Page 7 of Deceptive Vows

“Oh good, you’re here,” she says to him. “I need shelves done in the back.”

“Sure,” he replies, and we both watch her as she strides away like she’s walking the runway.

He walks in, and as soon as the door clicks shut, I rush over to him, hoping he has some news for me.

He promised to help me escape, pursuing my father’s dying wish. José has been my only hope for the last two years of my sentence here.

Nothing could explain the pain I feel for being the cause of my father’s death.

After Raul raped and killed my mother right in front of us, Papa wanted to get me out of this hell. He was trying to do just that when our plan was discovered. José has been Raul’s senior lieutenant for over twenty years, but there was nothing he could do to save my father as Raul ordered Felipe to kill him with my father’s own gun.

When José takes both my hands into his and a solemn expression washes over his face, I know any news he has for me is not going to be the kind I want to hear.

With the shake of his graying head, he confirms I’m right.

“Lo siento, mi amor,” he says, telling me he’s sorry in Spanish. It’s times like these when I appreciate how he always speaks to me in a mixture of Spanish and English. Just like my father did. It’s as if he wants to keep his memory alive for me. “I’m still working on a plan. I promise you I am. It’s just hard.”

“I know,” I reply. I do know. What we’re discussing is no mere thing. It could mean death if anyone even heard us.

Raul would killhimbecause he’d lose too much if I died.

Sometimes, I wonder if death might be my only way out of this hell.

I pull in a deep breath and try to clear my head. I can’t think like that. My parents would never want me to think like that, so I can’t just give up. Not when they went through so much to keep me alive.

José, too.

He touches the edge of my cheek and gives me a warm smile.

“Be strong, mi amor.” He lowers his voice. “I will die before I allow Raul to sell you.”

“I don’t want you to die.”

“Do not worry about me, child.” His pale brown eyes stare back at me with a fatherly warmth that worries me because I know he means what he said. He’ll give his life for me. I don’t want anyone else I love to die. “Go now. The seamstress is already here.”

I nod, and he gives my shoulder a reassuring squeeze.

When I leave the room, I steel my spine and summon strength. The seamstress isn’t going to like seeing me again.

When I get down to the hall where we do the fittings, her angry face is the first I see when I step through the grand oak wood doors. But I’m more concerned about the shit-eating grin spread across Felipe Naveed’s face to worry about how angry the seamstress is or what she might say to me.

He’s standing next to her dressed in his suit. It almost makes him look like a human being.Almost.

Felipe is Raul’s second-in-command and just as evil.

I don’t think I could be fooled into thinking this man was anything other than the bastard he is. Every time I see him, I remember how he placed that gun to my father’s head and pulled the trigger.

He killed my father on Raul’s orders, but he hated my father enough that he didn’t need any orders to kill him.

“Wonderful. Leave us,” he says to the seamstress with a taunting vibe laced through his voice.

I’m a joke to him, too, but he doesn’t want to kill me. He wants me in other ways. He hasn’t fucked me because he wants me sold in the auction as well, but that hasn’t stopped him from playing with me.

The seamstress opens her mouth to protest, but she wouldn’t dare say anything besides what she says now.

“Si, Señor Naveed.”

As soon as she walks out the door, casting me a look of disapproval as she passes by, that smile on Felipe’s face widens.