Chapter 37
Aria
Ithink I black out for a second.
Did he just say what I think he said? No way in hell.
“Can you repeat what you just said?” I have to ask for clarification because my mind is spiraling, and I can’t comprehend a single thing.
Elliot slides closer on the couch, placing a hand on mine before he speaks. “Drake just wanted to protect you.”
I swallow hard, and I swear, I’m seeing stars.
Are my lungs working?
Am I even breathing?
“Why?” I say as my eyes move away from Elliot to somewhere random behind him. I don’t even know what I’m looking at. Everything is blurring. “Why would the cartel have any information about my relationship with Jack?”
I should have told Serena.
I should have told her when she called all those weeks ago and mentioned Jack.
I should have come clean and told her I did know the politician she was talking about.
I know him. I dated him. In my head, he was my happily ever after.
I should have told her I was his mistress, that he was the reason I left Austin.
That I was the one who talked to him about the cartel.
It’s my fault he was looking into Leo and Santos.
All my truths should have come out right there and then, but they didn’t.
Now, they are hitting me head on, and I may lose the people who have been my family for the last three years.
“Because Leo asked me to look into him, and the file Drake sent over was going to go to him.”
My eyes may not have been on Elliot before, but they are now.
Did he just say what I think he did?
My words are almost a whisper, as if there’s someone else in the room who could hear us.
“You know Leo?” I knew he and Santos knew each other, but I had no idea that extended to my best friend’s husband. All this time we’ve been together, all the times I’ve mentioned Serena to him, he has never let on that he may not only know Leo but is also in contact with him.
He nods. “Since high school. Leo, Santos, and I went to the same boarding school in Texas.”
The one he had Bennett send him to.
“Have you stayed in contact with Leo since?”
He nods again, and I swear, a chill runs down my spine.
My mind goes to when we had dinner with his family. I’d made a comment about how he could have asked Santo for information, but he said they hadn’t stayed in touch.
Elliot lied to me.
If he lied to me about something so simple, about knowing my best friend’s husband, what else has he lied about?
“And you know Leo is part of the cartel?”
His face goes a bit stoic. “I think you and I both know he’s more than part of it.”
I stand from the couch. For a second, I think I’m going to storm out of this damn penthouse, but instead, I start to pace.
What do I do with this information? Should I be happy my bestie’s husband already knows the guy I more than like and approves of him?
Or should I be mad at the fact that I’m just learning Elliot, my Elliot, has cartel ties?
You have cartel ties too.
I guess I would be a hypocrite to be mad at him for withholding that information. I haven’t been very vocal about Serena’s everyday life.
But there is one question that looms in my mind as I pace the length of the living room, Elliot sitting on the couch.
“Did you know I’ve been connected to him and Santos since Vegas?” I ask, stopping for a second to look at him before pacing again.
He nods before letting out a deep breath.
“I tend to keep tabs on a lot of people. Leo Morales and Santos Reyes are on that list. I discovered Leo married someone in Vegas a week or two after the trip. And when Drake first looked into you, I was able to put two and two together—the Serena Leo married was the same Serena who shared a lease with you in Austin.”
I stop pacing again. “Why would you keep tabs on them?”
He leans forward, placing his elbows on his thigh and looking at straight me. “We’ve worked closely throughout the years. Santos and Leo are friends of mine, no doubt about that, but there are a few things I need them to stay out of, so I try whatever I can to keep it that way.”
“Are you part of the cartel too?” That’s the only logical next question.
Elliot shakes his head. “No. I do work with them when needed, and I have created bridges between them and the Italian mob in Chicago, but that’s where the connection ends.”
I take a breath or two, but nothing in my body calms down, so I start biting at my nails.
“So Leo had you look into Jack Harrison?” I ask, feeling like an anxiety bubble ready to burst.
“Yes. It was a bit ago. From the looks of it, your ex is trying everything in his power to destroy the cartel; he’s even sought out help in doing so. Leo wants to find out what he can about the bastard to bring him down.”
My nerves are getting the best of me, so I stop pacing and go back to sitting on the couch. But sitting only makes things worse. Not only am I biting my nails, but my leg is bouncing.
“And he came to you to get that information,” I state instead of asking.
From my peripheral, I see Elliot nod. “Drake and I had helped him before with things like this, so he knew we could get him what he needed.”
And they did.
There is currently a file sitting on a computer somewhere or in a desk drawer ready to be sent to Leo, and when it lands in his hands, he will know I betrayed him.
He will know I talked about his family to someone who could take everything away from him.
He will know, and in turn, I will never have his trust again. I will never have Serena’s trust again.
There’s a chance my best friend’s husband could land in prison because I told my bastard of a politician ex-boyfriend what I went through and who my friends were.
Families will get ripped apart. Friends will be lost. All because of me.
I feel the cushion I’m sitting on shift a bit, and before I know it, Elliot places a hand just under my cheek.
“Is the Jack Harrison we looked into your ex?”
There’s no point in lying, so I nod yes.
Elliot’s eyes shut for a second, as if in defeat, before opening them back up again. “And I’m going to take a wild guess that Leo doesn’t know either.”
I shake my head. “Serena knew I was seeing someone for a while. I told her that much, but I never gave her specifics, not even at the end. I always used a nickname when talking about him.”
When I finally agreed to go out with Jack, there was so much going on in Serena’s life. I didn’t want to bother her with my stuff. I was a commitment-phobe anyway, so I didn’t think it would go for as long as it did, as deep as it did.
There were more times than I can count when I wanted to lean on my best friend, especially when I found out Jack was married, but she was busy being a mom, a wife, a teacher, and I didn’t want to take her away from that.
“Does Serena know why you moved to Chicago?” Elliot asks, his hand falling from my chin but landing on my waist, as if he is trying to hold me as close as possible.
I shake my head once more. “I told her I needed a change of scenery, but even now, she doesn’t believe me.”
I’ve been waiting for her to show up on my doorstep and call me out on my bullshit.
Looks like she will be getting a lot of answers very soon.
Elliot squeezes my waist. I think it’s his way of telling me that while he hates I’ve kept things from my friend, he understands why I did it.
He shifts again, and when he drops his hold on my waist, I know hard questions are coming.
“You may hate me for this question, but I need to know. Did you tell Harrison anything about the cartel?”
I start to sweat as I hear the question leave Elliot’s mouth.
A cold bead of moisture runs down my back as I look at the man next me, dead in the eye, and nod.
A look of both disappointment and sadness cross his face. When he speaks, I expect his words to come out hard as stone, but they are soft and comforting.
“Would you be able to tell me what he knows?”
It’s such a simple request but a hard response. Yet, I find myself giving him a nod again.
Elliot nods along with me, takes my hand in his, and waits for me to work up the courage to say something.
It’s about two minutes later that I finally speak.
“I told you I went through something traumatic,” I start, looking at Elliot the whole time.
He nods but doesn’t respond with words.
I start picking at my nails again. “I didn’t tell you what that traumatic experience was.
” I take a deep breath and lower my eyes, unsure if I can look at him while I relieve the darkest day of my life.
“It happened in November, a few months after we met in Vegas. I had gotten home from a shift a few hours before and was waiting for the super to come by to check out something going on with the shower.”
Right away, my mind goes to that night, to hearing the knock.
“I didn’t think twice when opening the door. I thought it was the super; I should have at least checked, but I didn’t.”
Elliot tightens his hand around mine. “If it wasn’t the super, then who was it?”
His mind is probably going to Jack, but that isn’t the case.
“Two men. At first, I thought they had the wrong apartment, but then they stormed in.”
Memories of darkness and screams and pain come running through.
I remember their faces. Their words. I remember everything they did and tried to do before Serena came in.
And I remember everything that happened after.
“They,” I pause trying to come up with the right words, “they were there for Serena. I found out later that they were a part of a rival cartel and were trying to use her as leverage. They hadn’t done their research, though, and didn’t realize she hadn’t been in our apartment in months.
So instead of getting her, they got me.”
I don’t notice my hand is in a death grip until I finish speaking. Elliot is holding my hand so tightly, I can see my fingers turning white, but I don’t tell him to let go.
“Did they do anything to you?” he asks through gritted teeth. I can tell he’s trying, and failing, to hold himself together.
Tears burn my eyes as I continue. “They roughed me up, tearing up my clothes. Eventually, they were able to get a tight enough grip on me to tie me to my bed. I thought they were going to do more, rape or kill me right there, but for some reason, they didn’t.
They left, and Serena found me still tied up a bit later. ”
The horror on her face is something I still very much remember.
There are nights when all I can think of is what happened. Each time, the nightmares end differently.
Serena doesn’t get to me in time.
The men kill me.
We escape and run as far from any cartel as possible.
“What happened after Serena got there?” Elliot asks, his question taking me out of the darkness that encapsulates my dreams.
I take a deep breath. “We weren’t able to get far.
The men came back and knocked us out. We ended up in a house somewhere where we got roughed up a bit more.
Shots were fired, and both Serena and I ended up in the hospital—her with a bullet wound in her shoulder and leg and me with a ruptured spleen after getting kicked in the stomach.
If it weren’t for Leo and Santos, we probably wouldn’t had made it out of there alive. ”
A tear rolls down my cheek as I remember being carried out of that house and the pain I was in. I never wanted to be in that situation again, and for a time, I distanced myself from Serena because of it. Even after everything we went through, she stayed married to Leo and I hated her for it.
It took me some time to move past it; at least, I thought I had.
“Where does Harrison fit into all this?” Elliot asks, his voice strained.
A sigh escapes me, and I start to explain.
“That day stayed with me. I hated being alone in the apartment. I hated walking anywhere myself. It traumatized me beyond repair. It has gotten better; I don’t look over my shoulder as often, but when Jack and I finally got together, I struggled with it, and he noticed.
He would ask me about it, but I always moved the conversation to something else.
It wasn’t until almost a year in that I finally gave him the answer.
“We had gone out to dinner, and I drank more than I wanted. I drank so much that when Jack took me back to my place, he asked what the hell had gotten into me. I was angry that Serena had stayed with Leo after what happened to us, and that day she had told she was pregnant. That piece of information opened the flood gates. So I got drunk and told him everything. I told him about my friend getting married in Vegas to a drug lord. I told him about the attack. I told him everything I knew about the cartel, about Leo, about Santos. Everything that I could thing of.”
And everything I knew included whatever I found online.
My best friend had married into a crime family, and I thought I would do my due diligence. That way, if she needed to get out, I knew what I was dealing with.
I readied my mind with so much information, I ended up using it against her instead of helping her.
I don’t realize I’m full-on sobbing until Elliot places his hands on my face, cradling my cheeks as he tries to comfort me.
His eyes are filled with sympathy I don’t deserve.
“You did nothing wrong,” he tells me, but I’m already shaking my head before he finishes.
“But I did. I told a politician who wants nothing more than to get to the very top everything I knew about the Muertos, and now there’s a chance the friends and family I built these last few years will lose everything. I will lose people I love, I may lose my life because I got drunk and talked!”
Tears stream down my face with nothing to stop them.
I don’t wipe them away, and neither does Elliot.
He knows I’m right.
I talked about the cartel, and nothing will ever be the same.
Something crosses Elliot’s face. I can’t pinpoint it, but it’s quickly replaced with determination.
“We’ll fix this. I promise.”
I don’t respond.
I just sit in silence while he comes up with a plan in his head.
But the damage is done.
Leo is going to find out what I did and take away those I love.
There’s nothing that can fix this.
I’m a dead woman walking.