2. Carmen
Chapter 2
Carmen
I t’s a cruel twist of irony that I would find myself, mere hours after expressing my distaste for the prison that had become Rubio mansion, in an altogether different kind of prison.
At least my family home had modern amenities, comfortable beds, and familiar, if not somewhat jeering, faces.
The Prince’s Guild are either suffering more harshly than my father suspected from the ongoing war, or they simply don’t care about me enough to provide simple comforts. I’m smart enough to suspect the latter while still hoping for the former.
Either way, the man assigned to me today is more useless than most. He might be named Alex. Or perhaps this one is Martino. I don’t care to remember.
Thankfully, I’ve not had to deal with the one who kidnapped me yet, the man with the infuriating smile and personal space issues.
He’s the first on my list when I get out of here. He’s the one I’ll have killed first.
“Eat something,” whoever he is barks over his shoulder.
He’s been watching the TV for the last hour. He turned it on immediately after trading shifts with the last guy and throwing a bunch of vending machine snacks on the bed I’m curled up on. One of my hands is cuffed to the bedframe.
It’s a dingy apartment somewhere in Manhattan. That much I’ve been able to discern from peering through the cracks in the boarded-up windows. The skyline offers me at least some semblance of navigational bearing.
Technically, it’s more of a studio or perhaps even a hotel room. There’s a small kitchenette in the corner, the appliances seemingly groaning under the weight of their own age, and the space is entirely open plan.
My college dorm room was bigger than this.
“I need water,” I declare to the back of his head.
He doesn’t even look around, just gestures to the bed. “There’s something there.”
“This is carbonated sugar,” I grimace down at the near-fluorescent green bottle amongst the chip packets and candy wrappers.
“Sorry, princess. This ain’t the Ritz.”
It takes every ounce of my self-control not to pick up the offending bottle and chuck it at the back of his head.
Instead, I go back to looking around the tiny room, scanning for any opportunity for exploitation. If I can just get a message to my father…
My eyes drift once more to the bedside table opposite me. I can’t quite see it without tearing my arm off, but I’m fairly certain there’s a phone there.
Maybe this is a hotel…which means there’s probably a reception desk, right?
Not for the first time, I imagine what Red would do about all this. The version of my friend that lingers in my mind would probably have been tied up right next to me. She would have laughed and thrown the bottle at the guy herself.
Red was my first friend in New York City after four years at Princeton pretending I wasn’t the heiress to a Mexican drug ring. She was the first person to know me as Carmen—not just the bioengineering nerd or the Cartel’s princess, but both and neither.
Red had grounded me in ways I don’t think she ever really understood. She was a mercenary, loyal to me and my money, but it was more than that. She cared about me beyond academic success or what I could do for my father’s empire.
I thought she’d cared.
She didn’t, in the end.
I tuck the anger neatly away. I’ve had more than enough time to adjust to her betrayal, but it still burns every time I think of her.
What would she do if she were here?
“I’m on my period,” I blurt out before I can convince myself not to.
This finally gets his attention. His wide eyes are almost comical. “What?”
“Let me call reception. They can bring up some water and supplies.”
“You’re not touching that phone.”
I shrug, unaffected. “Fine, you can go to the nearest bodega for me. I need triple-max tampons and?—”
“Enough!” he snaps, a delightful shade of red coloring his cheeks. Men are so sensitive, honestly.
I quirk an eyebrow at him. “What, you’re going to let me just bleed out on the bed?”
The red of his cheeks quickly turns to a nauseating shade of green. “I…no. Fine. Make the call.”
He stands and walks over to the bedside table, pointedly looking at my face and absolutely nowhere else. He sighs as he hands me the receiver, attached to a spiraling chord, before punching in the number.
After a moment or two, a bored voice picks up. “Yeah?”
“Hi, I was wondering if you might be able to bring some sanitary products to room…” I trail off and look at the man expectantly.
He holds up his fingers.
“Seven,” I continue.
The receptionist sighs as if I’m inconveniencing her. “Yep. Anything else?”
“Yes,” I hold the man’s gaze. He’s just started to frown. “Please! Please help me, I’ve been kidnapped. My name is Carmen–”
The phone is immediately wrenched from my hand, and I start screaming. Loud. Dramatically. Enough for anyone to hear through the thin hotel walls. Enough for the receptionist to have caught it before he smashed the receiver back down.
I smirk triumphantly in the face of his anger. “Oops?”
“You’re going to regret that.”
* * *
I’m moved three times after the incident at the hotel.
Each time, I manage to get a message out.
I don’t see Alex or Martino or whatever his name was again until I’m a few days in at the third location. I have a plan underway to slip a note into my clothes for the dry cleaner to find.
But I don’t get that far.
Not when the stupid asshole appears at the door with a smug little expression on his face, muttering about retribution and payback. He cuffs me, blindfolds me, and manhandles me out of the room and into the back of the car.
He’s promptly becoming the second person on my list of people to be murdered for this. If only I could care enough to find out his name.
I’m half-expecting to find myself in a fifth grimy little room when my blindfold is removed again, having been carried and jostled and talked about like I was nothing more than an inconvenience.
Good. Maybe if I’m too much trouble for them, they’ll just let me go.
So, it’s a pleasant surprise to find myself sitting in a very clean, noticeably large conference room.
For a brief second, I feel oddly self-conscious. It’s been days, if not weeks, of being carted around Manhattan. No one has offered me a change of clothes and there’s only so much you can do when there’s someone stationed at your bathroom door.
But the thought quickly evaporates from my mind when I see the group across from me.
Leon Natali, don of the Prince’s Guild, sits at the head of the table. Hands clasped in front of his face, and staring at me with thinly veiled contempt. Broad shoulders barely contained within his perfectly tailored suit give him an aura of durability.
Everything about him screams professional murder machine. Man of war.
Everything except the bags under his eyes.
God, I hope I’m the reason he’s suffering.
“Carmen Rubio.” His greeting rings through the room.
The other men and women fall silent and turn to look at me. Some with distaste, others with concern. I scan the crowd for people I recognize.
To Leon’s left is Teo Vitale, his second. Which means the rest are likely others from the Prince’s Guild inner circle. I spy Martino or whatever-the-fuck in the corner practically leering at me. Someone shuffles behind me, but I can’t turn to see with my restraints.
Then something shifts in my periphery, and my heart stops beating.
Her fiery hair is exactly the same. It’s impossibly slick waves fall just beyond her shoulders. She leans against the door, lean but still muscular. She has enough strength to take down a man triple her size.
I know because I’ve seen Red in action before.
She doesn’t meet my gaze. In fact, she looks anywhere but at me.
I don’t look away, letting the anger back out of its perfect little box. I don’t even look away when Leon starts speaking again.
“She’s proven to be quite the liability,” the don tells his little band of merry idiots. “We can’t afford to keep moving her with our current resources. Our options are becoming limited.”
I let a smirk tug at the corner of my lips.
Red still hasn’t looked at me.
“I say we kill her and get it over with,” number-two-on-my-list bites out immediately. The suggestion is met with a murmur of approval.
“Fuck you, Alex.”
If I hadn’t been watching her so intently, I would never have believed the words had left her mouth.
With all eyes on her, Red pushes herself from the door and walks straight to Leon.
Her husband.
“Killing her is not an option,” she says with a hand on the don’s shoulder. She’s powerful, poised, and staring daggers at Alex…oh, that’s his name.
If I hadn’t already suspected that Alex had a mental deficiency, there was no doubt about it when he squared his shoulders to verbally retaliate. “She’s a menace and a liability. It’s the cleanest solution.”
“You so much as touch her, and I’ll hand you over to Amos Rubio myself with your head shoved between your ass cheeks.” Red barely has to raise her voice to be threatening. I’d be impressed if it weren’t for…
“Mia,” Leon warns his wife softly.
That’s not my Red.
That’s Mia Natali, mercent for hire and spy for the Prince’s Guild, the woman they sent to befriend and use me for information on my father. Information she then passed on obediently to her husband, our greatest enemy.
If I’m being honest with myself, the root of my anger lies with my own self. For being so fucking naive.
“Carmen isn’t just Rubio’s daughter,” Mia continues as if I’m not even there. “She’s his sole heiress. She’s the Cartel’s bargaining chip for alliances across the border. Without her, they can’t marry her off to the highest bidder and claim the spoils.”
I stare at Mia blankly, wondering how she found this out. Was it when she was snooping through my father’s rooms when she was supposed to be looking out for me? Or does she still think enough of me to bother doing her own research?
“All I’m hearing is a more compelling argument for killing her,” Alex mutters under his breath.
Mia reaches for her gun and points it at the back of Alex’s head.
Leon quickly reaches up to lower her arm.
“We can’t kill her,” he says resolutely. “Not when it means we can keep the Cartel cut off from any further support. She’s valuable to them beyond sentimentality, which means she’s a bargaining chip I’m not prepared to lose. Give me other options.”
The request is met with stony silence until Teo sighs and leans back in his chair. “We could move her out of the country,” he says. “Take her passport so that even if she manages to get a message out or run, she can’t get back.”
Leon considers this a moment. “Europe?”
Teo’s dark eyes flicker to something behind me. “Emilia-Romagna.”
Italy?
I’d forgotten, momentarily, that there was someone behind me. That is, until he starts muttering, and a cold shudder of familiarity runs down my spine.
“I’m going to kill Rocco.”
Asshole number one. The one with the sly grin and the awful pickup lines who doesn’t stay down when knocked out by a serving tray.
Leon’s eyes are now trained on the man behind me. “Do you have a safe house there?”
With a sigh that sounds practically indignant, the asshole replies. “I have contacts.”
As if sensing his hesitation, Leon’s eyes narrow. “This is important, Dante.”
I mentally scrawl the name into the top spot of my list with flourishing cursive.
“I’ll have to make a call,” Dante seems to swallow down something bitter.
He’s uncomfortable. Good.
“Then I’ll leave Ms. Rubio’s care in your more than capable hands,” Leon announces as if he hasn’t just sentenced us both to death.
“You ignorant bastard,” I find myself hissing. “If I’m sullied before my union, it won’t matter if I’m dead or in Italy or anywhere else on this fucking planet. The wrath of the Cartel and my future husband will be on your doorstep before you can even beg for mercy.”
This draws a satisfying amount of alarm from those before me. I can only hope the threat resonates with the man behind me, too.
“Well,” Leon gives Dante a firm look, “that won’t be a problem now, will it?”
It’s Dante’s laugh that breaks the tension. “Not even remotely, boss.”