Chris (The Guzzi Legacy Book 3) Read online

  Copyright © 2019 by Bethany-Kris.

  All Rights Reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, organizations, corporations, locales and so forth are a product of the author’s imagination, or if real, used fictitiously. Any resemblance to a person, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted material is illegal and punishable by law. No parts of this work may be reproduced, copied, used, or printed without expressed written consent from the publisher/author. Exceptions are made for brief excerpts used in reviews.

  www.bethanykris.com

  Editor: Elizabeth Peters

  Proofreaders: Tracy A., Mia B., Tori W. and Felicia F.

  Cover Design © Under Cover Designs

  Interior Design: Under Cover Designs

  ISBN - 978-1-988197-99-9

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Books by Bethany-Kris

  For Peppen.

  Beautiful distractions hid the worst of crimes.

  The table, draped in silk, and filled with food cooked by a renown chef, welcomed their guests, in a dining room with walls covered in expensive art. It proved to Valeria that the other people sitting down at the table for dinner would forget the young lady—who was barely a woman—across from them had been in the papers just a few months ago.

  They wouldn’t remember her face had been on the news after her mother’s murder—the wife of a prominent Mexican politician. They didn’t seem to remember how just months later she walked down the aisle, not yet sixteen at that point, forced to marry the son of the man who had invited them to this dinner.

  None of it mattered to them.

  Money talked.

  And it apparently said very nice things.

  Like the silk linen, the coveted art, delicious food, and beautiful people dressed in their best with glittering diamonds showcased on their bodies to prove their status and wealth. All of it became a promise to them. Should these people keep quiet about the other issues at the table, like Valeria, then the Lòpezs would make a deal.

  They liked that.

  Deals.

  Better known as bribes, or blackmail. It depended on her husband, and his father’s, preference or their need. When it had been her father on the other side of this table, they had wanted a promise he would help them smuggle their illegal drugs into the United States where he had connections to border control.

  Her father said no.

  They killed his wife.

  Her father then agreed.

  And so, they took her, too, and forced her to marry the oldest son of the Lòpez cartel’s leader. A way to drive the point home, she figured. Because that’s all she had been.

  And now, she was a trophy.

  A beautiful thing.

  Something to own.

  “Sonreírse,” Jorge said to her left, his Spanish order for her to smile coming out dark, and harsh, even under his breath. He watched her constantly, and when she didn’t behave as he wanted her to, he made her aware. His fingers curved around her thigh under the table, flexing enough to make her draw in a quick breath. “Now, Valeria.”

  Her gaze swept the people at the table, a business meeting, they told her. Right, more like a way to manipulate and gain what the Lòpez family needed to do their work without trouble. Tonight, it was cops in high positions of power. Officers that controlled the subordinates under them, which corrupted the system further, but allowed the cartel to breathe a little easier.

  This was how it worked.

  She smiled when the wife of one officer turned her attention away from Valeria’s sister-in-law, Abril, to the ones at the other side of the table. The whole damn family sat there—from her father-in-law, Martín, to Jorge’s younger brother, Samuel. They pulled out all the stops to draw these people into their traps without using violent means first—the cartel’s usual way.

  When someone denied them things turned bad. Valeria’s family was a good example of that.

  “Martín,” the woman said to Valeria’s father-in-law, smiling a little too widely, “you must be pleased, sí?”

  What was her name again?

  Missy?

  More American than Mexican. A dual citizen of both countries, if she trusted what her husband told her about their guests earlier, which kept the conversation drifting back and forth between English and Spanish for most of the dinner.

  Not that Valeria cared to engage.

  “Pleased about what?” Martín asked, tipping his wine glass up for a drink.

  Out of all the people at this table, Valeria hated Martín the most. A difficult task for him to accomplish, considering she married his son, a man who beat her to keep her in line. He had suggested the marriage after killing her mother, like they should have expected it.

  Still, she blamed him.

  For all of this.

  Across the table, Missy nodded at Valeria with a subtle tilt of her chin. Her grin reached to her eyes, as though she held a secret, but for now, she was only hinting at it.

  Martín seemed to understand.

  “Ah, el bebé,” Martín said, chuckling. Setting his glass to the table harder than necessary, proving just how much he had imbibed over the course of the dinner, he smiled and nodded. “Very pleased. We hoped it would be a niño for us. A boy. And yet, it seems it will be a girl, but that’s okay, too.”

  Valeria had done her best throughout the dinner to not draw attention to herself. For the last several months, they had not allowed her out of the Lòpez’s compound after her marriage. This was one of the first dinners she attended, and her greatest fears would be that someone would ask about her father, apologize for her mother’s death, or even, like now, want to discuss her current life.

  Valeria’s hand lifted from the table to rest upon the swell of her stomach. Under her palm, she felt the baby girl shift from her mother’s touch, but like the good baby she already seemed to be, the child settled, allowing Valeria little discomfort from the movement.

  “Congratulations,” the woman said to Valeria. “Babies are gifts.”

  “Blessings,” the man next to her added.

  Right.

  Her husband created this baby through violent means and pain, but she wouldn’t say so. Was raping her a blessing? And besides, she loved her daughter. She loved her enough that she sat at this table, kept her smile on, and shut her fucking mouth so that Jorge wouldn’t beat her later in the evening when everyone left. Then, the baby wouldn’t get hurt, too.

  “Thank you,” Valeria whispered.

  Her first words at the dinner.

  No one seemed to notice.

  Next to her, Jorge gave Valeria a tight smile. Another warning, she figured, but without him speaking it out loud. She didn’t need him to do that at all—she was aware what he expected of her, and what the punishment would be if she failed.

  It used to scare her.

  He terrified her.

  Now, she just … worried.

  For this child she carried, mostly. Because what would happen to her once she made her presence known in the world. Valeria, all of sixteen years old, but she would be seventeen before this baby was born. Not that it mattered because what control did a girl of her age have against a man like her husband. Six years her senior, a criminal who had only taken her because of the status it would provide him, and far too power hungry for his own good.

  What could she do?

  How might she protect this baby from him?

  From the rest of them?

  “Val, would you like another drink of water?”

  At the soft question from a familiar, kind voice, Valeria came out of her thoughts to see her sister-in-law standing from the seat on the other side of hers. Abril gave Valeria a small smile, but in her eyes she found the truth.

  Concern warred in Abril’s gaze.

  Older than her by a few months, Abril was the only person in the Lòpez family that Valeria had made friends with, and sometimes, she even questioned it because she no longer trusted anyone. Abril had done nothing to prove she deserved that hesitation though. She helped.

  And she had promised to help more.

  “Water?” Abril asked again.

  Valeria nodded. “Yes, thank you, that would be nice.”

  Abril passed Valeria’s chair, her hand coming to rest on her shoulder as she bent down to whisper, “The plan happens tonight—I received the message.”

  As quickly as Abril had told her the words, ones that might promise her freedom, she was leaving the dining room and the rest behind. Valeria looked to the man at her side, finding her husband distracted, and grinning at the young wife of an official across the table from him.

  That grin meant he wanted to fuck the woman.

  Valeria didn’t care.

  The promise of freedom would make a person smile, no matter ho
w dangerous, crazy, and even if there was no guarantee her plan to run away would work.

  Still, she had to try.

  For this child, she had to.

  “Valeria.”

  She hoped the guilt didn’t show on her face when she met Jorge’s gaze. He never missed her distractions. Now didn’t seem like a good time to play with fire. The blank expression he wore said she was the last thing on his mind.

  Good.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m sure you won’t mind going home to the compound alone tonight, will you?” he asked.

  He posed it like a question.

  It wasn’t.

  “Of course, not,” she said.

  “I’ll be home for breakfast. Take care of my baby. You got me?”

  Better than he understood.

  Valeria did her best to soothe the nerves running wild as she brushed down the colt, Butter, in the stables. Butter, only two months old, had given Valeria a reason to visit the stables on the compound more often over the last couple of months.

  The compound itself, set on a good twenty acres of secluded, desolate land protected by armed guards, allowed the Lòpez family privacy. To the east, one would find cliffs leading out to choppy, dangerous ocean water. The guards and an electric fence secured the only road leading out of the compound. Two larger barns, used like warehouses and full of drugs to smuggle, sat further west of the compound, while their homes and stables made up a small village right in the center.

  There was no way out.

  Or so they thought …

  One simply needed enough time, and the means to make it happen. Not that they ever gave her the opportunity to run before. She could rarely do anything without a guard or her husband nearby to watch her do … whatever.

  The stables, however, were her free time. Or, that’s how Jorge liked to put it. He didn’t have much interest in the horses, it was more of a pet project for his siblings, and some guards that stayed on the property.

  Valeria took a liking to the horses because her husband didn’t care. He wouldn’t follow her into the stables to look after the horses, and he didn’t mind her taking one out for a ride—like she did after arriving back to the compound that night—as long as someone was with her to keep an eye on her.

  But when she looked after the horses in the stables?

  No one cared.

  No one watched her, then.

  The sound of boots crunching against dried grass, and the hay that fell around the outside of the stables during the last delivery, made Valeria slow the strokes of her brush against the colt’s hind end. She peered up over the back of the colt in just enough time to see Abril slip into the stables.

  Dressed in riding boots, a helmet in hand, jeans molded to her legs, and a shawl that would keep her warm on a ride, Abril looked ready to take a horse out.

  “Ready?” she asked.

  Valeria swallowed hard. “Did they see you?”

  “One or two.”

  God.

  That just made Valeria nervous. Her heart threatened to jump into her throat. Was this possible? Would this even work?

  She didn’t know.

  But she had to try.

  “Stop worrying,” Abril whispered, coming closer to the colt, and Valeria. “We have it all worked out, right? You went out on a horse and came back with a guard. They saw you do it. And like usual, you’re in here taking care of the horses—nothing strange.”

  Right, right.

  “But—”

  “But nothing. They’ll see me go out on a horse,” Abril said, shrugging, “and they won’t think anything strange when they see you go into the house.”

  Valeria nodded.

  Except it wouldn’t be Abril taking a horse out, and it wouldn’t be Valeria heading back to the house. The girls were close enough in age, and in some ways, appearance given their olive-toned skin was the same, their stark, straight black hair both reached mid-back, and as long as someone was looking at them from behind while they sat on a horse, no one would tell the difference.

  Abril had an inch of height on Valeria. Her eyes were a shade deeper brown than Valeria’s russet gaze. Her sister-in-law took after her family in appearance. Sharp, angular jaws, elongated features. Whereas Valeria had a softer, rounder face, and lower cheekbones that always showed the apples of her cheeks when she smiled.

  Looking at them face to face, it was clear the two looked nothing alike. But from behind, and on a horse, at a distance?

  No one would be able to tell.

  “Someone has to see you come back, though,” Valeria pointed out. “Or they’ll believe you helped me get away.”

  Abril shrugged as she dropped the riding helmet to the floor of the stables and kicked off her riding boots. “And they will.”

  “How?”

  “You know Juan?”

  “Samuel’s guard?”

  Her brother-in-law had a friend—friend being a loose term because Valeria wasn’t sure any of the people in this family had someone they cared about, except for Abril. Point was, Samuel preferred one guard amongst the many that looked after them at the compound.

  “What about him?” Valeria asked.

  Abril smirked up at Valeria. “He’ll do me a favor, okay? Tit for tat, I gave him something he wanted, and he’ll make sure someone saw me come back tonight on foot after the horse threw me off. Now, are you going to get dressed and switch clothes with me, or keep wasting time?”

  Valeria had so many more questions.

  What kind of favor?

  What had Abril done?

  “All right,” Valeria muttered.

  The two of them stepped into a stable corner and made quick work of shedding their clothes. Abril dressed in the clothing from Valeria, and she took her sister-in-law’s stuff to slip on. Before long, they came out of the corner, and Valeria turned to head for the horse she preferred to ride on toward the end of the stables.

  “No, take Maple,” Abril said, “he’s my horse, and that’s the one they expect me to ride.”

  “But he won’t come back.”

  And Abril loved Maple.

  “It’s okay,” Abril said, “he will be taken care of once you get to where you’re supposed to go. I know that.”

  Valeria hesitated to move for the other horse who was blowing them his special kisses because his favorite human was close, and it meant a ride was coming. Turning to Abril, Valeria let the first tear fall, and she didn’t bother to brush it away.

  “Thank you for doing this.”

  She understood well just how much Abril was risking.

  What it could mean if someone caught them …

  “Take care of my niece,” Abril replied, “and stay away so he can’t hurt you anymore, Val.”

  “I will.”

  Or she would try.

  It was all going to fall on a hope, a wish, and a damn prayer, though. She didn’t doubt for a second that once Jorge knew she had run away, he would come after her. He would never stop tracking her down.

  She was his trophy.

  His thing.

  He won her.

  She belonged to him, and only he decided when to toss her away like trash on the sidewalk. But that was okay because Valeria would keep running. As long as it meant her baby was safe, and Jorge couldn’t hurt their child, then she would keep going.

  To the ends of the fucking earth.

  Abril checked the watch on her wrist, and said, “You only have three hours, now. Do you remember the spot where you’re supposed to meet Cruz? He has the fake papers you’ll need with him, and he can get you across the border, but only for a small window of time, Val.”

  “Can I even trust him?”

  “Papá killed his father—he’d do anything that went against my father or brothers. It’s only because he was my … it doesn’t matter,” Abril whispered, shaking her head. In a flash, the emotion she had showed speaking about her lost love, something she guarded even from Valeria unless she slipped up like now, to cold in a blink. “He will be at the meeting place, but he will not wait past the time we agreed. You need to go, so go.”

  “Right,” Valeria said. “Now or never.”

  “Good luck.”

  Those words—good luck—echoed in Valeria’s mind long after she had taken Maple from the stables and headed out toward the cliffs to the east of the compound. Two hours later, when her back ached, her legs felt like pins and needles had settled into her bloodstream, and her stomach cramped, she still thought about those words.