Chapter 9
I tried calling Rio four times tonight when I finally got home, and I won’t stop calling.
Each time I stared at the cell screen long enough to know exactly what would happen before it did. The line would ring. Then it would stop. No answer.
Even if he did pick up, it wouldn’t change anything. He’d already refused to move the meeting up. But now, I don’t only want to show him the locket but light a fire under his ass because I’m getting married this weekend.
I let my back fall with a thump against the plush, high velvet headboard of my California King. My phone lies in my hand, the screen filled with a pathetic row of messages I’ve sent him over the last hour. The words look more desperate the longer I stare at them.
Please answer.
We need to talk sooner.
I only need five minutes.
My pride is curled somewhere deep in my stomach, shriveled with humiliation. I’ve been reduced to begging because of that jackass. Why can’t he give me five damn minutes? Because men love control. And saying no is the ultimate way to show you have it.
Pride doesn’t matter, though. Isabel and Beatriz do.
My engagement ring catches the fairy lights and flashes across the ceiling.
Luther said he picked it himself. Not because he loves me, of course, but most likely because my father wanted him to prove how much I was worth. It’s a massive rock. This ring says everything about how much Luther wants whatever deal my father is dangling.
I slide the ring off my finger, dance it between my fingertips, and consider the weight of it, the size of it.
I squint at it, the gemstone’s many cut edges, the way it’s crystal clear.
I don’t keep it on my finger because I’m an obedient fiancée; I keep it there because this thing is valuable and it’s gonna pay rent one day.
I slide the ring back on.
I can’t marry Luther.
He’ll have me on an even shorter leash than I’m on here because I won’t even have the level of trust with him that I have with my dad. I won’t be free to contact Rio or find the women I’m responsible for hurting.
My throat tightens.
He’ll force himself on me.
The thought sinks into my gut and makes me nauseous. I’ve only ever had sex once. I had to make it happen in complete secrecy.
It was with a new prospect who was old enough to know better than to do it with the seventeen-year-old daughter of a dangerous man, but young enough to be out of his mind with lust. I’d been eyeing him as my opportunity to see what sex was like from the moment he walked into the club.
He was good-looking, but in a boy-next-door sort of way. A type I’m not that attracted to, so he was perfect. I could keep a guy like him at arm’s length.
It happened at an Iron Covenant party that wasn’t held at the clubhouse. Ledger’s daughter was engaged. He held a party for her. Everyone was there.
I dragged the young guy out into a small copse of trees in the backyard. It was pitch black. I was prepared with a condom, and he was delighted to say the least.
It was fast, and it hurt.
I bet that’s what sex with Luther will be like.
Except he won’t disappear like that prospect did. I’ll have to face him every night.
I push myself back against the pillows and stare up at the ceiling, at the twinkling lights my dad hung when I was fifteen. Shadows scatter softly across the ceiling.
I hate this bedroom. When I turned eighteen, my dad asked if I wanted to redecorate, but by then, I’d already known that as soon as my mom died, I would figure a way out of here. Saying yes to redecorating felt like committing to staying here.
Now I’m twenty-five with the same vintage posters of slasher movies and the pink neon Antisocial Club sign throwing ambient light from the corner.
Jesus, I never thought I’d be here this long.
I’m turning the corner toward thirty now, and this room screams disgruntled teen.
I’m still disgruntled though.
I pick my cell up between my fingers. I have four days before the wedding. Four days before my life becomes legally tied to Luther and whatever alliance he and my father are building together.
Frustration bubbles up. I roll onto my side, pressing my face briefly into the pillow, and let out a groan.
Waiting isn’t a plan.
I need one.
Tina scratches at the mattress next to me. I peek one of my eyes open.
She’s perched at the edge, front feet hooked over the quilt, looking up at me with that polite expression she’s had her entire life. She waits to see if she’s allowed up on the bed.
She’s the only one in my life who cares what I think. What I want.
“Up,” I tell her softly.
But she can’t jump this high anymore, and if she tries, she piddles, so I lean over the side of the bed and lift her carefully.
She’s warm when I pull her against my chest and settle back against the headboard.
Her little body relaxes immediately, her tail thumping once against my arm before she lets out a sigh and turns into a hot water bottle on me.
I love her so much.
I snuggle my face into her neck, under her ear, and whisper. “What are we going to do, Tina?”
She tilts her head and licks my cheek, the pink tuft I gave her sticking up like the cutest little crown. A crown she deserves.
I named her after Tina Turner. My mom loved Tina and read her autobiography and everything.
My mom even dragged me to LA as a kid to see her last performance.
Tina was the only love my mom and I ever shared.
When my mom was sicker and unable to leave bed much, we obsessively watched Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome, her old videos, her biopic…
When I got this sweet little poodle with sticky-up hair between her ears, I named her after that epic woman because I saw Tina Turner in her.
My little pup is gentle until she’s explosive, just like the icon.
And because at that point in my early teens, I already decided I wanted to be just like her.
I, too, wanted to walk away from a man who thought he owned me and rebuild my entire life somewhere else.
Tina Turner reinvented herself.
That’s what I always told myself I’d do one day.
Leave.
Start over somewhere else.
Become someone my father doesn’t control.
My gaze drifts across the room slowly, taking in the dark furniture, the velvet chair in the corner, the distant Sierra foothills through the tall windows.
Every inch of it belongs to him. Even the air feels borrowed.
And Rio is playing the same power game– silence. Distance. Control.
I think back to when I walked into Rio’s office with that manila folder.
I didn’t ask for permission to see him. Not really.
I learned everything I could about him, diligently read every article I found about him or his family for an angle.
That’s when I learned about his mother dying from breast cancer.
It was cruel to do it, but posing as a breast cancer charity rep was my only play. If I hadn’t taken a meeting by force, by pretending to be someone I knew he’d meet, I never would have gotten this far.
Why do I suddenly need permission to see him now?
Tina’s fur is soft as I stroke her mindlessly, deep in thought.
I can’t sit here waiting for Rio to call me back. I can’t wait any longer to solve these problems or stay here until the last minute when I become the bargaining chip in some MC deal.
I place Tina on the plush bedding beside me, rolling onto my other side to readjust and stroke her head.
She closes her eyes, instantly sleepy from my relaxing touch.
I can’t imagine trusting someone so much that I could fall asleep next to them in three seconds.
Or at all. Hell, I know my dad has the key to my bedroom, but I lock the door anyway, just so if he ever entered in the night, I’d have a warning.
Tina releases a wet sigh out of her glistening black nose, and she’s out like a light.
I have to leave here. I’m not marrying Luther, and I don’t even want to get close to that happening.
I have to leave now.
I won’t be able to take much with me in the car, or Dad will notice I’ve fled. Tomorrow, I’ll pack up as if I’m headed to work and just keep driving…
As if having a life of its own, the locket digs into my hip bone in my jeans’ pocket, a reminder that there’s so much more at stake here than just my own freedom.
I can’t abandon Isabel and Beatriz.
If I run without solving this, they’ll stay in whatever prison my dad found for them.
And my father will keep feeding women into whatever machine he’s running.
I already know more women are coming. He wants me to enable this operation, but he hardly needs me.
Nothing has ever stopped his greed before. Not even his wife getting sick.
I have to see this out. Rio needs to see the locket. He needs to believe me and do something about this. But if he won’t answer me voluntarily, I’ll force his hand again.
In person.
I’m already reaching for my cell before the thought fully forms.
I pull up Maps. Echo Valley. Once I found out Jackal was Rio Mendez, I devoured everything I could find about him, his family, his company, GhostEye. That one sure was ironic. A previous criminal teaming up with Feds? You couldn’t write it.
In any case, I found it intriguing that a man with a billion-dollar company lives in a small town pretty damn far from his headquarters. In a lifestyle interview I read, he said you can take the boy out of the ranch but not the ranch out of the boy.
Ugh.
Disgusting.
Trying to woo some interviewer into thinking he’s humble? He sure as hell isn’t from anything I’ve seen.
But he does still live on a ranch. I pull up a new search window on my web app. What was his brother’s name again? Santi? In a frantic search, I find the name of the ranch again. Monarch Hills.
Back on my maps, I type in Monarch Hills, Echo Valley.
It’s almost two hours from here.
It’s six o’clock.
Dad said he was “checking on his bets” tonight—which means he won’t be home for hours.
Which means this is my window.
I kiss Tina’s pink tuft of fur. It’s now or never.
I’m out. I’ll get this locket to Rio and then find somewhere safe to hide. I don’t want to stay in-state, but I’ll have to until Rio and GhostEye take down my dad. Then, and only then, will I find my haven lakeside in Wisconsin.
I slide off the bed and set Tina gently on the floor.
I grab a canvas tote and dump it onto the bed. A couple of tops. Underwear. Socks. My hands move faster than my brain, yanking things from drawers, shoving them in without folding.
Not too much. It can’t look like I’ve left.
I hesitate over a sweater, then toss it aside.
I can wash clothes. I can buy things in a thrift store.
But I can’t give myself away before I’m gone.
Tina follows me in tight circles as if she’s eager for me to grab her leash for a walk.
Sweetie, we’re going for the walk of our lives.
I reach into the closet and pull out my old winter coat. The lining is heavy with cash—years of tips and my future self stitched in the seams.
I shrug it on, then clip Tina’s leash onto her collar and pause for one last look around the room.
The plan is simple.
Go to Monarch Hills.
Make Rio listen.
And hide out until my dad is in hell behind bars.