Chapter Fifteen: One Down

Emiliano

ONE DOWN

Performed by The Trishas

I swirled the dark whiskey aroundin the crystal glass. The color reminded me of Natalia’s eyes. My eyes. Our mother’s eyes. I was equal parts furious and impressed. Not only had she encrypted the device in a way that would be nearly impossible for even me to break without the key, but she’d had a child and kept it from me for years. Two points, Natalia.

Except, she should have known better than to play these kinds of games with me. I didn’t lose. Ever. I’d already peeled back several of her hidden layers, retracing her footsteps, and revisiting every location I knew she’d lived since I’d brought her back into the fold. The reports my men had gathered after interviewing people in those locations had allowed me to assemble an approximate age and description of the child—a little girl between six and seven years old.

That had been enough for me to know the truth.

It was his. The man she’d nearly given everything up for. The man she’d abandoned me for.

The man I’d promised her I wouldn’t touch as long as she stayed where she belonged. With me. With our family.

All promises were off. He was now forfeit.

But for the first time in my life, I regretted slicing someone’s throat. The idiot who’d killed Natalia had to have seen something and not understood it. He’d sworn no one had seen him, so where had the child been? Hiding? Or had Natalia left her with someone? Who? Because I knew for a fact the child hadn’t spent all these years with the Tennessee rancher.

I shouldn’t have allowed her the little cat-and-mouse game she’d thought she’d been playing with me. It had seemed like such a small concession. A gift I’d granted the sister I’d spent an entire childhood protecting. I’d allowed her to do her job from wherever she wished to save her the pain of reliving our childhood. I hadn’t cared if she did her work from Colombia or the Caymans or Montana, as long as she did it. But she’d taken my gift and abused it. She’d made a fool of me.

If any of my other employees had done the same, they’d be dead.

And now she was.

I was still furious that it hadn’t been at my own hand. No one had a right to kill my family except me. They were mine to do with as I wanted.

The liquid in the glass taunted me, seeming to reflect the terrified betrayal I’d last seen in Natalia’s eyes. Except, she’d been the one to betray me. To leave me. After all the times I’d protected her, she’d run instead of thanking me for putting an end to decades of abuse.

My hand tightened on the crystal. If I had less control, I’d toss the glass into the fireplace, just to see it shatter. To see the flames flicker with the added fuel.

Instead, I set the glass down slowly, purposefully.

If the child was his, then perhaps that was where I needed to look for her.

Perhaps the child had the key.

That brought a lightness to my heart. I’d take the girl and make her mine. I’d make Natalia’s daughter love me. She’d adore me. She’d never betray me like her mother had. Pleasure coursed through me at those thoughts. My sister could toss and turn and burn in her grave, watching from beyond the veil as I turned her daughter against her. As I made her my own.