Chapter 12 – Matías
The morning has been good to me.
I haven’t slept beyond the odd, unrestful nap.
I rarely do these days. But the exhaustion sits differently today, settled in the spaces between my bones like a muted throb instead of the typical grating stitch.
Coffee helps, obviously. The potently black kind that burns down my throat and settles like molten iron in my stomach.
I sip at it slowly, letting the bitterness root me to the present.
After all, the cartel’s affairs demand my attention—and my mind remains calm enough to make my way through the mountain I’ve been avoiding.
The office is quiet, save for the occasional scrape of my pen against paper.
The empire doesn’t run itself. Shipments need approval, alliances need maintenance, and threats need elimination.
The delicate balance of power never stops shifting.
The men outside these walls think the hardest part of my job is pulling the trigger.
That’s the easy part. The enjoyable part, the one that keeps me in motion the way I am meant to be.
It’s this, all the menial stratagem—the constant maneuvering, the endless calculations, the anticipation of every move before it’s made—that is truly fucking soul-sucking work. Tomás handled it better. But that was true for most things.
The door opens without a knock. Only one man in this house has the balls to do that.
“Good fucking morning, Ardi,” I greet without looking up entirely.
That changes quickly.
Arturo steps inside, moving with his usual efficiency.
No wasted motions. No unnecessary words.
Pure purpose. His face is a blank portrait—or it would be, if I hadn’t known the man my entire life.
There tension in his jaw, a stiffness in his shoulders that isn’t solely warranted by the permanent stick up his ass, and neither are imperceptible to me.
Fortunately, he doesn’t make me ask. He drops a thick folder right onto my desk, and announces, “You need to see this, Mat.”
I take another swig of my coffee, letting the flavor flood my mouth hotly before I gulp it down, like it’ll brace me for whatever the next blow will be. Then, I resign myself to it, and flip the damn thing open.
My blood turns to ice.
Grainy black-and-white surveillance shots stare back at me. I don’t need to search for her face. My eyes go straight to it, like they’re drawn by a force I don’t want to name.
Noa.
Sitting in a fucking café.
Speaking to someone cropped out of the frame.
I don’t move. I don’t breathe. I scan the images, pulling them apart in my head, dissecting every angle. The timestamp burns into my brain.
This afternoon.
I grip the edge of the photo, my fingers tightening against the slick paper.
She didn’t sneak out. She didn’t lie. But she didn’t tell me either. We spent all morning together, and she didn’t say a word. I don’t have to wonder if it was a mistake to give her my phone. It’s clear that it was.
Across the desk, Arturo watches me with a careful neutrality that only pisses me off more. His expression is wooden, his stance casual. He’s measuring me, though, always gauging the next reaction brewing beneath my skin.
“We were sent this,” he says evenly, “and so were the others.”
A wife is either an asset or a liability in our world.
She is a useful bargaining chip, a warm body waiting in bed, a companion—or a weak spot, a pressure point, just waiting to be exploited.
Noa, despite my attempts at keeping her under wraps, isn’t just some trophy wife tucked safely behind these walls.
She is Ignacio Beltrán’s daughter. We still don’t know if it was Ignacio or Tomás that was collateral damage in the attack, or for whom it was initially intended.
Noa came with a past. Connections. Leverage.
She is a fucking target.
And this is a fucking message.
I shove away from the desk. The chair scrapes against the floor as I rise, the strain in my muscles reaching a breaking point. My mind is already ahead of my body, already moving through the next steps.
Find her. Drag her back. Remind her who the fuck she belongs to.
I reach for my gun.
Arturo just watches as I walk out the door, already drowning in the storm building inside me.
Noa steps through the doors of the estate, her posture relaxed enough.
I see the way she rolls her shoulders, though, the furtive glance around that precedes her entry.
I see her suck a shaky breath in. It’s the breath of someone trying to settle back into their skin after being somewhere they shouldn’t have been.
A guilty child caught with their hand in the cookie jar.
Except she hasn’t stolen so much as she has squandered.
She isn’t expecting me to be waiting for her.
She starts when she catches me at the end of the stairs, watching her.
My knuckles flex around the folder in hand, right before I toss it at her feet.
The photos spill everywhere. Their grainy black-and-white evidence exposed for both of us to see.
The café. Her hidden partner. The timestamp from this morning.
Proof.
I say nothing at first. Letting her feel it. Letting her take in the depths of my fury.
Then—
“You’re stalking me now?” The question cuts through the space between us, quiet but crisp. A blade unsheathed, waiting to be used. I blink at her, crossing my arms across my chest lest I actually wring that pretty neck of hers.
I almost want to laugh. “Where the fuck were you?”
Noa’s lips purse into a line. “I went to get coffee,” she says after a beat.
“And who the fuck did you meet?”
Her brows bunch together at that, and she has the gall to look at me like I’ve disappointed her. “What does it matter? I came back.”
Wrong fucking answer.
I move before she can react.
One second, she’s near the door. The next, her back slams against the very door she’s walked through. Hard enough to rattle the paintings on the wall. Hard enough to send a tremor down the hallway, a warning to any bastard who thinks they should intervene.
My hands cage her in, fists braced against the wall on either side of her head. Her breath hitches, but she doesn’t shrink back. Not Noa. She stares up at me, eyes burning amber fire. Imperious. Like a fucking queen.
“You think this is a fucking game?” I snarl venomously.
She doesn’t answer.
So, I lean in closer, close enough to feel her gulp in air against my chest. Close enough to let her know exactly what kind of mood I’m in. “You think you can just fucking disappear?” My voice drops, deadly quiet. “That no one would notice?”
“I wasn’t hiding,” she counters stubbornly. Her words are firm, but I’m close enough to hear the way her heart pounds a madhouse rhythm in her neck.
Rage simmers beneath my skin. She has no idea what she’s done. What kind of target she’s painted on herself. What kind of bloodbath could be waiting for her if the wrong set of eyes were watching.
I drag one hand down the wall, gripping her jaw instead. I force her eyes to mine, gaze searing. “You don’t get to make decisions like this anymore,” I bite out. “Not without me.”
Her eyes narrow to slits. “I’m not your prisoner.”
“No,” I snap back. “You’re my fucking wife.”
She glares at me, then plants both palms at my chest. Two actions that ought to be opposite and aren’t. “Then don’t question me like a traitor.”
I stare at her. Then ask, plainly, “Are you one?”
“If you even have to—” My stare changes her mind.
“I’m not. I’m not a traitor, Matías.” Then she shakes her head, and shoves me, hard enough to almost make me budge.
“But you? You’re not acting like a leader.
This isn’t power, it’s mania. You can’t do this to me.
I won’t live my life this way. This is the same bullshit Arturo pulled you aside for at the party, isn’t it? He told you this, too.”
Her words land like a bullet, lodging deep, festering before the wound has even begun to form. Not a leader. Not like Tomás was.
I could laugh.
Instead, my hold deepens, opposite fingers flexing against the wall beside her head. The tension rolls off in waves from my body, sinking into her like my teeth crave doing. “Careful, esposa.”
Noa doesn’t fight my hold on her. “Or what?” she sneers, impertinent haughtiness dripping from her challenging words. “You’ll hurt me? Prove everyone right?”
The house is too quiet, holding its breath with us.
A restless throb pulses through me, hollow and wanting.
I can taste it, the bite of rage mixing with darker appetites.
The need to show her exactly what kind of man she married.
Not the one she imagined in some fucked up fairytale, but the one standing in front of her.
The one who doesn’t get questioned, doesn’t get fucking tested.
And yet, that’s all she does.
She stares up at me like she’s daring me to make her regret it.
My temples throb with a furious thumping. “You think I need to hurt you to make a point?”
Noa doesn’t even blink. “I think you don’t know how to do anything else.”
My nostrils flare with frustration, my tongue latching to the roof of my mouth. A bitter laugh scrapes against my throat. “You have no fucking idea what I can do.”
Noa tilts her head, gaze never wavering.
“Maybe not,” she concedes, softer now, and somehow no less lethal for it.
“But I know what you’re not doing.” The edge in her voice shifts, nearly pleading.
“You’re not leading, Matías,” she bargains.
“You’re just reacting. Lashing out. You don’t trust anyone, you don’t listen to anyone.
And now you’re standing here, treating me like I’m the fucking enemy because I had coffee with my best friend. ”