Suffer
CARLOS
The angry purple bump on the side of Estelle’s forehead makes my blood boil every time I look at her. It could have easily been a bullet hole. That’s how close she came to dying.
She catches me staring again and sighs. “Stop. I’m fine.”
Her leg hasn’t stopped bouncing the entire time we’ve been sitting in the hospital waiting room.
I don’t look away. “Your dress was beautiful.”
She’s obviously never wearing that cursed thing again, but I did have a moment during the chaos, while she was getting checked out by a doctor, to really look at her.
Even with the crimson stains, she looked divine. I know this isn’t what she wants to hear right now, but I’m running out of ways to help her stay calm.
Estelle isn’t used to operating in this kind of situation—not like me.
Nothing’s rattled me in a long time.
Until her.
She smooths a hand down the black pants I had them bring for her to change into.
“We should’ve heard something by now, right?” she asks softly, her eyes going to her open palms again.
I reach out and cover one with my hand. Estelle looks up with wide, unblinking eyes. If she cries again, I might actually lose it.
“It’s only been an hour,” I reassure her.
That’s only half the truth.
It took ten minutes for the ambulance to take Alice to the hospital, then another fifteen minutes to assess her injuries and secure an operating room. So far, she’s been in surgery for one hour.
I know Estelle is mentally counting down the seconds.
“We’re running out of time, Carlos,” she whispers, swallowing hard.
“We have time.” I caress the center of her palm with my thumb. “Calm down, little dove.”
My men back in LA are chasing down Tray and Javier, the traitors in my detail who took Elsa and Micah.
Right now, the Investigators and hackers are digging into everything, from their bank transaction history and communication, foraging through their apartments—everything.
I’m not worried.
Even if they don’t find anything useful, I still have a card left up my sleeve, but in order to play it, Alice has to make it out of surgery alive.
The door opens slightly and Grayson peers around the side to look at me, nudging his head sideways.
I kiss Estelle’s hand. “I’m going to check on something, okay? You should eat.”
She nods, but I know she won’t leave this room.
Grayson’s standing right outside the door. “Surgery’s over. No major damage other than to one of her lungs. The bullet made a clean exit. She’s still knocked out by the anesthesia, and they’re giving her morphine.”
We start walking toward the recovery ward. “Do you have it?” I ask.
“I’ll send you the link.”
“Tell Ross to bring Estelle something to eat.”
We push open the double doors, and the strong smell of rubbing alcohol and cleaning chemicals immediately assault my senses.
Grayson stops in front of a door at the end of the long hallway, to the right. He takes his position outside as I open the door and step inside the room.
It’s dead silent except for the rhythmic beeping of the machine monitoring her heart. Alice’s still form on the bed stirs something dark in me.
Her platinum blonde hair is in a loose bun on top of her head—disheveled and lackluster from where she was lying.
I remember the day I interviewed her for the assistant position, impressed by her glowing resume, her poise, and, above all, her calmness in my presence.
Now, I can clearly see what I interpreted as professionalism and natural talent was nothing more than training, fueled by an agenda to see me fall.
She hated me from the start.
I press the button to turn off the machine controlling her morphine drip, then sit back in the armchair next to her bed and wait.
It doesn’t take long for her to start stirring, gasping, and groaning from the pain as she becomes fully conscious.
“Fuck,” she croaks, bracing her elbows on the mattress.
“Don’t try to move. You were just in surgery,” I say calmly.
Her head turns slowly toward me, and she stares at me for a moment, confusion furrowing her brows as the cloud of anesthesia slowly clears from her mind.
Her eyes open wide, and the beeping accelerates.
“Carlos,” she rasps. “Where—”
“Try to stay calm, Alice. We don’t want you to have a heart attack. Who will take care of Charlotte?”
Her whole body stills, the beeping spiking even more. I’m not worried about a nurse showing up to check on her; we took care of that.
Her chest rises and falls quickly before she starts regulating her breathing.
There’s nowhere for her to go.
She knows she’s trapped.
“Charlotte,” she rasps.
I lean forward, resting my elbows on my legs. “I was surprised to learn that Santiago had a daughter. He hid her well. Very well.”
The child crying out for Santiago—for her father—had surprised Grayson, who locked her in a closet so she wouldn’t have to see the carnage and her father’s dead body.
She swallows hard but doesn’t say anything. We stare at each other in silence for a long moment.
“We went to great lengths to get you back. I wonder what the plan was when you faked your kidnapping, but it doesn’t matter anymore.”
Another long silence.
“She’s a beautiful child,” I say slowly, watching Alice’s eyes widen even more. “She has your eyes, your face, even your natural hair color. Brown, right?”
The beeping spikes again.
“Please, Carlos,” she says, wincing, probably from the morphine wearing off even more.
I pull the phone from inside my jacket and quickly find the link Grayson sent me. The video starts to play, and the sound of a young girl’s laughter immediately fills the room.
A tear slides down the side of Alice’s face. She shakes her head slowly.
I turn the screen toward her, and she watches her child playing in the park with the other children. More tears spill out of her eyes.
If I have this video, it means my people are too close already.
She clenches her jaw. “I know you, Carlos. You would never hurt a child. Ever.”
I nod as I stuff the phone back inside my jacket.
“You’re right. I don’t have it in me.” I lean back against the armchair, letting the silence unnerve her even more. “I didn’t find out until I was eighteen that the man who had adopted me when I was thirteen had actually killed my father.”
For five years, I looked up to Roberto, the silver fox, who was then a feared Mafia boss in California.
“You know the story. I killed him and took over his operation. He was a hard man and not at all a father figure.”
Alice’s brows furrow, no doubt wondering why I’m telling her my life’s story.
“I will raise Charlotte as my own and erase Santiago Ferreira and... you. I’ll destroy his legacy and every picture of him that exists online. Charlotte will have only me.”
Her eyes widen as I lean forward again.
“I will be her father.”
“No!” Alice starts to rise, her features morphing in panic. “You can’t. No—”
I stand up and press my hands gently on her shoulders until her back is against the mattress again.
“Please, Carlos. Fine, I will do anything you want. Please don’t—”
“You hurt Estelle and took the people she loves most in the world.”
“I’ll give them back,” she sobs.
I stare into her eyes. “How could you put a mother and child through that when you have a child of your own?”
“Okay, okay,” she cries.
I grab the bed’s railing with one hand. “Tell me everything,” I say slowly, my eyes boring into hers.
“You have to promise that you won’t take Charlotte.”
“I promise.”
She swallows, biting her lower lip, “And that you will let me go.”
I make sure my expression remains calm.
Cold.
“No.”
“Carlos—”
“Your sister will take her in after you’re gone, and I will make sure she’s taken care of. She will never know me,” I say.
Fear deepens the soft lines on her face, her eyes filling with tears, and she becomes even paler. “You’re going to kill me?”
I nod slowly, gripping the railing tighter. We don’t have time for this. “I promise you won’t suffer.”
Alice looks away, inhaling deeply, considering her options, but she knows she has no choice.
“I’m supposed to call Javier and Tray to tell them when I will land in LA. Then I will meet with them at one of Santiago’s houses, but they need to see Estelle’s face on the security camera before they open the gate.”
I pull her phone from my trouser pocket and hand it to her. “Call them.”
Alice grabs the phone with trembling hands.
“If you try to warn them, things will end painfully for you,” I say, standing upright. “Tell them your flight was delayed and you will be in LA in four hours. You will text them when you’re almost at the residence.”
She swipes through the phone silently, then places it against her ear.
“Speaker,” I order.
The loud ringing fills the room before the line connects.
“You sure took your time. Everything go according to plan?”
My jaw clenches at the sound of Javier’s voice.
“Yeah. Everything’s good. I have the bitch,” she says. “My charter plane was delayed. I’ll land in four hours and come straight to you, but don’t call—text me.”
“Yeah, sure. Anyone on your tail?” he asks.
She looks up at me briefly. “No. Clean snatch. Carlos is looking, I’m sure, but it’s too late.”
Javier chuckles. “A fucking plus. Later, then.”
The call ends, and Alice hands the phone back to me.
“What’s the address?” I ask.
“553 Silver Spur Road, Rolling Hills. Carlos?” She breathes in deeply. “Quick and painless?”
I walk out without answering. Two more guards are standing outside the door.
Grayson turns to look at me. “All good?” he asks.
“Tell the doctor to come in and administer the injection.” I start walking away as Grayson brings his phone to his ear, keeping step with me.
“But let the morphine completely wear off first. Let her suffer for a while.”
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