anguish. “We’ll elope,” I said. “Papá will understand how much I love you, and he’ll find a way to stop the Maldonados. He has that power.”
“He doesn’t,” Diego said. “If he did, he would’ve stopped them already because he . . .” His jaw squared as if he were checking his emotions. “He’s in just as much danger as I am.”
No. My heart fell to my feet. I’d lose the two people who meant the most to me in the world. I put my hands over my face. “They’ll kill him too.”
“I’m sorry.” His voice came out strangled. “I’m so sorry, Tali.”
I wanted to sink into a ball on the floor, but that wouldn’t help. As despair weighed on me, I forced myself to hold it together. I picked up his hoodie to fold it over the arm of my chair. “There has to be another way. There must be.”
“There . . .” He hesitated. “There is.”
I glanced up at him, unsure I’d heard him correctly. “What is it?”
“It’s not on the table,” he said. “I won’t involve you in any way.”
Me? I could do something? I didn’t care what it was. I hurried over to take his hands. “If I can help, let me. Please.”
He brought the backs of my hands to his lips. “I don’t deserve you. You should walk away now.”
“You must know I’d die for you if it came to that,” I said firmly.
He swallowed, his eyebrows cinching. “Tali.”
“I would,” I said. “Now tell me what can be done.”
With obvious trepidation, he paused for a breath, seeming to struggle to get the words out. “The Maldonados are too powerful. Nobody who would help us can match them. They don’t fear us—but they could.”
Hope surged in me. There was a way—that was all that mattered. Not all was lost. I would take a sliver of hope over nothing. “How?”
“Neither your family nor mine is strong enough to stand against them alone. But together . . .”
Together. Two families standing as one. Unified.
“You’ve been part of our cartel longer than you haven’t,” I said. “We already stand together.”
“Not officially.”
To bind our families in a legal sense meant . . .
Marriage.
My heart soared. Relief and joy—and a sense of rebellion—spread through me. They thought they could destroy us, but we’d fight back. My father thought he knew better, but he’d see that keeping us apart wasn’t the answer. Taking Diego’s name was not only a privilege, but now it was my destiny. I could save us—and I’d be getting exactly what I’d always wanted.
“We’d stay in the shipping business but bring on a weapons and narcotics division,” Diego explained. “Each cartel would benefit from the others’ infrastructure. Pooling our resources, network, and cash, we’d become a formidable front.”
“Father would forbid it,” I cautioned. “He’d never let us go through with it.”
“Once it was done, he’d be forced to see it was the only way. Our houses, united, expands his empire. He’d control the movement of his own drugs and guns—we’d be untouchable.”
“But where do the drugs and guns come from?” I asked.
“Cristiano.”
My stomach dropped. So it had come to that—making a deal with Hades to get another devil off our back. “But he set all of this in motion. Why would he help us?”
“Because it gives him power. Even more than our parents had. More than your father has. More than the Maldonados.” He closed his hands over mine, pressing my palms together as if we were both in prayer. “That was his goal all along, and this is the fastest way to get it. He gains more than he did as Costa’s partner—the protection of family. He knows what it means to bear the Cruz-de la Rosa name.”