Page 46 of Empire of Carnage

He scoffed, pulling my chin up higher to give me a kiss.

I moaned into his mouth, missing the way we could wrap around each other so perfectly.

“I’m no longer an injured man. Behave or I’ll make you regret it,” he threatened before pulling me away from the car and opening the door to the back for me to get in.

Santos grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me into an embrace, stamping a kiss to the side of my face before letting me go. He climbed into the back, and I followed, seeing Mateo already comfortably settled into the passenger seat.

How had I been alone for so long when now I felt so incomplete anytime I was apart from one of them? I’d done so well for myself as a solitary creature, caring for nothing and no one with only a goal to survive until the next day.

That wasn’t living, and my tío would pay for wasting so much of my life forcing me to live that way.

“So?” I asked, my eyes meeting Ronan’s in the rearview mirror before I looked over to Santos. “Did you deal with… whatever it was you were dealing with?” I asked them, playing along like Santos hadn’t already told me the truth.

Their eyes met; Ronan grunted.

I looked back over to Santos who gave me a look that said he was grateful.

“Tell me everything,” I insisted.

“The Crows have absolved.” Santos spoke and Ronan exhaled loudly.

“Ronan, what the fuck?” I yelled, and he moved a hand from the wheel to scratch the back of his head.

“It’s more complicated than what Álvarez is saying,” he tried justifying.

“Then explain it better, payaso.”

“We stepped down. The crows split in two… maybe three actually,” Ronan explained some more without giving me any details.

“Ronan!” I slapped the back of his seat. “Que chingados, pendejo? What the fuck are you doing?”

“I can’t very well lead a criminal organization when I’m here with you, can I?” he asked.

It was a good point, one I hadn’t stopped to think about yet which was exactly why he hadn’t mentioned it until now, when he had already done it.

“Why didn’t you let me in on this? Why wasn’t this a decision you thought we could make together, between all of us?” I asked loudly, feeling myself getting angrier the more I thought about him throwing away everything he built for himself because of me.

He fucking laughed.

Laughed.

Mateo pinched the bridge of his nose, and it took everything to not crawl through the middle console to make my point clearer.

“Como?” I asked.

“I’m sorry darling, I just think it’s funny that you’d think I’d let you in on a major decision regarding me spending the rest of my life with you, when the last time you had the chance you dropped the ball.” His eyes met mine again with a coldness to them. “Completely,” he added.

“Fuck.” The memory of me leaving a suitcase full of money in our two-bedroom apartment while I drove away with a trunk full of cártel weapons haunted me still.

When you hurt the person you loved the most, you hurt yourself too.

I was plagued with nightmares of Santos’ voice calling out to me from the dark telling me that I was going to destroy Ronan. I imagined his reaction for years, how he must have felt and looked when he read my note.

But I never actually asked.

I was afraid of actually knowing just the size of the damage I’d left behind.

“It was the right move, morena.” Santos came to his defense, letting me know I was likely going to be fighting this one on my own if I wanted to ride into battle. “Our men were in limbo. Now they are free to choose where to go. Many will follow, soon Crows will be flying south to work foryou.”