19. Diego
CHAPTER 19
DIEGO
Originally, I planned to bring her around town to make the media coverage worse for when we attend the garden party the day after tomorrow, but after the tattoo appointment, I bring her back to the apartment. It’s obvious I can’t keep control of myself around her, so I decide it’s in the best interest of my plans if I stay far away from her up until then.
She doesn’t complain as I lead her back, and I torture myself with the thought that it’s because she’s planning to fuck herself like she threatened. Maybe she even thinks I’m going to give in to her little games and tie her up, but just imagining her tied up and waiting for me gets me derailed. No, I don’t have time for any of this shit that seems to be happening between us.
I swing the door open, but she can barely walk inside the bedroom with the mess she made before. While she just jumps through things and looks unbothered, I’m pissed. Without another word, I leave and lock her again just to come back a few minutes later with a basket of cleaning supplies. She stares at it for about a second before ignoring it. She turns around to peel the dress off, adding another thing to the pile.
She’s unbelievable. My jaw ticks, and I watch in silence while she puts on the cum-stained jeans she wore when we got married and a dirty T-shirt. Maeve arches an eyebrow, but if she wants me to believe my dry cum is comfortable on her skin, she’ll need to school her face better.
“Get this fucking place cleaned up, and I’ll get you some comfortable clothes to wear,” I say finally, done with the games.
“I’m wearing something.” She blinks slowly.
That’s why I keep fucking her silly. She likes to play dumb. I have to fuck some sense into her.
“The choice is yours,” I tell her because she can play tough as much as she wants. I know she’s still just a Sinclair underneath.
My hand closes over the handle, but I decide to let fear sink into her a little. “We only have plans for the day after tomorrow. I’ll see you then.”
The confidence falls off her face the second the words are out of my mouth. Good.
“Wait, the day after tomorrow?” She scrambles to get closer. “I won’t see you until then? How will I eat?”
The balance of power is back where it needs to be. My shoulders relax just a little, and I smile to myself.
“Well, I would worry about getting this place clean. That’s the only way to guarantee anything from now on.”
She doesn’t need to know I have discreet staff who will take care of feeding her for me. She doesn’t need to know that while I hate her, I don’t plan on starving her. The realization finally comes to her. She’s my prisoner here. I make the rules.
She bites her lip, and her eyes water. She looks up at me with my name around her throat, and I hope another ruined orgasm has made her even more emotional, even more miserable.
“Fine, Diego. Whatever you say.” I leave her alone, locking the door behind me.
To leave the poor boy with a sick mother behind and become who I am today took sacrifice. I knew from the very start that in order to pull off my revenge, I needed to be someone who wasn’t afraid of anything. To destroy an old family like the Sinclairs takes a different type of man.
Cornelius Sinclair made me in more ways than I care to admit. Taking him down will take every fiber of my being, every second of my attention.
This is my life’s work.
Yet I can’t continue to ignore the criminal enterprise that brought me the opportunity for revenge, so for the next day or so, I work on running this town.
I don’t visit Maeve, but I enjoy watching her scrub the room clean through the cameras I had installed while I was tattooing her. She does everything I told her to do in hopes to earn food and clothing, and I feel a little vindicated. I remember her father doing similarly demeaning things to my mother, and it feels good to return the favor.
At around noon on Friday, I drive over to the auto shop I own, the very same place I would make Maeve drop the cars she stole for me. My men are standing around discussing something, but when I walk in, all conversation ends. I like to think I’m the type of guy who brings fear and silence to a room, but I know better. There’s something else too.
“Is there any reason everyone is just standing around today?” Like magic, they all jump into action and return to their work.
I head to the office at the back, and my shop manager, Carlos, sits at the desk. He glances up from the paperwork and nods at me as I come in but doesn’t bother speaking. He’s probably ordering and doesn’t want to lose his count. I wait a minute for him to finish, and he turns his full attention to me.
“Thanks for waiting, boss.”
I wave his gratitude away. I don’t mind being patient with those who give me respect and loyalty.
“What the fuck is going on out there?” I ask, jerking my head toward the main room.
He laughs and gives me a disbelieving look instead of replying.
“What’s funny?”
“You’ve been parading that heiress around like the whore of Babylon, and you wonder what they’re talking about?” He laughs again. “High school girls have nothing on them. Bunch of gossips.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Goddammit.” I don’t have time for this.
“How the hell did you get her to go along with all that?” He shakes his head again.
“She’s not going along with it.” I shrug.
He looks at me with a little concern this time, but it disappears a second later. “Sure, boss. As long as you know what you’re doing.”
The hint of disbelief in his tone rubs me the wrong way. Things with Maeve aren’t as meticulously planned as things with her dad. For Cornelius, it took me years to figure out the right angle and even more time to gather what I needed to take this to the next level and successfully end their old money.
Maeve just happened. She was supposed to be a pawn in my game. I planned on leaving her penniless and crying over the fall of her family, but the second she knocked on my mother’s door, things changed. She’s now the star of my show.
The answer is no. I don’t know what I’m doing, but I know where I’m going.
“It’s fine,” I tell him under my breath, giving him very little else.
“So you know she’s the car thief?” he says smugly.
Fucking Maeve.
“She’s shown her face to you?” Anger fills my words, and I’m not sure who to aim it toward.
Carlos shrugs. “I don’t think she meant to.”
“Fucking idiot,” I mutter to myself, and now my anger has a target. It’s Maeve. Always Maeve.
I leave the body shop without saying anything else. I’m trying to concentrate on work, but everything comes back to Maeve, and it drives me crazy. I still can’t see her without wanting to touch her, so when I come home, I turn on the camera instead.
She did a great job with her room. It’s back to what it used to be, though I didn’t expect she knew how to work hard. I suppose there is some level of unfairness to my assumptions about Maeve. I keep thinking about her as just the spoiled rich princess I painted her as, but she’s also a dedicated ballerina. I grew up with one at home. I know it takes discipline to do what they do every day. Maeve is not playing dress-up. She’s a professional.
She lies on the bed, wearing a pair of pajamas that I told my housekeeper not to give to her no matter how much she begged if she didn’t finish. There was no begging necessary. She just completed the task.
If she was trying to impress me, she succeeded.
I value nothing more than determination. I think about the way my mom used to talk about Maeve. She was always so proud of her, but at the time, I couldn’t understand why.
Is it possible I miss something this crucial about my house guest? My mother was usually right about things. I’ve found that true about so many things over the years.
My hands clench into fists, and I drop my head into my hands. This grief is a physical pain. This anger invades every part of me. It takes over my senses, and I don’t have space to feel anything else. It doesn’t matter if Maeve isn’t as bad as I thought. None of this is about her; it’s not even about me. It’s about making Cornelius pay for what he did to my mother.
My pain stops the softening I was feeling toward Maeve. My plans are cemented, and the dress she wore to the tattoo appointment is laundered and waiting for her. It’s time for all of them to get a look at what they’ve done. Maeve in that dress with the tattoo across her throat is a symbol. She’s the beginning of the end.
I sleep fitfully that night, and by five in the morning, I give up the pretense and get up. Bringing the laundered dress to her room, she’s still sleeping when I go in. I’m quiet, and she doesn’t stir. Her brown hair fans over the pillow, the small shorts of her pajamas ride up her thick thighs. I don’t even understand how I can hate someone so beautiful, but I do hate her, and there’s no other option.
I leave the dress on her bed and watch her when she wakes up and finds it there. She pales and looks around as if I’m still hiding in the dark corners, and I’m glad she’s scared. She should be. I waste my precious time watching her too much. Eventually, it’s time to go, and she’s dressed, so I let her out of her room.
“Where are we going?” she asks as we climb into the car.
I tsk. “You always ask when it’s already too late. Have you noticed that?”
“How’s that too late? We just got in,” she argues.
“It was too late when you agreed to marry me,” I say, and we pull out of my spot and onto the highway.
Her aunt doesn’t live far from where Maeve grew up in the house we shared once. I can tell by the panic in her features that’s where she thinks I’m bringing her as we move through the city. Which wouldn’t be much of a problem for her, considering none of her family are home right now.
“Diego, where are we going?” Alarm colors her tone as I drive closer and closer to her aunt’s estate.
“You didn’t really forget, did you? It’s your aunt’s garden party.”