Javier
Chapter 4
Javier
S tanding in front of my house, waiting for the two idiots I instructed to go grab the girl, my anxiety sets in, and I begin to pace the driveway. As the car pulls into the circle, I back up out of sight and watch to see how they handle her.
Gambino opens the rear door of the car and pulls Charlotte’s legs out. She’s laying with her legs open as they hang out of the car door. He’s standing between them, looking down at her. I can see bruises and scrapes on her already. Anger blazes through me when I see him bending over and looking between her legs.
She’s wearing a maxi dress, but he has it hiked up to her hips. Gambino reaches down and forces her panties to the side, pushing his filthy hand into them. His hand is on my girl’s pussy. The motherfucker just touched what doesn’t belong to him.
As I stride up behind him and grab the back of his neck, Sal gets out of the driver’s side, and his brows are furrowed. I don’t think he saw or realized Gambino was touching my girl, as he was too busy.
Grabbing Gambino by the throat and ramming his head into the side of the car, I have to hold myself back from killing him too quickly.
“You dare touch what belongs to me?”
“Boss, I’m sorry. I was just going to take a little taste.”“A taste? A taste of my woman?” The words come out of me before I realize I’m screaming.
“I’m sorry, it won’t happen again.”
“Hold out the hand you touched her cunt with,” I growl.
As Gambino holds out his fingers, I grab them, shoving them into my mouth, sucking the taste of my woman’s cunt off him.
“You don’t get to taste what’s mine.”
Pulling my knife from the holster, I grab his wrist, placing it against the hard metal surface of the car’s hood. It’s then that he realizes what’s going to happen. He tries to pull his hand away as I cut into the soft flesh of his wrist, sawing until his hand falls to the ground, severed from the rest of his arm. Blood flows from his arm, sticky and warm.
The piece of shit is screaming and crying. Snot is coming down his face. The smell of his piss hangs in the air as I look down at the dark stain spread across his crotch.
Sal stands before me, looking down at the ground silently with fear etched on his face.
Putting my bloody knife back into my pocket, I pull out my Glock and hold it to Gambino’s face. A loud pop echoes through the air and the body hits the ground with a thump. Looking down at the man who I trusted to go pick up my woman and bring her to me safely, I see he’s missing half of his face.
“Clean this piece of shit up. Let this be a reminder that if anyone touches what belongs to me, I will kill them.”
Adrenaline and rage are coursing through my system as I reach down and carefully pick up Charlotte. Removing her from the car and carrying her bridal-style into my house, I bring my lips to her forehead.
“I’m so sorry, Carino. I’ll never trust another man with your safety again. You are not for his disgusting hands to touch.”
Bringing her up to our bedroom, I pull the covers back and put my sweet girl to bed. I clean the cuts and scrapes and apply arnica balm to the bruises.
Once the drugs wear off, she’s going to be fighting mad, and I’m prepared to fight for her. She’s mine now. Heart and soul. Her father may have sold her for chump change but she’s worth all the money in the world to me.
As soon as I saw this girl, I knew she belonged to me, and I was going to have her. The fact that my Abuela likes her as well is a bonus. Abuela is the woman who raised me inside the cruel Consuelos Cartel. She was my soft place to land, and I love her with all my heart.
My father was a cruel heartless man who murdered my mother when I was just a boy. Stella Consuelos became the only person I could depend on from an early age.
My father always claimed that he murdered my mamá because she wanted to leave and take his son with her. A son in the Cartel is worth more than any woman. We carry on the bloodline and the criminal empire. I knew why she wanted to take me and leave. The man was abusive to us both. I remember the exact day my mother died.
My father was gunned down a year ago, and there are no suspects in his murder. I didn’t grieve his death at all, but I knew Abuela did. She didn’t raise him to become the monster he was, and it devastated her to lose her son to the Cartel. She told me that he was a sweet boy but changed as he grew older, becoming jaded by the darkness of our world. He turned into someone she didn’t know.
There was not a bone in my body that desired marriage until I saw the beautiful crimson-haired bookstore owner. For weeks, I watched her from afar, but when I sent my grandmother in to meet her, I knew it was time to make my move. If Abuela started playing matchmaker and got involved too deeply in Charlotte’s life, it could be dangerous for her. It didn’t matter at that point, because I couldn’t wait much longer to hold her in my arms.
The sparkle in her eyes told me that Abuela was only going to stay out of the situation for so long before she started playing matchmaker and, God forbid, she tried to match her up to some other man. Charlotte’s father is a dirty cop, one that could use Abuela against me. I won’t risk my beautiful grandmother, and I won’t lose Charlotte. She’s mine. I’m going to have her, no matter how many men I need to kill to do it.
Detective Emory has one chance and one chance only. If he tries to take Charlotte away from me, his position as a detective will not save his life. Over the years, I’ve amassed enough dirt on the man that he will beg for death rather than end up in prison. A dirty cop in prison with the people he’s put away is not a good position to be in.