“Set the phone on the table.” Matias flashed his teeth, his grin devoid of amusement.
It wasn’t the words that lowered Tate’s gaze. It was the long blade of a knife pressing against his inner thigh, sharp enough to slash denim, skin, and muscle, with the pointy end a hairbreadth from his balls.
His pulse hammered. Would the bastard neuter him? Right here in the bar? The glint in those cold eyes said, Yes.
The server approached, dropping off the beer and vodka, oblivious to the tension coiling beneath the table. “Can I get you anything else?”
“We good?” Matias arched an inky brow at Tate.
“We’re good.” Tate placed the phone on the table.
When the server left, the knife retreated.
“Hear me out,” Matias said, “and I won’t kill you.”
“Comforting.”
“Two months ago, she called me to collect a body.”
Van Quiso’s body. Tate gritted his teeth through a torrent of conflicting emotions. Van was a sadist, a rapist, the very monster that inhabited Lucifer himself. But something had changed in him around the time he was shot and left to die. He’d withdrawn from sex trafficking, avenged the wrongdoings against his first slave, Liv Reed, and left her the money he’d earned through his vile operation.
Six million to be exact, which she split between Van’s nine slaves. Tate received $666,666. A fitting number from the devil incarnate.
“As you know,” Matias said, flaring his nostrils, “Van Quiso didn’t die from that gunshot wound. I arrived to find him driving away from the house where he imprisoned and tortured my girl.”
My girl. Tate’s stomach hardened, every muscle in his body coiling with denial.
“She’s mine, Tate.” Matias flexed his hand on the table. “I know he enslaved you in that house, as well. By my count, nine captives total over the past six years.”
“And each of those captives had buyers,” Tate said. “All of which are dead and the bodies never to be found, thanks to you.” That was as much gratitude as he was willing to give the man.
“Van Quiso should be among them. I wanted to gut the sick fuck when I saw him drive away.” Matias sipped from his glass. “But he was my only lead to discovering Camila’s whereabouts. She trusts me to dispose of the dead, but she doesn’t trust me with her location. So I followed Van. He led me to Liv Reed, who unwittingly took me right to Camila.”
Camila doesn’t know she’s been found. She’d been so careful about remaining hidden, evading the law and keeping her cartel connections at a distance.
“I’ve been watching her for a couple of months. Learning her habits, where she goes, what she does, who her closest friends are.” Matias met his eyes.
If that were true, he would know how committed Camila was in her pursuit to abolish human sex trafficking. She was so passionate about it she didn’t consider the danger she put herself in. But Tate did. Constantly. He adored her tenacity, marveled at her fearlessness, but keeping her alive and out of prison was an endless worry.
“You grew up with her.” Tate cocked his head. “You know where she lives. Yet you haven’t approached her.”
“Puzzling, isn’t it? I’m the kind of man who takes what he wants. As much as I want to take her—restrained and at my mercy—I won’t. She suffered enough in the hands of that despicable slave trader.” Matias spat the words, his accent seething with venom. “I will not take what isn’t given. When she comes to me, it will be of her own volition.”
Yet he’d stalked her, invaded her privacy for months. Tate opened his mouth to argue the hypocrisy, but Matias raised a silencing hand.
“All bets are off when her safety’s in question.” Matias heaved a frustrated breath. “Now that Van’s operation is dismantled, she intends to take down another slave ring in Austin.”
Tate knew every detail of her plan and would protect her at all costs. “If you stop her, she’ll never forgive you.”
Against his expectations, Matias closed his eyes and said, “I won’t stop her.”
Then why is he here?
The thugs in the booth near the door surveyed the surroundings, not once making direct eye contact with Tate. Their dark jeans and bulky sweatshirts only partially obscured the sidearms they were clearly packing.
“What do you want?” Tate leaned back in the vinyl seat, watching with fascination as Matias struggled through whatever was darkening his expression.
After a long moment of silence, he spoke in a voice almost too low for Tate’s ears. “I’m the capo of the Restrepo cartel. She doesn’t know this. They”—he nodded at his companions near the exit—“don’t know this. My enemies would bribe, torture, and butcher for that information.”
“Why the fuck are you telling me?” Tate angrily whispered, jerking forward with forearms braced on the table. “You don’t even know me.”
“I know you love her.” Matias raised the glass of vodka to his mouth, his gaze sharp. “I know you’d lay down your life to protect her. That works in my favor as long as you understand she’s not yours.”
“She’s not yours, either.”
“She will be, and you’re going to help me.”
Two hours later, Tate closed the front door of the five-bedroom house he shared with Camila and the others. He rubbed his eyes, his head pounding with the weight of Matias’ crazy goddamn plan. A plan that would bolster Camila’s pursuit while keeping her safe.
If Tate weren’t so viciously jealous, he might’ve admired Matias’ selfless devotion to her.
His heavy boots carried him into the kitchen—the only room still illuminated at three in the morning.
“Where’ve you been?” Camila looked up from a spread of maps and news articles on the kitchen table.
“The bar.”
She leaned back in the chair, her seductive eyes stroking him from head to toe before returning to his face. “With a woman?”
It was an opening. An opportunity to tell her he hadn’t been with anyone since she freed him from captivity. Because he loved her with a madness that choked his senses.
But the fact that she’d asked about another woman without a hint of jealousy or anger spoke volumes.
She doesn’t care who I fuck.
Because I’m not the one she wants.
He stepped to the sink, filled a glass from the tap, and guzzled it. When the cool water failed to extinguish the fire in his chest, he refilled the glass and drank again.
“What’s wrong?” The chair scuffed behind him, followed by the tread of her socked feet. “Tate?”
“Have you ever been in love?” He gripped the edge of the sink, keeping his back to her.
“What kind of question—?”
“Yes or no.” Turning, he sank into her dark gaze.
“Yes.” Her throat bobbed.
“And now? Do you still love him?”
“Where is this coming from?”
“Do you still love him, Camila?”
“Doesn’t matter.” She looked away, shoulders hitching. “He no longer exists.”
She denied him a view of her eyes, but the pain seeping into her posture confirmed what he already knew.
Her heart belonged to Matias.
Acknowledging it, however, didn’t change his feelings for her. Love was love. It didn’t just go away when it wasn’t reciprocated. It endured, persisted, and waited like a pathetic, unwanted pussy.
He could tell her everything—Matias’ surveillance of her, his plan to decimate the Austin slave ring, his desire to eventually lure her to Colombia where she could help him fight against the worst slavery in the world, and the biggest shocker of it all, his refusal to reunite with her until the unrest in his cartel was controlled.
Matias calculated every detail because he didn’t want to endanger her.
Because he loved her.
Tate could tell her all of this. Declare his own love. Make her choose. But it would benefit no one. She would run headlong toward Matias, straight into the kind of danger Tate wouldn’t be able to protect her from.
“I’m going to bed.” He cupped the back of her head and pulled her into a hug, relishing the warm softness of her petite body.
The kitchen window felt like a spotlight on his back. Was Matias watching from the street? Were there cameras in the house? During the meeting at the bar, the cartel boss had described—in vivid, gory detail—all the ways he would remove limbs and organs if Tate touched Camila in a sexual way.
Tate didn’t scare easily, but a man in love wasn’t a force to be taken lightly. Especially when that man was the king of a cartel.
“Why don’t you call it a night?” He released her and stepped back.
“I will…soon.” She stared longingly at the scatter of papers on the table.
With an aching hunger, he left her with her outlined maps of revenge and climbed the stairs to his room.
He hadn’t agreed to help Matias with his insane plan to win Camila, but they’d exchanged phone numbers before parting ways.