Caged: The Complete Trilogy Page 17

  She’s blinking back tears now, thick lashes fanning fast. After today, she knows exactly what kind of man she’s dealing with.

  “Put the damn ring on, Selina.”

  I release her, and she obeys, her whole body trembling. I watch her slide the big diamond onto her thin finger, watch the simple motion tear her apart.

  Miel is right. It’s wrong, what we’re doing, but it’s what we have to do to survive. Desperate measures.

  I watch Selina’s shoulders shake as she sobs silently, her body looking small under the weight she carries daily. In another life, in another world, I might reach out and hold her. I’d smooth her hair back and whisper the truth to her: that I could never hurt her, that everything I do is to protect her from further pain.

  I promised myself that much on the night I killed her brother.

  Detective Andrews sighs, accepting a third cup of coffee from the nervous receptionist. Maybe it’s the fact that she’s rightfully shaken by the death of the company’s CEO just down the hall, but Andrews would have expected waiting room coffee from the headquarters of Café Palacios to be of a slightly higher caliber. Nevertheless, he chugs it down, needing all the help he can get as he faces down another case with no leads.

  When asked if they’d noticed anything else unusual today, a couple employees had sworn they’d seen Selina Palacios herself walking down the halls with the late Barry Smythe, but the receptionist claimed not to have seen the reclusive heiress enter the building. She had seemed a little cagey as she gave her account, yes, but Andrews didn’t think she was lying. He liked to claim that he could always tell when a woman was lying to him, but that wasn’t entirely true. Historically, he’d just found that his good looks and a bit of charm could make a woman give him anything he wanted, even the truth. And boy, had he laid the charm on thick with Delilah. Maybe, once the case is over and she is a bit less traumatized, he’d drop by again, take her out for some real coffee.

  Andrews glances up as the medical examiner’s team wheels the body bag out. It looks a touch smaller than they usually do, not because the victim was particularly short, but because techs are still scraping what remains of his head off the office walls. A lifetime ago, the thought would have made his stomach turn, but now, it’s just another day on the job.

  “Huh,” Officer Daley says beside him, and Andrews turns to look at the woman. Under his tutelage she’s on a detective track, and she’ll probably make a damn good one someday, but he plans to advise the Lieutenant against keeping her in Homicide, when the time comes. She’s too soft. She can take a gory crime scene like a champ, but that’s not really the problem. People like her, people with a touch of light still left in them, shouldn’t be led down the path that turns them into men like him.

  “What?” Andrews asks absently, following Daley’s gaze to the portrait of Selina Palacios hanging on the lobby wall.

  “I think I saw that woman today,” Daley says, nodding at the smiling image. “At the station.”

  Huh, indeed. Andrews steps closer, examining the photo. The young woman, barely more than a girl, wears a demurely tight-lipped smile. Her brown curls are perfectly coiffed, decolletage adorned with a string of saltwater pearls, but there’s a darkness in those amber eyes that makes Andrews frown. It’s probably grief, he thinks, remembering the quick history of the business that was whispered into his ear as they arrived on scene.

  Still, in his line of work, cliché as it may be, there are no such thing as coincidences. This woman was at the police station earlier today, and then the CEO of her family’s company wound up dead. Andrews turns back to Daley and nods at her notepad, which she flips open, ready to jot down her next orders.

  “Find out everything there is to know about Selina Palacios.”

  Glass Cage

  Caged: Book Two

  About five years ago

  It begins like every other night of the past ten years: a gun in my hand, a mask on my face, and a name on my lips. This is how it’s been since I did my time in prison, proving enough loyalty to my employer that he bumped me up from low-level dealer to the guy who “takes care” of problems. Now I’m a killer, not dealing in the slow death of drugs, but in the fast, messy death of bullets. What would my mother think if she saw me now? She probably wouldn’t be surprised. She knew no son of my deadbeat father could ever become a good man, even before the fucker finally went too far and beat her to death. This is the life I was destined for, the prison of circumstance that I’ll only escape through death.

  The car pulls to a stop down the block from the club in Buckhead, a shiny place that probably charges a cover two or three times the entire contents of my wallet. That’s the price of bottomless champagne and high class ass. Waste of money. In the dark, all booze gets you drunk the same, and all girls get you off the same, no matter how much you pay.

  We wait, two, maybe three hours. That’s almost the worst part of the job. Not pulling the trigger and watching brain matter paint the asphalt, not listening to mothers sob and grown men beg for their lives. No, it’s the waiting, the silence, and the darkness that threaten to swallow me whole. Sometimes, I wonder how much more of this I can take. But the survival instinct in me burns fierce, and the reality is I could take a dozen lifetimes of this hell, if that’s what keeps me alive. I gave up drawing lines for myself a long time ago. There aren’t many left I won’t cross.

  There. Movement, in the back alley behind the club. A young man, dark hair and a no-nonsense suit that looks wholly out of place under the flashing neon lights, and a girl, a couple inches shorter than him in her stilettos and stumbling like she drank the whole bar. That must be them, the Palacios siblings. These two are the billionaire heirs to the most profitable coffee company in the country, which also doubles as a front for importing my boss’s product—or it did, until one of them tried to cut us off. They’re unlike anyone I’ve found myself sent after before, not the usual low-level dealer caught skimming from the supply, or hooker-slash-mule running her mouth about escape. They’ll be easier to kill, though. Rich assholes never see it coming.

  “Pull up,” I tell the driver, tugging the ski mask down over my features. They’ll both die eventually, but only one is on my list for tonight. I can’t afford to let the survivor see my face. Rich assholes also don’t know not to snitch.

  We pull up with a screech, blocking the alley off, leaving no room for escape. I jump out of the car at full speed, gun up, safety off. They see me instantly. The guy pulls the girl back behind him fast, like a good big brother, but she doesn’t scream, doesn’t even react. She’s off her ass on something, eyes as big as saucers. And in a moment, one fucking moment, I get sucked right in. She’s stunning, even like this, drunk and high and terrified. Her dark hair falls in cascading waves down her back, and the lashes framing her warm brown eyes are a mile long. That skin-tight silver dress puts every curve on display, pushing her cleavage up to perfectly frame the giant diamond and emerald necklace she flaunts, but a girl like this would be gorgeous even dressed in a potato sack. And those eyes, those bottomless eyes. I fall into them like I’m tripping over a cliff. I’ll spend the rest of my life waiting for the rush of the fall to end, leaving me shattered in a thousand pieces. This girl will be the death of me, and it’ll be a beautiful, delectable death.

  I can’t kill her.

  I have to kill her.

  “Do you want money?” the man is asking, a foolish attempt to put off the inevitable. He knows this isn’t about money. When you’ve pissed off a cocaine kingpin as badly as he has, you know exactly what’s coming to you, sooner or later. “I’ll give you my wallet—”

  “Shut up and hand it over,” I say, lifting my gun a bit higher, aiming at his head. Asking for the money is a waste of my time and his, but it’s a perfect excuse to stall. My eyes dart back to the girl. Selina Palacios. My target. She should be dead by now. I’m under orders to kill her and let her brother know that he’s next if he doesn’t open channels back up for my boss. M
aybe he would, maybe he wouldn’t. It doesn’t matter. He’d be dead in a week or two anyway. You don’t get to defy El Sombrerón and live.

  The guy is handing over his wallet, and I stuff it into my pocket. It’s a useless piece of evidence I’ll have to dispose of later, but I need more time. I wave my gun back towards Selina. “Hers too.”

  She’s still frozen, stunned. She doesn’t have her brother’s survival instinct, at least not when she’s this messed up. He grabs the small purse off her arm and hands it over. I still don’t know what I’m going to do. I can’t kill this girl. Why can’t I kill this girl?

  “The necklace, too.”

  It’s her eyes. They could be any size, color, or shape, that doesn’t matter. It’s what I see in them. Under the haze of the booze and drugs, under the fear. It’s innocence. She doesn’t deserve to die for her parents’ mistakes, for her brother’s foolish attempts to undo them. But why should that matter to me? I’ve had to kill innocents before. Collateral damage runs rampant in my line of business. No, it’s not that. It’s the fact that just under that thin mask of innocence, I perceive a darkness, something embedded so deep into her core that even though she hasn’t embraced it yet, it’s so clear to me, so visible. It calls to me, dances with the darkness that lives on my surface. She could be like me, if I let her. If I made her. In another world, one where I’m not obligated to kill her, she could belong to me.

  “Selina, please, just give him the fucking necklace,” her brother is begging, and still, she doesn’t move, doesn’t flinch. Her eyes are still glued on me, like she can’t force herself to look away, and I, I can’t either. It’s as if there’s a physical pull between us, something that we could have gone our whole lives without knowing about, but now that our paths have crossed the bind is too strong to break. I’m caught in her magnetic field, and she’s pushing against the barriers of mine.

  “Please don’t.”

  She speaks for the first time, a tiny, croaking plea. She feels it too. She’s begging me to let her go, to sever the dark connection that will destroy us both, but I can’t. I know what I have to do now. Tonight, and every day after, for as long as I live, I must do everything in my power to protect Selina Palacios.

  I have to save her life, and in doing so, destroy it completely.

  That’s why I rip the diamond off her slender neck, turn the barrel of my gun back toward her brother, and pull the trigger.

  She does scream this time, a sharp and piercing wail. She falls as he does, collapsing into one body on the wet asphalt. I can’t stay to watch him bleed out, can’t stay to watch her lose what’s left of her innocence. The next time I see her, she’ll be a little more broken, darker. That’s alright. She’ll need that darkness to survive me.

  I force myself to keep my eyes to the front as we drive away, tires squealing nearly loud enough to drown out her hysterical sobs. If I turn to look at her even one more time, I’ll give myself away. If anyone ever finds out that I saved her life intentionally, I’ll never see her again.

  I’ll tell my employer that her brother jumped in front of the bullet at the last moment. Brothers do shit like that. It’s dark, the driver couldn’t have seen enough to say otherwise. And with the meddlesome Palacios heir out of the way, our avenues into the country will open up again. Everyone wins. I’ll still get a beating or two for fucking up the job, but I’ll take them gladly. And then eventually, I don’t know how and I don’t know when, I’ll see Selina again. I’ll upturn my entire life to make her mine.

  I will take her, and break her, and make her into someone that can exist in my fucked up world. Because now that I’ve found her, I know I can’t live without her.

  Sometimes I feel that all that’s left of me are my losses. That I’m made entirely of the things that have been taken from me.

  Mom.

  Dad.

  Max.

  Myself.

  I stand utterly frozen as the judge walks us through the paperwork, afraid that any false move on my part will trigger further repercussions from my captor, the man standing beside me, the man who is about to become my husband.

  “Usually I don’t do these so last minute, but when the mayor calls in a favor, well,” Judge Jones completes the statement with a little shrug, eyeing us over. The mayor? I risk a sideways glance at Vega. Is this how he finagled this? How does he know Mayor Conrad? How could he have forced the mayor’s hand like this?

  “It’s much appreciated,” Vega says, twining an arm around my waist to pull me closer. It’s a possessive motion, control disguised as affection, but the judge smiles at it blindly. Vega sinks his fingers deep into my side, hard enough to hurt, and I force a smile, too. We’re the portrait of a happy couple, so in love that we couldn’t wait a moment longer to bind our lives together for eternity.

  The judge hands over the marriage contract, and Vega signs his name first, then passes the pen to me. I stare down at the ballpoint pen in my hand for a moment too long. Is this it? This ink-filled bit of plastic is what irrevocably changes my life?

  “Selina?” Vega asks softly, laying a hand on my elbow. I nod almost imperceptibly. I’m not backing out. I know what I have to do and why I have to do it. This is to save myself, my family’s legacy, and Kate, my nanny-turned-housekeeper, still somewhere in Vega’s clutches. I just wish I didn’t have to sell my soul to save my life.

  I scrawl my signature on the line, with its swooping S and the tall P. What if he wants me to change my name, too? I don’t know if I can bear to lose my surname, the eight letters that have bound me to my dead parents long after anything else will. I shake the thought out of my mind for now, accepting the judge’s congratulatory handshake with a tight smile. And just like that, I’m married to the man who kidnapped me, a cold-blooded killer in sheep’s clothing.

  When we exit the courthouse, Vega doesn’t take us back to the car. Instead, he guides us to a coffee shop down the street. He orders two black coffees, then leads me to a small table near the back. I wrap my hands around the oversized mug, feeling a little bit like a kid in the principal’s office, about to get lectured. Aside from the conversation last night that ended in a proposal, we still haven’t talked about what happened yesterday. I know he’s furious at me for a thousand reasons, and as much as I dread his violence, this controlled fury scares me even more. I wish he would just get it over with.

  “This, you and me, doesn’t have to be the way it’s been,” Vega begins, elbows resting easily on the edge of the table, as if we’re normal people having a normal conversation. As if we didn’t just get married less than ten minutes ago. As if my whole life doesn’t rest in his palms, ready to be crushed the moment I push his patience too far. “The threats, the blackmail, the violence. Everything is different now, Selina. You’re different, we’re different. You know why I’m here, why I have to do this. You know there’s nothing you can do to get rid of me, so I’m giving you a chance to fight with me instead of against me. Things can change, if you want them to.”

  “Since when do you care what I want?” I spit, leaning back in my chair, my body forcing as much distance between myself and my now-husband as it can. “Just because you forced—literally, forced—me to marry you, doesn’t mean anything has changed.”

  “Not yet, but it can,” he goes on, ignoring my jab. “Selina, listen to me. This can be a partnership now, if you learn to behave.”

  “Oh, it can be a partnership, as long as I keep doing everything you tell me to?” I scoff, my hand bringing a sip of coffee up to my lips on autopilot. It’s too hot, and a little burnt. “Let’s stick to the threats and save the pretense.”

  “Princesa, put the fucking attitude away and listen,” Vega says in a low growl, reaching across the tiny table and grabbing my hand. On any other newlywed couple, it might be a sweet, romantic motion. Here, he pins my hand down and squeezes it too hard, forcing me to look at him. “We want the same things now.”

  “Oh, you want me to be free of you, too?” I spit, a
nd something dark flashes in his eyes, his grip on my hand growing impossibly tighter. He’s regretting his decision to have this conversation in a public place, I can see that much written all over his face. My body flashes hot at the thought of what he’s stopping himself from doing to me, what punishments a man like him would inflict in private. It’s the terror, I tell myself. It has to be. Because it would be insane to be flooded with desire at such an idea.

  “Alright, maybe we don’t want exactly the same things,” he admits, releasing my hand and leaning back in his seat. It’s a casual move, but new fear trickles through me. My captor is at his most dangerous when he is calm and collected. “But I can get us both to where we’re trying to go. And my way is the only way we both get away from El Sombrerón alive.”

  Fuck. Caught up in my own trauma and the hideous knot that my family history has turned out to be, I’d almost forgotten about the biggest threat out there: the drug kingpin who already killed my brother and now wants my captor-slash-husband dead, and who won’t hesitate to kill me in the process. Compared to that monster, Vega is a saint. I shift in my seat. How does the saying go? The enemy of my enemy is my, well, certainly not my friend, but he might be my only hope of survival.