3. Chapter 3 #2
The thought of the path I should have taken, the respectable path, made me sick.
Clawing my way to a corner office, renting a tasteful apartment, spending a decade smiling at international law firm partners as they steal my work and call it mentoring, then wasting forty years protecting fortunes I would never touch?
No, thank you.
Ciro’s records had crossed my desk by accident, and I took full advantage of the situation.
Shell companies. Private clubs. Construction interests.
Charity fronts. Offshore transfers hidden under names that belonged on plaques in hospital wings and university buildings.
Dirty money from arms deals and controlling drug pipelines, yes, but so much of it.
There was enough to turn an MS-13 thug with bad grammar and worse manners into someone senators answered.
That was when I understood the truth.
Ciro Delgado wasn’t brilliant. He was violent and absolutely ruthless.
I studied him for weeks. Learned all I could about his businesses, habits, temper, his strict Catholic mother, the long-dead father, and his women. The boy who had turned to gang life and grown into a man who still wanted innocence kneeling at his feet.
He had a weakness for purity that he could enjoy corrupting.
So I gave him exactly that on the day of his meeting with the partners.
Short plaid skirt. White button-down, opened one button too low.
Gold cross resting between the curves of my full breasts.
White knee socks with little bows on the outside.
Hair tied up in a ponytail. Eyes lowered at the right moments.
My real first name had already done half the work.
Isabella. A name that hooked into something buried deep enough in him to matter and easy for me to use.
I didn’t stumble into his attention.
I had aimed myself at it.
The partners thought they had fed me to him.
They never understood I’d walked into that conference room with the intention of being taken.
After that, becoming Isabella Delgado on paper was easy. Money opened court records. Fear hurried clerks. Men with badges forgot to ask questions when other men with more money told them not to.
Then Ciro put me to work.
I learned how to make a blade out of paperwork and smile while someone else was crushed.
But paperwork was only the respectable side.
The uglier work paid better.
College women were easy if you knew what they were desperate for.
Debt that was too big to ever pay off. Bad fathers.
Pretty faces. Big dreams. Girls who wanted modeling contracts, mentorships, travel, scholarships, access to wealth and power.
I didn’t drag them anywhere. I opened doors and let hunger guide them through.
Some came back changed.
Some didn’t come back at all.
I slept fine.
Ciro rewarded results with cash, jewelry, trips, and the kind of access men guarded from wives and handed to mistresses when they wanted to hear how impressive they were.
I’d been banking as much as I could.
A Swiss account under one name. Crypto wallets under others.
Enough dark-web earnings to make even Ciro’s tech men look basic.
They thought I was spending so much time with them because I was fascinated by them.
They thought a woman who let them put their hands on her couldn’t possibly be stealing from them at the same time.
Men shared more when their pants were down, and I took notes.
Ciro knew about some of the money. But not all of it.
No man ever got all of me.
I looked at the folder Mr. Byrnes had left on my desk. Thick. Organized. Damning. In nine hours, he’d figured out more about my life and our plans for Club Xyst than most people ever could.
That should have scared me.
And it did.
A little.
But fear was useful when it sharpened the mind.
Lachlan Byrnes wasn’t just another powerful man with a pretty face and a conscience he mistook for honor. He was connected to Nikolai Volkov, The Syndicate, Club Xyst, and DarkMatter machinery, and he knew things Ciro would pay dearly to hear.
Ciro would break him for information.
I wanted him broken for other opportunities.
A ruined man could be trained. Lachlan had already shown me his weak spot: his noble sense of honor. Touch the right nerve, wet the eyes, be submissive, make him believe saving me was his idea, and the stubborn Irishman lost his footing.
I wanted him on his knees, furious and bleeding, staring at me with those green eyes when he finally understood the helpless woman had led him by the throat.
Maybe, if I played this right, Lachlan Byrnes would become something more valuable than either Ciro or The Syndicate expected.
A weapon.
A shield.
A man dangerous enough to be useful once someone taught him how to submit.
My phone was still in my hand.
I opened my contacts and called the private salon that handled women who didn’t ask prices.
“Clear a room for me this afternoon,” I said when the manager answered. “I need the works.”
“How much time do you have, Miss Delgado?”
“Enough for a full-body wax and massage. And I need hair, nails, and makeup. Send someone for wardrobe too.”
“Any particular look?”
Men always named the wrapping and pretended the gift belonged to them.
“A palette of whites again. Soft,” I said. “Expensive. Innocent.”
A pause. “Innocent?”
“Did I stutter?”
“No, Miss Delgado.”
The woman on the other end understood then. People in service industries always did. They heard more truth in appointments than priests heard in confession.
“Of course,” she said. “We’ll take care of everything.”
“Yes, thank you.”
I ended the call and set the phone on my desk.
All I had to do was wait.
Men who wanted to save women always found a way to play the hero.
And when Lachlan Byrnes reached for me again, I would let him believe he had found something worth protecting.
By the time he realized who I really was, Ciro’s men would already have him locked inside his Salvadoran dungeon.