“Have you ever taken a life before?” I asked gently.
“No. But Michael, my bodyguard, tried to teach me everything he knew about how to protect myself. He’s the one who taught me to shoot, how to get out of handcuffs and zip ties… just never how to get out of an iron shackle in a madman’s dungeon.” She smiled sadly down at her shrimp.
“Is Michael still in your father’s organization?”
“No.” Her lips were tight again. “My father had him killed.”
Chapter Nine
In which Cora was really not expecting that.
Cora…
My appetite is gone and I push my plate away.
“I’m sorry,” Dario said, sounding sincere, “he sounds like he was the only man who truly protected you.”
“He was,” I smile bitterly, “and that’s why he was murdered. Michael was the one who helped me disappear, and he paid for it with his life.”
“Did you love him?” Dario is toying with his wine glass, watching me intently.
“Not in the way you’re implying,” I snapped. “He was like a father to me. On my eighth birthday? He was the only one who remembered. When he realized my parents were going to ignore me and leave for some party, he brought me a cupcake and sang to me while I blew out the candle. It felt more genuine than anything my parents ever did for me.”
“I’m glad you had him in your life,” he said gently.
“So am I…” I look down at my shrimp, trying not to cry. I knew they’d killed Michael when he didn’t show up at our rendezvous spot. Nothing could have kept him from meeting me but death.
“So, when your father, the esteemed US Senator from Massachusetts, decided you were going to marry that old bastard Gabriel Santos, you disappeared,” Dario prompted.
I looked up, shocked, “How did you… Of course, you found all the dirty little secrets, didn’t you?”
He shrugged modestly, making me want to throw my plate at him. “Don Santos is a pig,” he said. “Three wives, all meeting tragic, accidental deaths when they didn’t give him a son? You must have seen the writing on the wall.”
“I could not believe it,” I shake my head, still having trouble understanding my father’s utter lack of care for me, “I was supposed to meet my dad for dinner. I was actually excited, he never wanted to spend time with me. Except he wasn’t alone. That cartel prick was sitting there like some malevolent toad, grinning up at me. Dad introduced us and left, telling me that he wanted us to have time to ‘get to know each other’ like this was a blind date. He left me with that evil bastard! Michael was there as my bodyguard; he was the only reason Santos didn’t try to feel me up right there in the restaurant.”
“Santos really needs to be killed,” Dario said thoughtfully, “why hasn’t that been handled yet?”
“Uh, because his cartel controls most of Brazil, and he covers his drug pipeline to the US with his beef production company,” I said, “marrying me was supposed to be his bid for legitimacy. I don’t even want to know what my father was going to get out of that deal.” I laughed bitterly, shaking my head. “My parents more or less left me alone when I went to college. I got accepted to Harvard but I never told them, I took my admission to Brown University instead, just to get away from them. Then when I graduated, they were suddenly there at the ceremony, clapping and looking like the model, loving parents.”
“How long after that did the hell-match with Santos get proposed?” he asked.
“They made me come home for Christmas that following December and told me that my apartment in Rhode Island was gone, along with my shot at a master’s degree.”
“Medical research, yes?”
“Yes,” I take a shaky gulp of wine. “Cancer. There is so much data coming from genetics studies right now. It has the potential… Anyway, once my father tricked me into coming to that restaurant, it all became clear.”
“So Senator Asshole Thorne’s thugs and Santos’ cartel dogs have both been hunting you.” Dario shook his head. “And you kept out of their reach for this long? You should be proud.”
“You didn’t hear that fake agent who grabbed me,” I said. “He was Santos’ guy. His boss planned on just… keeping me as a sex slave or something. I don’t think he was ever going to tell my father that he found me.”
“We caught their third man out on the tarmac near that exit,” he said, “he had the car running and ready to go as soon as they dragged you out. There was an impressive number of handcuffs, gags, and a big bottle of chloroform. Carlo had some fun getting their plans out of the guy. Santos was planning to hold you at his estate in Fortaleza. You never would have left there alive. He claimed you dishonored him by running away, so he didn’t intend to give you the privilege of becoming his wife.” His amber gaze snaps back to me. “You have to admit it,Bellissima.Running into me is the best thing that’s ever happened to you.”
“I will be forever grateful to you for saving me from- from Schmidt.” It was still so hard to say his name, but I refused to feel the superstitious terror I used to when speaking of Him. No, justhim. He’s just a lower case ‘h’ now. “I am even more grateful that you tortured him. And I am grateful most of all that I killed him.” I finish my glass and hold it out to him, Dario refilling it without comment. “What did you do with the information you did get out of him?”
“Casey, our tech genius, accessed all of Schmidt’s accounts that we could find and drained them, donating the money anonymously to human trafficking charities,” he explains. ”In fact, Ekaterina’s brother helped create one of them years ago. It seemed fitting.” Dario winked and filled his own glass.
“After distributing details of Schmidt’s little hobby to Interpol and several news outlets, Casey was able to disable the network that his group of bastards used to communicate and find their victims. We sent the identities of six of his little buddies to associates in those particular countries who’d enjoy ridding the world of such a piece of shit.”
