Chapter 19
Alma
Iwas ready to confront Efren the moment reality returned to me, but he never came back to the penthouse. Three days have already passed, and the need to yell at him has turned into an anxious need to know if he’s okay.
Somewhere, tangled in the loathing, is a hunger I can’t shake. Efren has pulled things out of my body I can’t explain. It’s more than a need. It’s something darker, deeper. A craving that grips and pulls. Primal and unrelenting.
“Alma, I’m sending Ariella up to help you,” Enrique’s voice emerges from the intercom.
The hotel is extremely short staffed in the days following Vicente Consuelo’s birthday party. Over half the hotel staff have caught a stomach virus. I thought maybe Efren had caught it and was hiding in his room, so I barged in last night, but he wasn’t there.
It’s not until Ariella Reyes is in my office that I contemplate another theory about where Efren has been these last three nights. After I told Axel about Ariella, I felt a pang of guilt. Maybe I’d misjudged her, but the loathing reappears when I see her whole neck covered in hickies.
She glances up from where she’s smiling down at her phone. Suddenly, I’m hyper aware of her every perfect feature, and I can’t get the image of Efren and Naomi out of my mind. Only now it’s Ariella on all fours on the bed, and he’s thrusting inside her.
“I’m sorry, is everything okay?” Ariella asks.
“It’s fine. When you’re done with the rooms, you’ll need to clean the commons bathroom next to here. I take it you know where everything is?” I do my best to remain professional.
She technically owns this place. Her family does, and I don’t want to offend her, but she’s getting on my last nerve. I wait until she’s gone to do a good old fashion google search.
Typing Efren’s name into the computer, all I can see is his arrest information. I never really knew what happened. From what Mireya told me, he and Adrian had been set up by Adrian’s ex-girlfriend and her father.
I hadn’t had enough time to do a proper stalking of Efren before this. Maybe I didn’t care before, but I should know who I’m living with. Pulling up my Instagram, I go to Ricky’s page. There’s no Efren to be found in his list of friends.
Diving deeper I search Adrian, Mireya, and Thalia’s pages. All their accounts are fucking ghostlands when it comes to content. The last picture on Adrian’s page is of him and Mireya at the Calavera Christmas party. Her belly is big, and his hand is possessively placed on it with the caption: Diosa.
I spend the next hour looking up everyone I think might know Efren, going down a deep rabbit hole where I end up stalking Silas’s aunt’s friend’s cousin’s page. The woman had a whole ass quinceanera for her pet chihuahua. Eventually, I come back to square one and search Ariella’s page.
My mouth drops. Seventy thousand followers!
Seventy thousand people who apparently love her daily vlogs and workout content.
Her whole page is filled with videos that make me look at the box of donuts on my desk with disgust. Who has the time to work out this much?
I look at her pictures, convinced I’ll see a glimpse of Efren’s hand or something in the background, but there’s nothing.
Her last picture is one of her and Vicente Consuelo with the caption, “La Consentida de Welo.” There are over 100,000 likes.
I vaguely search to see Efren’s name. It’s not real stalking if you don’t go through every single comment.
While I don’t find anything that might be Efren, I do see one that stands out.
Levithegoodwitch: Like this comment if you came here after watching Tonio has Tea.
There are over a hundred likes already on the comment. I pull up the YouTube channel on my desktop and find Tonio has Tea’s page. The video’s titled “Guarda Espada or Amante?” Body guard or lover? There’s over ten thousand views.
In the video, Ariella is crying, and a large guy steps between everyone and picks her up. According to Tonio, the man picking her up is her bodyguard and her lover? I’ve never seen the guy. This has to be some kind of clickbait.
Before I can dive further, Shawny is at my office door.
“I just finished my last room. Is that all for the day?”
Shit. I’ve spent half the day looking for Efren on socials.
“Yes. Do you think you can help me with the linens?” I reply.
“I guess.” She sighs, following behind me.
“Hold on, I need to pee.” I rush into the bathroom and find the nearest stall.
“Did you see the Princess at the party? ‘Help me. I can’t drink a flute of champagne without needing some man to save me.’” Shawny’s voice is high pitched while she mimics Ariella, and I laugh.
“That’s Ariella Reyes for you. She loves to just throw herself at every guy who blinks in her direction,” I reply.
The thought of them dancing together still makes red flash across my vision. Both of them looking like America’s Next Top Model. With her high end fashion and his vintage suits.
“I’m pretty sure she has Nero wrapped around her finger. He doesn’t even come to the club anymore.” Shawny says.
I come out of the stall and see the streaks on the mirror. “Look at this, I told her to clean this bathroom!”
“Well, we can’t all be rich and entitled,” Shawny remarks, examining under her fingernails.
“You should have seen her this morning, covered in hickies.” I shake my head.
Maybe Shawny could give me more insight into this Nero guy. But instead, she fuels the flame of jealousy building in me. “I’m sure they were from Nero or Efren. They’ll fuck her, get bored, and find someone who can do it right.” Shawny snickers.
We wash our hands, and I wipe the mirror, irritated by the streaks.
“Oh my god! Did you see the video Tonio did of her?” I ask as we exit the bathroom.
“No, what video?”
I go to grab my phone but it’s not there. Shit. “Start the linens, I left my phone.” I rush back into the bathroom .
The moment I get through the door, I collide right into Ariella. Our eyes meet and hers are rimmed with red. Behind her, the handicap stall is wide open. Fuck. This won’t only cost me my job, but my friendship with Thalia. Turning to chase after her, I’m met with an empty hallway.
A thickness rises in my throat. What did I just do? I feel small all of a sudden, and it’s not from jealousy, but shame. What type of person am I resorting to? Why am I so concerned about her and Efren? He’s no one to me. He’s my ex-boyfriend’s brother. He’s possibly my ex-boyfriend’s murderer.
“Did you see Ariella Reyes come this way?” I ask Rae, one of the other maids.
She narrows her eyes at me before rolling them. “No, but Shawny spent her entire shift talking about her while getting no work done.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“I mean, while Shawny took several breaks and spent way too much time in room 462 with one of the male guests, Vinny, Nova, Ariella, and I did two times the work to make up for it.”
Vinny comes up behind her with a bag full of trash and throws it on the cart.
“I wouldn’t listen much to Shawny. Ariella Reyes is one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. Definitely a lot different than I expected.”
I walk around the floor another time to see if I can find her. The knot in my stomach grows by the second. Shawny’s not in the laundry room when I get there, so I finish my work in silence, thinking of how crazy Efren is driving me.
It’s unfeminist of me to be mad at another woman over him. No dick is that good. I haven’t even had his dick for Christ’s sake. It’d be one thing if Ariella were taunting me or trying to make me jealous, but that wasn’t the case. Once again, it’s just me ruining my own life.