29. Miguel
29
MIGUEL
R ueben tried to put out the fights more than he tried to help me not get killed. Cartel members were notorious for infighting. Loyalty was supposed to be reserved for the big boss, not each other. And with me being there—seemingly in the wrong place, at the wrong time, with the wrong woman—there was no way I could win here.
Too many of them ganged up on me, fighting and shooting. Another bullet hit grazed my skin. More fists and feet hit me in punches and kicks. I stood my own, not falling or letting myself be taken down, but I couldn’t escape. I couldn’t knock them all out or hit them all with my gun.
It was mayhem, and in the middle of it, they took her.
I’d failed my woman. They’d taken Isabel. My sweetheart was gone.
Rueben finally called them all to stop. He somehow got them to stand by and listen to me after I yelled and repeated that they were wrong.
“That’s not her!”
Rueben held the men back, perhaps realizing that he could benefit from whatever he could learn here. That if the woman I was with could bring in a hefty reward for him, or if he could prove the others had taken the wrong one.
“That wasn’t Graciella!”
“It looks like her,” one man said.
“Nah. I don’t remember no tattoos,” another said.
“That was Isabel Flores. Now tell me where they took her!” I grabbed the front of one man’s shirt and lifted him with my fist ready to slam into his eye socket.
“Fuck. That wasn’t Graciella? That’s who the hit’s on.”
“She’s got a sister.”
“That looked like Graciella.”
They all could figure this shit out later. On their own. All I knew was that they had my woman and I had to hurry after her to save her.
Rueben took mercy on me, realizing too late that there were two women in Louis’s family. Not just this Graciella that Louis seemed to use for business deals, but also Isabel.
They’d targeted the wrong woman.
My woman.
Rueben got a tracker from one of the thugs who’d driven off with her, and I didn’t wait. I didn’t stop. With a parting promise that I wouldn’t come back out of my early retirement and kill him if he cooperated, I left following the tracker for one of the men who’d dared to take Isabel.
Speeding without a stop, I headed into the city and snuck inside an office building. I hurried up one floor, then the next, frantic to reach her. Desperate to find her.
I couldn’t let myself stay rooted in shock at how this was all coming together. I had already started to wonder if there was another woman at play here. Those moments when I’d read between the lines with what Drago told me. Those little nagging thoughts that things might not be as they seemed. I’d already been wondering if someone else was the true target, and I knew that as I raced up to the floor where the tracker dot stayed in place, I’d soon be facing the culprit behind all this danger Isabel didn’t deserve.
Sneaking up behind one of the Cartel members who’d come to Rueben’s, I choked him off and dismissed him as a silent death. The moment I lowered him quietly to the floor, I stood up and listened in to the conversation in the office. Behind closed doors, a man spoke about women being pawns. Then I heard her. Isabel was in there, listening to Louis Flores explain that he’d hidden Isabel’s twin, Graciella, all her life. How he’d groomed her to work with him and deceive men with fake proposals of arranged marriages.
Overhearing it all, I let this news seep into me and stoke the flames of fury. Incensed but patient, I listened to it all.
I slid my fingers over my gun, readying to burst in there and finally finish what I thought would be one last job for me. One last hit before I retire .
I would kill Louis Flores right fucking now, and that would be the end of this bullshit.
Isabel and I would be free to start our futures together and be happy, never alone so long as we had each other.
Now. The time was now. I lifted my hand to the doorknob.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
I stilled at the sound of a woman’s voice behind me.
I’d lowered my guard, focusing too intensely on what was being said in the other room that I neglected to keep an eye on what could sneak up behind me.
Spinning with my gun out, I came face to face with a familiar smirk.
Graciella.
It was her.
It had to be her.
Twisting her lips like that as she kicked my gun out of my hand, she resembled Isabel when she was being sassy. Those brown eyes were just as caramel as hers, too, only lacking the warmth and humor I had fallen in love with. Her face, her hair, even her height. They were identical, yet so different.
No sexy tats lined her bare arms. She didn’t have the sweet curves and softness that Isabel rocked, instead showing off lean arms and a too-slender figure of a woman who prioritized working out and knowing how to kick ass.
Looking at the face of the woman I loved, yet not, I was hit with the realization, the proof, that what I felt for Isabel wasn’t just physical, wasn’t just lust or an itch.
If I could look at her identical twin and not feel a spark of that love, not a hint of that connection that I interpreted as a sign that she was my one woman, it had to mean that only Isabel could be my soul mate. That deep down, where it mattered, it was her heart that mine wanted to beat with.
I felt no connection looking at Graciella.
It was proof I hadn’t needed that Isabella was the woman I knew and loved.
The woman I would spend the rest of my life with and enjoy every second of getting to know even better.
“Why not?” I asked, mocking her threat.
As if she could tell me what to do.
Like anyone could warn me off from rushing to Isabel’s safety.
Her upper lip curled in disdain. Instead of answering me, she attacked me.
Unlike Isabel, she knew how to fight. Punching and kicking, she swiftly shifted into more sophisticated maneuvers like grabbing on to me and trying to choke me out. For as skilled of a fighter she was, she had to have the knowhow and means to kill me. She had killed others before, clearly prepared to end others’ lives.
But she had nowhere near the ultimate strength and prowess I was capable of.
I’d killed many more. I’d faced men twice my size. I wouldn’t underestimate her because she was shorter. Or because she was a woman.
In close, hand-to-hand combat, we tried to pin each other down. She couldn’t knock me to the floor. I couldn’t maintain a secure grip on her to bash her head against the wall more than once.
Struggling to get my gun and end her, she got the upper hand and pushed me into the door. We slammed into it, shoving it open with a huge burst of action.