Blood Money (Dark Cartel Romance) (Dinero de Sangre Book 1) Read online

  The men who fuck you years later might trace them with their fingers, sensing the slight flaws in your seemingly perfect skin. Were you hurt? One of them asked me once.

  He didn’t really care as to the answer.

  My cunt worked, at least.

  “Did you hear me?”

  I shiver as thick, calloused fingers slip beneath my chin, gripping it tight until I face the man before me, my eyes streaming.

  “I asked if you like it hot or cold.”

  I blink, confused. “W-What?”

  “The water.” He snatches my collar, sliding his finger beneath the thin leather. With a beckoning motion, he yanks me forward so suddenly I nearly trip into him.

  At the last moment, he pivots, shoving me aside.

  Whoosh! Water hits my skin, so hot, every ounce of air leaves my chest. A hard surface slams against my knee as I scramble to brace my hands against something firm, but curved, beneath me. The bottom of the tub? My head, however, is still above water, my mouth open. I’m trying to scream, but I can’t even make a sound.

  “Too hot?” Domino questions as he shuts the faucet off. “Don’t,” he warns when I grip the rim, ready to bolt from the basin. “I suggest you endure it, Ada-Maria. Think of it as practice for what else I have in store for you.”

  “You’re sick.” My reply is a wail, barely audible beneath the pain.

  Everything hurts. My skin is raw, blistering wherever it contacts the water. I’m burning alive. More tears fall, and I’m helpless to stop them.

  “You’re a monster—”

  “I’d advise you to save the insults,” Domino suggests. He sits on the rim of the tub and plunges his hand beneath the water. Leisurely he feels down to the bottom, dipping between my legs.

  I jump, bracing myself to feel his touch, but he evades my skin completely, retrieving something with a sigh. The chain. Deliberately, he loops it around and around his wrist, seemingly unbothered by the scalding heat.

  “I have a lot more planned for you, Ada-Maria,” he says once the majority of the chain is secured, leaving me just enough to breathe freely. “This is merely an act of mercy. Later, you’ll thank me for seeing that you are fed and bathed. I will bet my life on that. This will be the last luxury your beautiful skin will feel for a long while. Now…” He bends, fiddling with something that must be on the floor by his feet. When he sits upright, he’s holding a bottle of different colored liquid in either hand.

  “Honey or Lavender?”

  Body wash, I presume. Each one looks to be a golden liquid at the base, with one containing purple flowers, and the other simmering bits of pearlescent beads.

  Eyeing them, I shiver so violently water sloshes over the rim. He couldn’t know. Could he?

  But those choices are so specific. So deliberately plotted. God, these memories hurt more than they should. It’s been so damn long. Why can I still hear her so clearly, her laughter infectious?

  Purple is the color of royalty, Adie. So is gold. They’ll be our colors, the three queens...

  “Pia,” I croak, swiping at my cheek to banish whatever tears I can. “You knew Pia.”

  He looks away and makes a show of lifting each bottle for closer observation.

  But I don’t miss the satisfied tilt to his mouth. This test I passed with flying colors.

  “Pia Inglecias,” he murmurs. “I’ve heard the story. Who hasn’t? What a damn shame for that poor girl and her family.”

  Her family.

  “She only had her mother,” I say. But the second the words leave my mouth, I realize I’m wrong. “And a brother, but he—” I break off, feeling my throat go dry at the possibility. Could he somehow be a living Inglecias? It could explain his grudge. Even as I think it, I recall a detail that renders that explanation impossible. “He was sick. With a terminal heart condition. It couldn’t be cured.”

  Whenever Pia spoke of him, it was briefly, only to mention how precarious his health was. My brother was the fastest runner in the neighborhood before he got sick. Could have gone to play ball in the big leagues, I bet. That’s why I’m here, she added, referring to our boarding school. It was an open secret that she was there on a scholarship as part of the school’s community outreach toward promising students from poor families. Mama is too busy with Nav to worry about me, too. I’m not jealous, though. He needs the help.

  As far as I knew, his life expectancy was months by the time we both turned fifteen. Even if he did manage to live, I doubt a boy who survived a congenital heart defect, so severe he could no longer run, would grow into a man sculpted from solid muscle.

  He’s been listening to me speak all this time, but I can’t gauge a single hint of emotion.

  “A brother,” he says. “Funny. From what I remember, Pia Inglecias was an only child.”

  I shake my head. “No, I remember—”

  “Lift your arms.” When I don’t comply fast enough, he snaps his fingers. “Now, Ada-Maria. As much as another man would enjoy the sight of your naked body, I find that the allure has worn off—” he inspects me with a ruthless sweep of his gaze, his eyes narrowing. “It’s not quite as impressive as I imagined.”

  Because he did imagine me once. Five years ago, before he knew who I was, when I sauntered up to him wearing a pink ensemble with a cream top. He wanted me then.

  But not now. No man can fake this level of disinterest. Like the vain creature I am, I cling to the same excuse I’ve used all these years to explain it. He’s gay. There is nothing wrong with that.

  It just means, in the grand scheme of his nefarious plans, I have nothing to fear when it comes to the realm of sexual violence. …Right?

  Slowly, I lift my arms without taking my eyes off his face.

  He bends, grabbing something else from the materials at his feet—a cream-colored cloth. He makes a show of wetting it with the bathwater, barely grazing my knee with the fabric. Then he comes at me directly.

  I stiffen, hating the way my body reacts to him. Part of it is instinctive. The rest is pure vanity. It’s repulsive how his appearance can still have an effect on me.

  He’s handsome beneath the evil, and my brain struggles to separate the two. Why would it? I’ve spent my entire life in the shadow of a man who excelled at blending beauty with violence.

  And therein lies the key to resisting him and dampening any attraction I may feel. Those in my father’s orbit always joked that Domino was his shadow, damn near inseparable from his master. They were wrong, of course.

  Domino is no better than my father, bred from the same stock all powerful, egotistical men are born from.

  “What are you thinking behind those eyes, Ada-Maria?” His tone is so deceptively casual that a part of me is lulled by it. I respond to him without thinking.

  “That you seem to hate my father, but you’re just like him—”

  I break off the second I see his arm move. My body braces for another slap, but when his finger does make contact with my face, it’s gently, stroking along the corner of my mouth.

  “You will never compare me to him again, do you understand?” His eyes hunt mine ruthlessly, reminding me of a stern father scolding a naughty child. “Do you?”

  I’m terrified enough to nod—but as I do, my lips part. Curiosity is as addicting as any other vice when it comes to him.

  “Why?” My eyes water, and blinking frees more tears despite how hard I try to keep them at bay. It’s horrifying to think of all the ways he’s been invited into the very heart of my family, becoming a regular fixture at my mother’s perfunctory Sunday dinners. “You worked for him for five years,” I add. “Why now?”

  I think of all the times I snuck glances at him, imagining how that body would feel against mine. Was I so naïve as to not sense his true feelings? Was I just blind to the hate lurking beneath that stern façade?

  Or just stupid enough to be easily fooled.

  “Why?” He taps his thumb against my bottom lip, applying a bit more pressure with each pass. I
hiss as he nears the throbbing mark from his slap. “You’re right. For five years, I worked for the bastard. I hid his messes. Cleaned up his dirty work—”

  “You killed for him.” It’s an accusation I’ve never made out loud, but one I know full well is the damn truth.

  He doesn’t try to deny it. “I did. I arranged hits on the political enemies he wanted out of the way. I sent covert threats to their families. I handled his contacts with the men who ran his drug mules in and out of the city. I covered up every illicit affair while your Mama’s back was turned—”

  I wrench away from him, eyeing the floor. Harshly, he snatches my chin, forcing me to face him.

  “He had a type,” he tells me, his voice gruffer. Guttural. “Some could say it was creepily specific. He liked them young with supple tanned skin, and big round eyes—bonus points if they were light blue, or even gray. He liked big tits, a tiny waist, and long, straight hair, preferably blond—”

  “You’re disgusting!”

  He chuckles and dips the hand holding the cloth into the water just beyond my quivering belly.

  “I’m not the man who liked fucking women who resemble his daughter, Ada-Maria.”

  Is he lying? Bile spills up my throat and I can’t process the thought further. I squeeze my eyes shut instead, struggling to keep my breathing steady. I can’t give in to the panic now. It’s what he wants. He’s trying to rattle me.

  It’s working.

  “Don’t tell me you didn’t sense that his devotion to his only daughter verged on the unhealthy,” Domino taunts.

  When I open my eyes, he’s smirking. He’s gotten inside my head, and he knows it. Even if my father were screwing other women on the side, that has nothing to do with me. Nothing.

  “I guess that means he molded you into the perfect woman according to him. Beauty. Obedient. No brains to speak of. The only downside was that he couldn’t touch you, so he had to make do somehow.” Withdrawing his hand from my chin, he uses both to wring the water from the cloth. Then he brings it to my chest as if daring me to react.

  I do, flinching as the fabric makes contact. It’s painful to subject myself to his touch. He swipes across the top of my breasts and dips the cloth into the water again.

  “I’ll spare you what the rumors have claimed about you and your dearest Don Roy. I hope, in that case, it was all merely talk—”

  “You don’t know anything!” My voice is a whisper, strained by how badly I’m shaking. Every secret I’ve kept at bay cloys on the tip of my tongue like a bad taste.

  My father never abused me. Sexually.

  But sex was always a game to me. A trivial act, neither overly fun or too boring to attempt every now and again. I never felt the rapture other women bragged about. I was damn good at faking it like I did, though. Sex never terrified me the way it did good, seemingly wholesome girls like Pia who openly fantasized about the man they would bestow their virginity upon.

  I want a love like in the movies, she told me once. Real tragic shit. I want to orgasm rainbows and live happily ever after…

  Deep down, I think I’ve always believed that there are other forms of violation far more degrading than sex. A body can heal.

  The mind can’t. I was never one to play the “my trauma was worse” card like some of the spoiled bitches from my boarding school, who equated credit card limits with child abuse, liked to. Still, I tend to believe that I’m smart enough to recognize that there are some lines a normal parent shouldn’t cross. “Favors,” they should never ask of their children.

  Secrets they should never demand be kept.

  “Your father never touched you,” Domino declares, but when I look up…

  He’s scanning my face intently, and I get that niggling feeling again. He’s telling me what he believes he knows. What he wants to hear. Anything otherwise goes against the narrative he’s built.

  “How did you kill him?” I don’t think I really want to know the answer. Somehow, it feels important just to say it. To watch his expression shift as he mulls over his reply.

  I think I’m hoping to catch him up. To prove that it’s a lie. Papa is alive and well, and the nightmare that has ruled my life wouldn’t end so easily.

  Domino cocks his head. “It was slow,” he tells me, his voice surprisingly expressive. He doesn’t sound like someone recounting a traumatic event. He sounds like a man re-living a sweet, beautiful moment he wants to savor reminiscing. “Very slow, Ada-Maria. Over hours. He suffered, if that’s what you really wanted to know. He suffered greatly.”

  I close my eyes again, inhaling raggedly. A wave of emotions crashes over me, but the worst part? I can’t decide which one to feel; they all resonate with the same intensity. Horror. Grief. Pain. Relief…

  “Turn around so I can finish,” Domino demands, cutting my mourning short.

  I comply in silence, too stunned to question.

  “Wait—”

  He grabs my arm, dragging me toward him, and I scream, reflexively trying to escape his grasp.

  “No.”

  Something in his voice freezes me solid. I go still as he yanks me to my knees with my back to him.

  The water drips from my body, playing an eerie melody as I brace myself for his assault. Will he hurt me now? I almost can’t stifle another scream as cool air tickles my ass, warning of an impending touch.

  Instead, he prods my lower back, and my confusion battles with the terror. Then I realize exactly what he’s inspecting.

  Oh, that.

  “You were whipped,” he says, his voice rough as he drags the pad of his finger over a long-healed scar. It’s one of many. “Multiple times… By who?”

  Chapter Seven

  You were whipped…

  The anger in his voice seems alarmingly out of place. My breath catches as I weigh the possibility that my scars somehow offended him. They’re so small, that I was assured surgery wouldn’t be needed to erase them. In fact, few have ever pointed them out, at least not to me.

  And not like this.

  “I… I thought you knew everything there was to know about me?” I rasp. Especially since he spent more time with my father than anyone. He would know exactly what a man like Roy Pavalos is capable of.

  “Apparently not,” he replies. Hot like a poker, his finger traces one of the linear scars, triggering a memory I try to ignore.

  Pain, sharp and stinging. The chilling hiss of leather snapping at the air. My own screams…

  “Were you? Whipped?”

  I flinch at the question, phrased so differently than the first time. Like he wants me to confirm it. This hint of violence clashes with the fictional version of Ada Pavalos he’s formed in his head. I’m so sure of what he thinks of me—a dumb slut who never had to work a day in her life. No way could the scars on her back be anything more than a harmless accident.

  “I fell into a cactus on a trip to the desert,” I blurt tonelessly, shrugging his fingers aside.

  It’s funny how little I’ve said that lie in comparison to how many days I spent poring over every detail to make it believable. How much information to give. How much to withhold. How to make my tone the right mix of bored and embarrassed to sell it.

  I’ve gotten so good that I’ve fooled myself.

  I even fool him.

  He withdraws, bored by the marks. No part of me holds his interest, I see when I sneak a glance at him from over my shoulder. Even naked, I might as well be a part of the wall.

  Shame bites deep despite every ounce of logic in my brain warning me that this is a good thing. I don’t want to appeal to him. Being seen as unattractive by a monster should be a blessing. It shouldn’t sting.

  “Get up.” He’s on his feet again, crossing over to the counter. From a drawer, he withdraws a silver brush similar to the one Ines used on me earlier. I shudder at the thought of how he might go about such a task.

  When I climb from the tub, I spot the towel he procured, resting on the floor, just beyond my reach. I t
ake a step toward it.

  “No.” Domino snaps his fingers. “Not yet. Come.”

  The floor is slick enough to make every step a struggle. I slide the second I try to move, flailing my arms to stay upright.

  I don’t know if he takes pity on me, or if it’s a willingness to adhere to his “schedule” that makes him approach me himself, brush in hand.

  “Look forward.”

  I cringe as he raises the brush, expecting the worst. As the first stroke runs through my hair, some of the tension in my muscles loosens. Some. He’s as briskly efficient as Ines, and when he’s smoothed every last strand, he grabs the towel himself.

  I reach for it, hoping he’ll let me dry myself. Ignoring my outstretched hand, he steps behind me, dragging the towel over my back. Then across my ass and down my thighs.

  I think the fact that I’m waiting for the cruelty is why the softness of his touch catches me off guard. He’s methodic, working just enough pressure into my skin as he goes to soothe the muscles underneath. As the cooler night air tickles my body in contrast to the heat of the water, his ministrations, paired with the quality of the towel’s material, have me relaxing before I can help it.

  Everyone knows how violent physical pain can be. How aching limbs can throb and sting. Few people ever recognize that the worst part can come afterward. When the very person responsible for inflicting those aches and pains is the same one who takes it upon themselves to soothe them. It does something to a person’s mind, to have the source of brutality provide comfort.

  My body is already conditioned to the dichotomy. That’s why I arch into his next pass that travels from my lower back down to my thigh, raising goosebumps. I don’t know exactly when it happens…

  When I start to twist along with his movements as he dries off my legs. I have no control over how my nerves prickle with the awareness of him. How my breathing hitches the lower he goes.