Page 83 of Angelic Vengeance

She held my eyes and I wondered what she saw in them.

I usually wore a harsher stare but I couldn’t have altered the look I gave Maria even if I’d tried. All I knew was, a flame burned steady in my gaze whenever it was on her.

Her lips parted and I wondered what she tasted like. Her chest slowly expanded as she took a deep breath.Was she breathless too?

I leaned in, and her eyes lowered to my lips as a smirk twisted them. “Begging.”

Her eyes snapped back to mine, remembering my earlier threat. “Fuck you,” She cussed, trying to get out of my hold while rolling her eyes.If she only knew all the ways I could make her eyes roll like that.

One of my hands went higher, to the back of her neck, as I pulled her back into me; her arms, the only barrier between us. “Would you?”

That’s when she smiled, though her voice came out slightly breathless. “I’d rather gouge my own eyes out, chew them down, and then shoot myself in the head.”

Liar.

A smirk tugged the corner of my lips up as my hold on her loosened.

My face hardened along with something else when she stepped back and dropped her hands from my abdomen, accidentally grazing my bulge. She must have realized too because her cheeks warmed with a soft pink, though neither led on that we did.

Clearing my throat, I took a step towards the road and raised my hand to stop a taxi. When it did, I opened the backseat door and Maria stepped in without another word or glance my way. I shut the door before knocking on the passenger window. When the man rolled the window down, I handed him a couple hundred bills from my wallet. The fare wouldn’t be more than $30.

“Get her home safe,” I added after giving him the address.If only she had any idea how much I knew.

We shared an understanding look before he nodded and took the money. “Yes, sir.” He’d probably never seen or heard of me before, but there would be an obvious price to pay if he didn’t do as told.

I stepped back on the sidewalk and watched the cab drive off. It was getting closer to midnight now, so traffic had died down.

My clothes felt heavier.

My skin was hot.

I needed to get laid.

CHAPTER 28

Present

I TOOK IN A DEEP breath, sitting up straight as ice-cold water dripped down my naked torso. I blinked through the water coming down from my hair, seeing the bed now soaked.

“What the fuck?!” I yelled, throwing the black, silk sheets off me and getting out of bed in nothing but my boxers.

My brother, already dressed in a suit, pointed a finger at me from the other side. “That’s what you get for the shit you pulled last night.”

I stared at him like he was insane. He was thirty-four – ten years older than me – and still acting like a man-child.

“You’re fucking serious?”

“Shouldn’t be giving me last-minute jobs that big.” He shrugged, heading out of my bedroom with a large pot in his hand that looked comically small in his hand considering he was 6’5, just like me. “I’m supposed to be on vacation, remember?”

Hehadbeen on vacation. For the pastfouryears.

Matteo became the head of the Mexican Cartel at sixteen after our father was killed in the drug war against the Colombians. I’d only just started the first grade at the time, so my brother sent me to New York, away from South America.

He ran the Cartel for fourteen years, managing to stay alive by avoiding every stupid mistake made before him; he remained faceless, instilled respect and loyalty into his army, and filled his enemies with fear by killing anyone who even remotely resembled acucaracha. Rats and snitches were punished with worse than death.

While he controlled South America and Europe, traveling constantly to take care of business, I ran the US for him.

Or at least I did, until one day four years ago, he showed up at my penthouse in New York and announced he was retiring.