4. Chapter Three
Chapter Three
T wo Days Later
Dina reached into the top drawer of her desk, retrieved a small bottle of ibuprofen, and twisted the lid. She shook two pills into her hand, hesitated, and then added a third and fourth, just to be sure. Between her aching head and cramping midsection, she needed all the help she could get.
“You’re going to give yourself an ulcer,” Lola warned as she entered the office without even knocking.
“I’m on my lunch break.” Dina frowned at her younger sister. “My office is closed.”
“Yeah, to everyone else, but not family.” Lola shut the door behind her and swanned over to the wall of windows overlooking the city’s main financial district. She tapped a remote that had been left on a table and activated the shades to dim the room. “Better?”
Dina made a so-so gesture with her hand while washing down the medicine with the last of the water in the sleek tumbler she always kept on her desk. “Now, if there was a button you could push to make my uterus behave.”
“Well, I’m sure if you ask Mama, she’ll tell you that being pregnant solves that problem for nine months,” Lola bitterly remarked.
“Having been pregnant, I can assure you that’s not true.” Dina remembered all too well the constant nausea and weeks of Braxton-Hicks she’d endured with Camila. “Whatever relief you get from not having a period is outweighed by the nightmare of childbirth.”
“When I have kids, I’m going for the full numb from the neck down package,” Lola insisted. “Just dart my spine the moment I walk through the doors of the hospital and juice me up with the good stuff.”
“It doesn’t always work like that,” Dina warned. “I wanted all that, but Camila had other ideas.”
“Yeah, she’s always been a troublesome little sh—.”
“Hey,” Dina warned. “That’s my kid.”
“ Shitake mushroom,” Lola corrected. “I would never call my sweet, angelic, totally innocent teenage niece anything like that other word.”
Dina snorted. “I’m her mother. Sweet and angelic are the last words I would use to describe her lately.”
“I’m sorry, Dina.” Lola shot her an apologetic look. “I’m sure it’s only a phase.”
“That’s what worries me.” Dina left her desk and joined Lola at the small sitting area near the windows. She sank down into the cozy upholstered chair where she liked to read through documents and kicked off her heels. Her feet were swollen like everything else, and her toes felt pinched in the pumps. “I went through a phase, and it let to the biggest mistake of my life.”
“That was different,” Lola argued.
“How?” Dina asked the question that plagued her day and night. “I was constantly fighting with Mama y Papa . I pushed boundaries. I ran with a wild crowd. I ended up falling in love with a monster.”
“You’re right. He was a monster. A predator ,” Lola emphasized. “He preyed on you. It wasn’t your fault. You were a naive little girl.”
“And so is Camila! And now her father is out there, running loose, probably trying to get close so he can hurt us!”
“He’s not going to hurt us!” Lola reached out and grasped Dina’s hand. “We’re surrounded by security. We have the Mexican and US governments looking for him.” She gestured toward the building across the street. “You’ve got Wyatt Earp out there following you like a shadow.”
Lola’s mention of Steve sent a ripple of something other than pain through her body. When they couldn’t make Steve fit into the role of businessman, they decided to simply make up a story that he was one of Sky’s friends from traveling the world. He was there as a favor to Rafa’s wife to learn about tequila and private labeling spirits for the Icelandic resort he’d bought with his trust fund. It allowed him to be close, but not rouse too much suspicion.
Too close .
Everywhere she turned, there he was. He was careful not to intrude on her personal space, not since their surprised meeting in Rafa’s office back at the state. He was respectful and quiet and hadn’t mentioned their fling even once.
And she couldn’t figure out why that pissed her off so much.
“Did she talk to you this morning? Before school? Or is she still giving you the silent treatment?” Lola carefully asked.
“She broke her vow of silence to remind me that I’m a miserable, lonely old lady who no one will ever love.” Dina chose not to use the exact words her teenage daughter had thrown in her face before walking her into the school building. “She was furious that I went inside with her and had that meeting with the principal and school counselor. I think she was madder about that than me taking away her phone and internet access.”
“You embarrassed her. Of course, she’s going to be mad about that.”
“She deserved to feel some embarrassment! After the horrible things she wrote to the police?” Dina winced with a particularly painful cramp. “She’s lucky she’s not in juvenile detention.”
“She said she didn’t know anything about Diego’s escape—.”
“And I want to believe her! I hate that I can’t trust my own child.”
“I’m sorry, Dina. I don’t know what to say that will help,” Lola admitted uncertainly. “I wish I could wave a magic wand and fix everything.”
“So do I.” Feeling overly emotional with her hormone levels all out of whack, Dina confessed, “It’s the vitriol that hurts me the most. The things she says to me Lola?” Dina shuddered and blinked back tears. “I think she actually hates me.”
“She doesn’t!”
“She does!” Dina stopped trying to hold back the tears and let them come. “She blames me for everything to do with Diego. She thinks it’s my fault he’s in prison. She believes everything Mirta tells her. She’s convinced he’s innocent and was framed.”
“Then maybe you should tell her the truth,” Lola said carefully. “About what he did to her and to you.”
Dina’s stomach churned violently. “I can’t.”
“He almost killed her, Dina.” Lola spoke softly. “She believes all this crap Mirta tells her because she doesn’t know what he was really like.”
“I can’t do that to her.” Dina shook her head. “I can’t. It would destroy her to find out how little she meant to him.”
“But it might save her from the heartache of finding out too late,” Lola warned. “How is she going to feel if it’s twenty years down the line and she finds out the truth after she’s alienated herself from you?”
“I could never be alienated from her. She’s my daughter. I love her even when she’s telling me she hates me.”
“Oh, Dina,” Lola said pityingly.
Dina waved off her sister’s concern and inhaled a steadying breath. She snatched tissues from the box on the table and dabbed at her eyes and face. “Is my makeup running?”
“No, it’s fine.” Lola obviously wanted to keep talking about the Camila situation, but she seemed to understand Dina simply couldn’t without having a full breakdown. “You look beautiful.”
Dina snorted indelicately. “Now, I know you’re buttering me up for something big.”
“I’m not!”
“Really? Then why are you here in the offices instead of out in the fields?” Dina might be new in the role of CEO, but she had plenty of experience in management. “You’re not the first person who has come to me with a request that Rafa wouldn’t entertain.”
“How do you know that Rafa told me no?” Lola didn’t deny she was there to ask for something.
“Because Rafael is conservative when it comes to business,” Dina said candidly.
“He’s boring and doesn’t see the future like we do.”
“He sees things clearly,” Dina defended their brother. “He took control of this company when he was basically a kid. Everyone expected him to fail. All of them. We were teetering on the verge of bankruptcy, and he saved us. He took this business from a Mexican secret to a global powerhouse, and he did it without making us sellout and lose control.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Lola muttered with a dramatic roll of her eyes. “He’s so wonderful. We’re so lucky. Blah, blah, blah.”
Dina scowled at her sister. “I’m going to remember this when he asks me what to get you for Christmas.”
“He already knows what I want for Christmas,” Lola replied. “It’s the same thing I’m about to ask you to give me.”
“And that is?”
“A thousand acres of farmland in Australia, a few hundred agave plants from our private stock, and enough money to staff a farming operation for ten years,” Lola said quickly.
Dina blinked at her sister. “Are you...? You’re not serious, Lola.”
“I am.” Lola grabbed her handbag and removed her iPad. “Look, I have it all planned out right here. Agricultural reports. Geological reports. Weather patterns and climate reports. I have forecasts and ROI and—.”
The office door opened suddenly, startling them both. Ximena, Dina’s assistant, entered without so much as a hello.
“We’re working,” Dina snapped in frustration. “You didn’t even knock.”
“It’s Camila,” Ximena said urgently. “She’s missing.”