I thought back to how the man dressed in black had gotten into my suite. How he had come through the tunnels . . . Had he searched them all until he found me?
My hands stopped halfway through rinsing my hair. The only way they could have known about those underground passages was from me, my father . . . “Or Tanner,” I whispered into the thick, dense steam. “No . . . he wouldn’t . . .” But I could think of no other answer.
Anger built at the tips of my toes and traveled up my body. With every new breath, I felt that anger take hold. I shook from the betrayal. I knew my father had made it appear that it was a cousin who was getting married.
“Why?” I said to no one but myself.
Drying off, I tried to quell my fury, but I succeeded only in reducing the roaring flames of ire in my chest to flickering kindling. I left the bathroom. Beauty was sitting on the bed. “Here, darlin’,” she said, getting up and handing me some clothes. “This is all I had. Thought it would be more comfortable than leathers and a tank. There’s some new underwear there too.”
“Thank you.” I dipped back into the bathroom and pulled on the fitted sleeveless black dress. I combed my wet hair with a comb I found beside the sink and brushed my teeth with the new toothbrush and toothpaste Beauty had left for me too.
I leaned against the sink. My hands shook on the porcelain. I couldn’t get it from my head that Tanner had a part in the kidnapping—a huge part.
“You okay in there, darlin’?” Beauty asked through the door. I hadn’t realized I’d been in here that long. Taking a deep breath, I opened the door and forced a smile. “Look at you!” Beauty said, smiling wide. “You look beautiful.”
“Thank you.”
Beauty handed me a sandwich of some description. “Here, eat this. You’ll feel better with something in your stomach.” I forced down the sandwich, but every bite felt like swallowing sand. My stomach was churning over and over with the possibility—no, the almost certainty—that Tanner had been the one to relay my family’s secrets to these men. My family’s enemy.
When I was done, I said, “I’m tired, Beauty. Can I lie down?”
“Sure, sweetie,” Beauty said. “I’ll just be in the corner reading my book.” She leaned in. “It’s about a duke and a servant girl in sixteenth-century England. Tank mocks me something fierce for reading this shit, but I can’t help it. I fucking live for all the romantic crap!”
This time my smile was genuine. Tanner had been right. I did like Beauty. In another life, perhaps we could have been friends.
Moving to the side of the bed, I lay on the cover and closed my eyes. Beauty turned off all the lights but a small lamp for her to read by. I closed my eyes, breathing deeply to shed this feeling of betrayal. How the hell had it all got so messed up? I answered my own question when I thought back to that night. To the night when everything changed.
To the love, the loss, and what led us to the mess we were in right now . . .
*****
“No . . .” A pain so intense it sliced through my stomach; I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I stared at my papa and slowly shook my head. “No . . .” I cried again, as tears welled up in my eyes. I looked about the room, searching for some form of relief, but none was to be found.
“They were attacked by Valdez’s men. Run off the road, dragged from the car to a ditch and shot in the head.” I tried to hold it back. I did, but a rebellious sob spilled from my mouth. I covered it with my hand to quieten the noise, but it was no use. She had been my friend. My dearest Teresa. One of my only two friends in the world was dead.
My father didn’t move from behind his desk. His hands steepled as he regarded me, coldly. Death was nothing to my papa. Simply part of his everyday life. “The men who killed them will be taken care of,” Papa stated, as though I wasn’t breaking enough in front of him. As if one of his closest friends hadn’t just been killed in cold blood by his number one enemy. “Go to your suites, Adela. Take the day to mourn Teresa. Then carry on tomorrow, as you must.”
I looked at my father and wondered how he could brush off so easily something so devastating. Then I considered how it was always his way. If you died, it was as though he never knew you. He never talked about my mother. My own mother was a stranger to me. I knew nothing of her, save the snippets the staff had given me. And I wondered, if I were killed, how would he react? Would he take a day to mourn me, then return the next, all business, “as one must”?
Unable to deal with my father and his coldness right now, I stood up from the chair and walked out of his room. But with every step I took the paralyzing sorrow started to build inside me, until it felt like a grenade about to explode in my chest. I rushed through the hallways, needing air. I clutched my chest as my brain took me to the very spot I didn’t want it to go. To Teresa and how scared she must have been today. To that moment she was dragged from the car and shoved roughly to her knees. More tears fell as I tried to imagine what it must be like to know for certain that in the next few minutes, she would no longer be. This was it. She wouldn’t see another tomorrow.
And I wondered if she felt any pain as she was shot through the head.
I prayed it was a quick death. It was the luxury that all of us in this life wished for, if taken by an enemy. A quick and painless death. Though, most of our enemies wouldn’t grant us this death—they’d want to make us pay.
When I burst out of the door, night had fallen. The hacienda’s grounds, although beautiful and blanketed in moonlight, suddenly felt like a prison. It was a feeling building more and more lately. The freedom I’d never had was suddenly becoming all I craved. Well, almost.
I ran into the landscaped gardens and into the high hedges. I didn’t know if anyone was around. At this moment, I didn’t care. I was lost, with no one to turn to . . . or, at least I did have someone—want someone. Unfortunately I was unable to go to him for fear of us being discovered.
Tanner’s face sprang into my mind at this moment. I didn’t know how we had gotten here, to this place. I didn’t know how he, the man I was never meant to like, let alone desire, had become my sun. Had become the star of my every waking thought. But he had. He had become my center—the anchor that kept me still.
But I didn’t know how, after tonight, I would survive. Because he was leaving. After four long visits, each time stealing another fraction of my heart and soul, tomorrow he would leave. The contract that kept him here was done. And there were no plans for him and his father to return.
Teresa . . . gone . . . Tanner . . . going . . .
Another sob soared from my throat and I sank down to the dirt. I set the tears free. I liberated the tears that were stinging my eyes to the point of pain. Drop after salty drop flooded my face, robbing me of breath. I never let myself give into my emotions, not even in private. I had been schooled to never let them rule me, to let them usurp my strength. But this time I couldn’t stop it. This time I gave in; I was lacking hope. This world I lived in wasn’t fair. My friend had just been shot dead—a risk we all lived with every single day. And the man I loved, the forbidden half of my heart, was leaving and there was no way we could ever be together.
“Lita?”
I started, looking up as a voice I so desperately wanted to hear drifted into my ears. Tanner came rushing toward me from a gap in the tall hedges. His face was racked with worry. He dropped down beside me and swept me into his arms. I allowed myself a second of his comfort before I pushed away from his warm embrace.
“No,” I whispered, scanning around us. “You can’t . . . we can’t . . . we can’t be seen.”
Tanner’s face frosted over, wearing the hard mask he once used on me. But not anymore. Now his face was soft, his blue eyes kind . . . and his touch was gentle whenever we were together. At times, I saw the war he fought in his tight expression. But he kept returning to me. Kept kissing my lips.
“Fuck that,” he said, voice low and stern. “You’re upset.” Tanner reached for me again. “I saw you running a
s I looked out the window of my room.” He dragged me back into his arms. This time I melted against him and let the foreign feeling of comfort seep into my bones. My head fell against Tanner’s hard chest and he cradled me against him. And I fell apart. There was no pride in being a Quintana right now. In this moment I was lost; Tanner was the man who had found me and given me a home.
“She has died,” I whispered. My voice shook, wrapped in a breathless rasp. “Teresa, my friend . . . was murdered by Faron Valdez today.” Tanner held me tighter as though he was struggling too. I lifted my head and saw that Tanner’s face was stone; his mood seemed glacial. His blue eyes flitted to mine. Then I saw it . . . Tanner Ayers let down his defenses and I saw what had him so troubled.
What had happened to Teresa . . . it had shaken him to his very foundations.
Was he worried . . . for me?
“Tanner,” I whispered and lifted to my knees. I wrapped my arms around his tense neck, watched his cheek twitch. He swallowed back the emotion he was trying so hard to disguise. “Talk to me.”