Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
PAST
For the first time since my mom died, I have hope. Not the quiet, gentle kind, but the kind that rattles in my chest like a caged animal, restless and wild. The most beautiful, creative, natural woman in the world chose me. And I chose her.
Now, all I need to do is deliver this bag, conquer a bunch of bulls, and bring home enough money to start our lives.
Then I can finally have what I wanted since the moment I laid my eyes on Katinka Castellanos .
I’m gonna grab my girl and hit the road. I’m gonna marry the shit out of her in some tacky Vegas chapel and watch her paint the Rocky Mountains when we visit my family in Starlight Canyon. We’re going to go to the Kentucky Derby and bet on the underdog and splurge on lobster in Maine, then climb the Empire State Building because we’re too broke to afford the elevator ticket. We’ve got dreams.
This is what it means to be crazy in love.
But we aren’t there yet. There’s an ocean of distance between what I want and what I can give her. I glance at the backseat, at the stuffed leather duffle, zipped up tight like it’s hiding a secret big enough to swallow me whole. My heart pounds violently, an uneven rhythm of thrill and regret, both warring for space inside me.
This was a mistake.
I should turn back. I should dump the bag in the middle of the desert, leave it for the buzzards, and pretend I never met Victor.
But I won’t.
A few days after Kat and I made our plan to take off together, I met a guy I should’ve walked away from. I was at a crappy little rodeo, killing time, when Victor approached me. Face tats. Diamond chain. Drove a Mercedes S-Class. Not exactly the type to be hanging around a backwater rodeo with a purse small enough that they don’t even write a check.
I knew he was trouble.
But good God, does love make you blind.
It wasn’t my smartest move. Hell, it might be the single dumbest thing I’ve ever done. But when my recklessness collided with my desperation to take care of Kat, I agreed to take this duffle bag to Reno for a price .
I didn’t ask what was inside. I didn’t want to know.
But that doesn’t change the fact that I crossed a line. A big one.
I can almost feel my mother watching me from above, shaking her head. This isn’t how she raised me.
But what was I supposed to do?
Kat and I are about to be on the road for a year, living off whatever I win on the circuit. What if I get injured? What if I don’t win enough? What if I drag her into a life of uncertainty, where we can’t even afford a tank of gas, let alone a motel room?
Delivering this bag is insurance. A safety net. A down payment on our future.
One job. That’s it.
Then I’ll go back, get my girl, and never do anything this stupid again.
I tighten my grip on the wheel, knuckles white. The endless highway stretches ahead, dark and empty, but it feels like a tunnel closing in.
My gut twists.
I’ve ridden countless bulls, wrestled them, roped calves at thirty miles an hour. I should have the stomach for one unknown delivery.
Turns out I don’t.
And my regret only grows stronger with every mile.
I swallow dryly, jaw locked, fingers tapping against the steering wheel as if the movement will shake off the feeling that I’ve made a deal with the Devil.
One job. One week away from Kat. It’ll be torture, but after that, we’ll be free.
And then—a glint of blue lights in my rearview mirror.
A siren shatters the night.
My pulse plummets .
No.
Every instinct I have—from years of riding, running, fighting to stay on something bigger and stronger than me—screams move .
But I can’t.
Because there, flashing bright and relentless in my rearview mirror is the thing I’ve been trying to outrun.
Not just the law. Not just this bad decision.
But the weight of a lifetime of almosts—almost free, almost good enough, almost giving Kat the life she deserves.
Almost having everything… and about to lose it all.
Hours pass.
I sit in a cell that smells like piss. My legs are stretched out, my head against the cold cinder block wall, staring at the tiny barred window high above me. They haven’t fingerprinted me. No booking, no paperwork. No phone call. Just left me to rot in my own thoughts, and that’s worse than anything else.
Because my thoughts? They won’t shut up.
Every road I took that led me here reroutes itself in my head. Every reckless choice, every desperate move to secure a future with Kat, a future where we had freedom instead of being shackled to expectations or empty bank accounts. I thought this was the smart move. The one-time risk that would make it all possible.
And now? I’m fucked.
My gut churns. Something is off. I don’t know much about getting arrested, but I’ve watched enough TV to know this isn’t how it’s supposed to go. You get booked. You get processed. You get put in the system.
I’m just sitting here.
The jangle of keys yanks me from my spiraling thoughts. Footsteps. My body tenses as the guard unlocks the door, and then—a man steps in behind him.
Not a cop.
A man in a dark, tailored suit. Sharp. Composed. Deadly.
His bright-blue eyes settle on me, cold and cutting, framed by a helmet of dark, slicked-back hair. His suit is impeccable, expensive, a different class of power.
He smirks.
“Santiago Mendez,” he says, like he’s tasting the name, deciding if it’s worth spitting out.
I don’t answer. I just stand, tall and solid. If this man wants me weak, he won’t get it.
“Let’s talk.”
Fuck that.
But the guard nudges me forward, and suddenly, I’m not given a choice.
The men lead me to a room with a table and two chairs, an interrogation room. There’s a two-way mirror, and in the corner is a CCTV camera with a red-light blinking. But as soon as the door closes and locks, the light goes off.
We’re not being recorded?
“Do you know who I am?” the man asks.
Immediately, I know he must be important because only influential people would ever ask such a question.
“No,” I answer, pissed off as fuck, just knowing this man is here to use me. With that light off, I know there’s no evidence of anything I say or do. This is shady.
He isn’t here for some sort of plea bargain where I tell him what Victor’s been up to in exchange for a reduced sentence. He isn’t here hoping that I’ll rat a gang out and give them Victor’s name, because that camera would be on and this guy wouldn’t be asking if I know who he is.
He extends his hand cordially but smiles like an assassin. “Paul Castellanos.”
The shock that runs through me has my whole body paralyzed. This is Kat’s father?
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
“Well, I’d love to ask you the same question, except I’ve known everything that you’ve done for the last couple of months, Santiago. Santiago, or should I call you Santi? Should I call you… cowboy ?” He says the word with a sickening sweetness.
The air in the room shifts.
He knows about us. He’s been watching.
A slow, sick dread claws through my gut. This man has been tracking her, tracking us, for who the hell knows how long.
And he’s here to destroy me.
“Listen, Santiago,” he says, “I’m here to make you an offer you can’t refuse. First of all, it’s important you know that this thing you have with my daughter it’s… it’s time for the game to be over.”
“The game?” I say incredulously, wanting to lash out and screw up his smug smile for life. “Kat is anything but a game. She’s everything to me.”
He tsks, taking every chance to kick me down a peg and patronize. “Well, if you two are so close, you must know about Nicholas by now?”
Paul smirks like a devil and pulls a photo from his suit pocket, sliding it across the table. “Kat is engaged to be married. ”
His words crush my soul.
People have often said I have a death wish, but never before have I wanted to actually die. But at this moment, I might have taken death over the pain searing through my heart and the white-hot heat consuming my skin.
My fingers move as if disconnected from my body and I pick up the photo of Kat. She’s with some older guy and her father. They’re all in front of a gigantic roaring fireplace with an elegant mantelpiece. They’re wearing matching Christmas sweaters.
“I take it you didn’t know about Nicholas?” Paul’s tone is light and airy.
He’s speaking this way to get to me, and it’s working.
All I can do is stare at the photo. She lied to me? She was engaged all this time? Is that why she always wanted to meet at the tree in the middle of nowhere? I want to put the photo down, but a sliver of hope has me willing it to be nothing.
I can’t go down without a fight. “This proves nothing.” I toss the photo across the table, and it helicopters to the floor behind him.
A sly smile spreads across his face. He pats his chest. “I have more where that came from.” He slides his cell out from the inside of the other blazer pocket and wiggles it in the space between us. “Care to go through my Nicholas and Kat folder? Lake Como? Paris? The Caribbean?”
My eyes sting. “She never wore a ring.”
His cruel laughter echoes in the barren room. He calms down slightly to speak again. “Kat is to marry someone who will take over my company one day. I never had a son, and she isn’t CEO material.” He scoffs, repeating my words like they were the dumbest thing he ever heard. “A ring.”
His mocking laugh enrages me .
“Oh, Santiago. Now I truly know it. You couldn’t run a company if your life depended on it.”
I grind my teeth until they ache in my jaw. I don’t want to believe him. But I don’t want to see more photos, see another man’s arm wrapped around my girl in a bikini. I turn my face to the side and stare at a stain on the linoleum. What has become of my life? My love? My hope?
His words are acid in my bones.
“Listen, Santi, I get it, everybody wants to marry into money…”
At that, I explode involuntarily and slam my hand down on the table. “Fuck you,” I growl like an animal, my voice coming from some other place inside me like some bigger spirit has taken over. “I will never be spoken to like that,” I grit out through my teeth.
A shroud of serious darkness falls over the space between us. Paul waits a moment—for me to calm down? Considering his words? I don’t know, but the pit of despair in my gut tells me I’m fighting a losing battle.
“You don’t come from our world, Santiago, so I’m just going to explain something to you. Girls like Kat do not marry guys like you. They don’t run away on the road and tour rodeos or go off and be a painter on some shitty little ranch in the middle of nowhere. Girls like Kat sow their wild oats with boys like you. But they blossom and become women with men like Nicholas.”
My chest heaves. I feel like throwing up. I trusted her, and she was engaged all this time.
“I’m going to make you an offer you can’t refuse, Santi. You never speak to my daughter again. You never contact her, you never reach out, you never utter her name—not while you’re awake, not while you’re sleeping…” he sneers, “not while you’re jacking off to her pretty fa ce.”
This man is vile.
“You can’t control me.”
“No, I can’t, but let’s just see how stupid you are, shall we?”
Pain sears in my jaw, I clench it tightly to not throw myself across this table and show him what kind of man I really am.
“You never contact Kat again, and I’ll make this all go away.”
Paul is the reason they never booked me? Just then, the officer’s face peeks in the tiny window. A dirty cop, taking dirty money.
“I’ve been watching you, Santi. I’ve been having you and Kat trailed since her location services showed her at Desert Bloom Ink.”
What kind of sicko stalks his own daughter?
“You can’t make this go away,” I spit. “Whoever is waiting for this bag will come after me anyway…”
“You mean Victor?”
He knows his name? Jesus … no …
Paul asks his question like he’s losing patience. “Do you think Victor just rose from out of nowhere offering some random chance to make money by transporting a bag of weed? Asking some guy at a rodeo?”
“You set me up,” I whisper, horror sinking into my chest.
Paul’s blue eyes gleam. “Of course I did.”
My vision darkens at the edges.
I don’t want to promise this asshole anything. Even if I can’t have Kat, I don’t want him to have her either. Or this Nicholas. All I want is to wreck this whole man’s life—to unleash Armageddon .
His evil gaze pierces my soul as he takes inventory of my thoughts.
“Santi, I’m a thorough man. I like to cover all my bases. And something told me a man like you isn’t afraid of a criminal record. But you do care about your family, and I know how this would impact them, too. Would you put a stake in the heart of your grieving father? Would you bring a dirty reputation to your brothers’ crime-fighting endeavors? Does your family need any of that right now? Really? In the wake of your mother’s death?”
I’m drowning.
Paul stands, brushing imaginary dust from his sleeve. “You need to think about this carefully, boy. If you ever talk to Kat again, your family will know about this. Anyone even thinking of investing in your brothers will know about this.”
I try to be strong, but my voice cracks slightly. I’ve never felt so low. So worthless. So ashamed of my choices in my life. But I still manage defiance. “My family would hate you as much as I do right now if they knew what you were doing.”
Paul folds his hands together on the table like this meeting is over. “You can burn with all the hate in the world.”
He leans in, voice like a noose tightening around my throat.
“But you will never have my daughter.”