Chapter 9 Angel and Emma
Angel and Emma
Emma was not a speedboat person. She spent the first three hours of the trip between Miami and La Isla Castillo, our private island situated in international waters, with her head hung over the side.
There was motion sickness medication somewhere, but I couldn’t step away from the wheel to help her look for it, and she couldn’t stand upright for more than thirty seconds to find it herself.
What a way to start a honeymoon.
I rolled my eyes at the thought. If I’d had my way there wouldn’t be this farce of a honeymoon, but Padre wanted me to handle a shipment of weaponry from Lorenzo Vitali and going with my new bride made an excellent cover. Having Emma around was already working in our favor, according to Padre.
“You should just kill me,” she shouted over the wind. “It would be a mercy.”
I bit down on the smile that threatened at the corners of my mouth. Sabihonda, I thought. “I can get there in twenty minutes,” I called back. “But it’s going to be rough. Can you handle it?”
She was quiet for a moment. “I’ll do my best,” was her weak reply.
The smirk I had been trying to curb spread across my face.
Emma played at being meek — especially in front of Padre — but there was always a fire in her eyes whenever she looked at me.
It was exciting and infuriating all at once.
It made me want to take her against the nearest available flat surface.
I pushed the throttle, skipping us over the waves even faster than before, and Emma groaned out loud. Within a few minutes, the island came into view, and I had to pull back so that we wouldn’t ram into the dock.
I rounded the small island so that I could swing into the right position, and when we finally coasted to a stop, I was able to throw the tie-off around the metal cleat on the dock.
Three of the men that Padre sent ahead of us to ready the house were waiting and finished securing the boat in place. They jumped aboard to grab our bags.
I climbed down to where Emma sat, fully upright for the first time in hours. Her face still had a gray, ashen look. “Come on,” I said and helped her to stand.
“What is this place?” Her eyes took in the small dock and path that led to the beach house some two hundred yards up. Our island wasn’t large by any means, but Padre kept it well-maintained, and I could remember spending many summers here before I joined my father.
“La Isla Castillo.”
“Someone spend a whole two seconds on the name?” Emma asked, rolling her eyes. “Why am I not surprised in the least that your family owns a private island?”
“Our family, mi esposa,” I reminded her. “Our family owns a private island.” I stepped from the boat to the dock and held out my hand to her. Emma stared at it for a moment, as if she didn’t quite trust me, but then she put her hand in mine, gripping me as she stepped back onto solid ground.
I could see the men’s eyes on Emma, dragging down her curves, and I contemplated throwing her over my shoulder. Taking her to the house and claiming her again. Or, I could break one of the men’s neck, and let that serve as a message to the other two.
You’re already having to recruit new men, I reminded myself.
So, instead, I stared at them, cold and blank, daring them to keep looking at what was mine.
The men’s eyes dropped away, and they slowly went back to unloading the bags from the boat.
Good, I thought, putting a hand on the small of her back as we walked up the pier.
They don’t get to look at her. Only I was allowed to do that.
As we cleared the dock and stepped onto the brick path that had been laid before I was ever born, the building beyond the house — the holding facility that my father had built after deciding that the island was good for more than just a vacation spot — came into view. “What’s that?” Emma asked.
“Don’t ask questions,” I advised her. “Especially if you don’t want to know the real answer.”
“You’re assuming I don’t want the real answer.”
I moved my hand from the small of her back to the back of her neck, squeezing until she made a noise of complaint. “Watch your tone,” I hissed.
“You made the assumption, but I have to watch my tone,” she snipped; her eyes were filled with fiery defiance. Goddamn that look. I wanted to fuck that look right off her face.
Soon.
I kept my hand on the back of her neck, and we continued our climb to the house. “It is beautiful here,” she said after a moment.
I looked at the white house, set high on pillars to avoid flooding damage during storms, and tried to see it from her perspective.
It was all white with deep blue hurricane shutters, and I knew the inside was tastefully decorated in the style my mother preferred, all creams and pops of color.
We came here so often that I barely noticed the stately beauty of the house anymore.
“It is,” I agreed, and then glanced at Emma. “If there’s anything you’d like to change, just tell me,” I said.
Emma couldn’t quite hide her surprise. She cleared her throat and said, “Thank you,” as we made the climb up to the first floor of the house.
Stepping into the house, I immediately liked it more than the compound in Miami. It was simple and tasteful and bright. Our bags were stacked in the front foyer. “I’ll take those upstairs,” Angel said. “I didn’t want the men trampling through the house.”
I recognized it as the kindness it was meant to be. “I can make you some coffee?” I offered. Since our wedding, I had learned a pitifully small amount of information about my husband, but I did learn how he took his coffee, light and sweet.
Angel smirked, and heat flared in my stomach.
He didn’t open up easily, or at all, but he seemingly had no issue with getting naked with me.
I knew that sex wasn’t a big deal to a lot of people, and I hadn’t slept with Angel because I felt an intense emotional connection to him…
but I had hoped it would draw us a little closer together.
If I had to be in this hellscape for the rest of my life, I might as well get some kind of enjoyment from it.
Except Angel holding me at arms’ length was keeping me from enjoying any of it.
“There’s only one thing I really want right now, mi esposa,” he said and settled his hand on my waist.
I sidestepped the touch. Not yet, I told myself. Our first time had gone perfectly well…until he’d dismissed me. I wasn’t going to let that happen again. “I’d love a tour of the house,” I said instead.
Angel’s smirk faded into the line that seemed to be his default expression. “Go explore, then,” he said, dismissing me the way he’d dismiss one of his men. “I’ll just take our bags up to our room.” He spun on his heel and practically stomped over to our luggage.
So…no proper tour then, I thought and surveyed the space.
There was a large common area off the foyer that had a fireplace that was absolutely unnecessary for a private island in the Caribbean.
The built-in bookcase was filled with books bound in leather.
I thought about pulling one out and checking to see if it was real or not — my mother had this theory about rich people buying blank books for decoration — but I kept moving.
I passed through a formal dining room that looked like a page out of a magazine.
I could picture Angel’s father sitting at the head of the table with that cold, calculating smile that made my skin crawl.
Shuddering, I passed through the room and into the kitchen, which was homey just like the one at the compound.
The cabinets were stained a light blonde; the backsplash was a white marble that had gold flecked in it.
I opened various cabinets: there was an array of dinnerware and pots and pans enough for a commercial kitchen. I could make five-star meals in this kitchen…if I had a book of recipes. Both the pantry and refrigerator had been recently stocked as well. Everything was neatly labeled and ready for me.
Looking into the fridge, a giggle formed in my throat.
It was labeled and everything was in its own plastic container and arranged just so.
It was like those restocking videos on YouTube that my mother had been obsessed over.
It seemed like everyone had the same type of Tupperware and organizational tools. And now I was one of those people.
What would she say if she saw you now? Married to a man who won’t even tell you how he likes his eggs in the morning. The thought was intrusive and cruel, and it turned my giggle into a sob. How was this my life?
“Emma?”
Angel was staring at me like I had grown a second head.
To him, I was sure that I looked crazy, sobbing in front of the open refrigerator.
“I miss my mom,” I said, as if that offered any sort of explanation for myself.
I could have explained about the videos that she and I would watch while she got her chemo treatments, but I doubted my husband would understand or care. “I…I miss her so much.”
Angel didn’t comfort me; he didn’t try to touch me at all, which only made my sobbing worse because it just proved that unless it was for sexual reasons, Angel had no interest in me.
“My mom was the sweetest, kindest person that I’ve ever met,” I said when he didn’t say anything.
I needed to fill the silence. “In her last days, she talked about how she would organize the kitchen when she got better. We both knew that she wasn’t going to recover, but she never talked about the end.
She didn’t plan at all…so I didn’t plan at all, and then she was just gone. ”
The words tumbled from my lips, and I felt more than saw Angel take a step closer to me. I thought he might reach for me, but then his arm went past me and shut the fridge. Then he went into the pantry and got out a can of sweetened condensed milk, dry milk powder, and powdered sugar.
“When I was sad growing up, my mother made me papitas de leche,” he said. “Do you want to learn?” Angel gestured to the ingredients that he’d placed on the counter.
There was nothing soft about my husband’s face, but my heart still fluttered at the question. It was the tiniest bit of information about him, but Angel had offered it. I didn’t have to pry it out of Lili or try to bribe Omar. “Please,” I said. “Teach me.”
His jaw clenched, but the corner of his mouth turned upwards. “I warn you,” he said, “that if you can do this well, I’m going to expect them to be made often.” He said it as a warning, but I could see that it was the price of such an admission.
I agreed. “If you like them, I can learn to make them,” I said. “If you would tell me your favorite dishes, I could learn to make all of them for you.”
Angel rolled his eyes. “We have Lara for that at home. Let’s just get through the next few days here, all right?”
“Does that mean there isn't any staff here?” I asked.
“We sent down a few men to prepare things,” Angel answered and began mixing the ingredients in a bowl.
He didn’t use measuring tools, so I tried to examine everything that he did as closely as possible.
“But they aren’t in the house because I wanted a little privacy.
” He shot me a look that was hard to decipher.
Lustful, yes, but angry too. “It is our honeymoon, after all.”
He wanted to get a rise out of me by using that word, but I ignored it. Instead, I settled at his side. “Talk me through what you just did? So, I’ll know for the future.”
Angel glanced down at the bowl and nodded. Then, he started to explain.