Page 42

Lauren

The world came back in pieces. First, the throbbing in my skull—a deep, nauseating pulse that made me want to sink back into unconsciousness. Then the cotton-dry feeling in my mouth, the heaviness in my limbs that spoke of chemical sedation.

My medical training kicked in even through the fog, cataloging symptoms: tachycardia, mild respiratory depression, the way my thoughts moved like molasses. Pupils probably dilated. Benzodiazepine, most likely. Maybe midazolam mixed with something else to ensure a longer duration.

I forced my eyes open, blinking against light that seemed too bright even though the room was dim.

The effort sent waves of nausea through me, and I had to breathe through my nose to keep from vomiting.

Expensive furniture swam into focus. A four-poster bed with silk sheets that felt wrong against my skin.

Mahogany dresser with brass fixtures. Persian rug in deep burgundies and golds.

This wasn’t a hospital or a warehouse or any of the places my drugged mind had expected to wake up in. This was…wealth. New-money wealth, the kind that felt the need to announce itself.

I tried to sit up and immediately regretted it. The room spun viciously, and I had to close my eyes against the vertigo. My hands fumbled at the sheets, finding that I was still dressed in the same clothes from this morning—was it this morning? How long had I been unconscious?

The memory slammed back: Logan beside me on the sidewalk. The crack of something—not gunfire, something else. Logan dropping, his body convulsing. Hands grabbing me. The hood. The needle.

“Logan.” His name came out as a croak.

I forced myself upright despite the spinning, gripping the carved bedpost until my knuckles went white. My legs shook when I tried to stand, muscles weak from whatever cocktail they’d used to knock me out.

The air hit me as I stumbled toward the window—thick with humidity that Chicago’s climate control had let me forget.

It carried scents that made my stomach clench: earth and vegetation and that particular green smell of jungle after rain.

My pulse spiked, sending my already elevated heart rate into dangerous territory.

No. It couldn’t be.

I reached the window, hands pressed against the glass to steady myself.

The view confirmed what my other senses already knew.

Dense jungle canopy stretched to the horizon, broken only by manicured grounds closer to the building.

In the distance, howler monkeys started their evening chorus—a sound I’d heard every day for six months.

A sound that belonged to only one place.

I was back in Corazón.

“No, no, no.” The words came out as whispers, fogging the glass. My legs gave out, and I slid down the wall, sitting hard on the polished floor. The impact jarred my spine, sent fresh waves of nausea through me, but I couldn’t move. Couldn’t think past the impossibility of it.

Chicago to Corazón. They’d drugged me and flown me back to the place where it all started. Back to Silva territory. Back to?—

I scrambled on hands and knees to a wastepaper basket, barely making it before the nausea won.

Nothing came up but bile—however long I’d been unconscious, it had been long enough for my stomach to empty.

The retching made my head pound worse, made my eyes water, but it also helped clear some of the drug fog.

Think. I had to think.

I pulled myself back to sitting, spine against the wall, and tried to list what I knew.

The sun was low, painting everything golden—late afternoon, maybe early evening.

My watch was gone, along with my phone, my bag, anything that might help me track time or location.

But the light quality, the monkey calls, the very feel of the air told me I’d been unconscious for at least most of the day.

Long enough to fly here, get me to…wherever here was.

The room gave me more clues. This wasn’t some jungle hideout or remote safe house. The furniture was too fine, the construction too solid. Estate. This was an estate. Which meant?—

The door opened with a soft click that might as well have been a gunshot for how it made me jump. I tried to stand, to face whatever came next on my feet, but my legs betrayed me. The best I could manage was pressing harder against the wall, using it to keep me semi-upright.

Diego Silva entered like he owned not just the room but the air in it.

He wore light linen, pristine white against his tanned skin, moving with the measured grace of a man who’d never needed to hurry in his life.

Two guards flanked him but stayed by the door—silent threats in tactical gear that looked military-grade.

My medical mind cataloged details even as fear flooded my system.

Diego looked older than the last time I’d seen him, lines deeper around his eyes, but he carried it like distinction rather than decay.

Sixty, maybe sixty-five. Good physical condition for his age.

Hands steady, no tremor. Eyes clear and focused with an intelligence that made my skin crawl.

“Dr. Valentino.” His voice carried that same cultured tone I remembered from the village, right before he’d put a bullet in Carlos. “I trust you’re feeling better. My medical team assured me the sedative would have minimal aftereffects.”

“Where’s Logan?” The words scraped past my dry throat, raw from the vomiting.

“Your guard dog?” Diego moved to a sideboard, each movement deliberate and unhurried. Crystal decanters caught the light as he poured water from a pitcher beaded with condensation. “Alive, I assume. Though probably quite frustrated.”

He crossed to me, offering the glass. The water looked like heaven, but taking it felt like accepting something larger. My body won the debate—dehydration would only make me weaker. I took it with shaking hands, hating myself for the necessity.

“You’re at my estate,” he continued as I drank, the water soothing my throat. “My home, here in Corazón. I thought it fitting you should return to where this all began.”

“This isn’t where it began.” I set the empty glass on the floor, needing my hands free even if they trembled. “It began when your son couldn’t handle rejection.”

Something flickered across his face—there and gone too fast to read. Disappointment? Disgust? He moved to the window where I’d stood moments before, hands clasped behind his back like a general surveying territory.

“Yes, Mateo. Such a disappointment in the end. All that potential wasted on obsession and poor impulse control.” He turned slightly, studying my reflection in the glass. “Do you know what his greatest failure was?”

I stayed silent, pressing harder against the wall as a wave of dizziness hit.

“He let emotion cloud judgment. Pursued you like a love-sick boy instead of seeing the larger picture.” Diego turned fully, those dark eyes finding mine with laser focus. “You were never meant to be a conquest, Doctor. You were an acquisition. One he bungled completely.”

“I’m not a thing to be acquired.”

“Everything is a thing to be acquired if you have sufficient resources.” He moved to a leather chair near the window, settling into it with casual elegance. The late-afternoon light caught the silver at his temples, the expensive watch at his wrist. “The question is always cost versus value.”

My stomach turned again, but this time not from the drugs. The casual way he reduced human life to economics was somehow worse than Mateo’s volatile obsession.

“If you’re looking for ransom?—”

“Money?” He actually laughed, a sound like ice cracking. “No, Doctor. What I want from you is far more valuable than money.”

I tried to push myself more upright, to meet his gaze with something approaching strength, but my muscles still felt like water. The lingering effects of the sedative made everything feel distant, dreamlike. Only the fear felt sharp and real.

“You killed my son,” he said conversationally, crossing one leg over the other. “Maybe not directly. But you were the catalyst. The…inspiration for his final failure.”

“Your son was psychotic.” Very much like his father. “Whatever happened to him?—”

“Was inevitable, yes.” Diego studied me with the same detached interest I’d seen in researchers examining specimens. “Mateo inherited his mother’s weakness. Her emotional instability. I had hoped to train it out of him, but genetics are stubborn things.”

My medical mind caught on his phrasing. The clinical way he discussed his son’s defects. A chill ran down my spine that had nothing to do with the air conditioning.

“She was beautiful, his mother. Fragile. Like a songbird.” His fingers drummed once on the chair arm—the first sign of any emotion. “I thought her delicacy would balance my strength. Instead, it diluted it. Mateo got her fears, her needs, her inability to see past feeling to purpose.”

“He was your son, not a failed experiment.”

“He was both.” Diego stood again, moving with the restless energy of a caged predator. “Which brings us to why you’re here.”

“Revenge.”

He gave a dry laugh. “No. Revenge is petty and generally pointless.”

My throat went dry despite the water I’d just drunk. I watched him pace, noting the controlled violence in every movement. This wasn’t a man who’d gotten soft with age and wealth. This was still the same killer who’d executed Carlos without a second thought.

“Heritage is all that matters. The Silva line must continue. My empire requires heirs. Strong, intelligent, capable heirs.” He stopped directly in front of me, and I had to crane my neck to meet his eyes.

“Mateo, for all his failures, had the right instinct about you. He simply lacked the vision to implement it properly.”

“You can’t be serious.”