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Thalia
Present Day
Living up to your parents’ expectations is a losing game.
The dice are loaded. The odds are stacked. But when you’re the daughter of a Colombian cartel king and an American angel...? That’s like surviving a snake pit with a fading flashlight and a water pistol.
Maybe that’s why, at nineteen, I find myself stranded on the island of Manhattan, somewhere between breaking all the rules and doing the right thing.
Stranded between doubt and determination.
Fear and fury.
“He wants to speak with you, Thalia,” comes a gruff voice as I’m attempting to slip into the apartment I share with my older sister, Ella, undetected. “And just so you know, he’s called three times this morning already.”
—Stranded between my father’s oppression and the keys to my freedom.
Spi
He’s holding out a cell to me, but it may as well be a loaded gun.
“Call him,” he urges.
“At least let me have a double espresso first.”
“Not this time.”
“Please, Reece.” I clasp my hands together. “It’s too early in the morning to be dealing with parental disapproval.”
“You spit in the devil’s face when you keep a man like him waiting.”
But he pockets the cell with a grimace. I can tell it’s physically hurting him to do it, though.
“Thank you,” I whisper in relief, wishing for the hundredth time that my father was more like him. There’s a layer of sympathy behind those cool, gray eyes—the likes of which never blessed Dante Santiago’s DNA. “Besides,” I add, with a hopeful grin, “ten extra minutes isn’t going to hurt.”
“Wa
I watch his eyebrows knit together as he takes in my extra short, overly expensive, silver designer cocktail dress, with the deep ‘v’ lace decolletage that kisses my belly button. Reece has been working for my family for longer than I’ve been screwing shit up on this planet, so I know what he’s thinking. This outfit is anathema to all the ripped ski
“You need to be smarter than this,” he warns, leaning over to shove the apartment door open for me. “He knows you slipped your bodyguards again last night. Even before I made the call.”
“Of course, he does,” I say flatly. “He knows everything.” Except why I’m acting out so much. “Listen, I’ll deal with him later. I swear.”
His grunt of disbelief speaks more truth than I ever will. I haven’t spoken to my father in over a month. Our last words were poisoned with blame and anger, and I can’t bring myself to taste the antidote of forgiveness, yet.
I shift my weight from foot to foot to offset my blister pain. “Did he give you a hard time about it?”
He chuckles darkly. “Santiago’s threats lose their jagged edge when they’re delivered from a thousand miles away.” His grin fades. The rifts in his face deepen. “I can’t keep you safe if you keep flying south on me, sweetheart. If you’re in some kind of trouble—”
“I’m not,” I say quickly.
“Where did you go last night?”
“Some bar.”
Another lie.
“You know the dangers—”
“I didn’t cross the Brooklyn Bridge, Reece. I didn’t go anywhere near New Jersey, if that’s what you’re implying.”
“Then where—”
“I went hunting... Oh God, not for that,” I groan, seeing dark things flash across his face. “Nothing occurred that was A—love related, or B—sex related.”
“Now you’re talking stupid.”
No, solutions, Reece.
Bad solutions to bad problems.
Like the forty-thousand dollars that’s burning a hole in the bottom of my Gucci silk purse.
“Have you been drinking?” he says suspiciously.
“Nope. Gotta go. Have a phone call to make.”
I slam the door and rest my forehead against cool wood, my panic rising up inside me like a flock of birds. I have a secret: a dark and dangerous thing that’s slowly ripping me apart. But I have a plan to make it go away, too. It’s cradled tight to my chest, and I can feel it fluttering wildly as I wait for the birds to disperse.
I find my sister sitting hunched over and cross-legged on the living room couch, her fingers weaving last minute college assignments out of a flurry of furious laptop clicks, a frown of concentration crumpling up her beautiful face.
She hasn’t heard me enter, so I’m gifted a rare moment to watch her u
Not even a bad secret is going to derail them.
My sister chooses her family battles carefully.
I fight with all of my tiger heart, too, but I always come up short, even when I’m wi
One whole semester.
Sam calls it the Freshman Fuck-up Special. He lasted a whole two years before he was tossing his frat house keys in the trash. There was only one way he was going, and that was straight into the family business…
The Santiago Cartel business.
As for me, I’m like one of those insects that dances above treetops on a summer’s evening, with too much energy and no place to go.
“Good night, last night?” Ella finally glances up from the screen as I stumble into the room, leaving a trail of bleeding Louboutin’s behind me.
“It was okay.” I reach for the volume control on the portable speaker, hitting the mute button with a frown. “You know you’re the only person under forty-five who thinks Fleetwood Mac are cool, right?”
“Don’t diss the Mac,” she whispers in mock horror, raking red-rimmed eyes over my non-existent cocktail dress. “And what the heck are you wearing? You’ll give Reece a heart attack.”
“Heck” is the closest Ella ever comes to cursing.
“Reece was already flat-lining in the hallway about something else.” I go to pick up her iPhone from the coffee table.
Now it’s Ella’s turn to cluck with disapproval. “Don’t tell me you ditched your security again? You know it’s not safe on the East Coast. Edier warned us about standing too close to Mexican fire.” She waves her hand. “Or something like that.”
Ignoring her, I flick through her Spotify playlist for something that wasn’t born and bred in the era of bad fashion sense. “Does Edier know you’re a flower-powered soul trapped inside the body of a twenty-one-year-old goddess?”
Ella blushes. “Why would Edier give a damn what I am, or what I wear, for that matter?”
“Damn” is her second closest word to cursing. Somehow, she ended up with all the good girl genes.
She’s making me feel guilty again. The heat on her face is like a love declaration with a megaphone. Ella’s had a secret, long-term crush on another of our childhood friends, Edier Grayson, for longer than she’s dreamed of being a reporter.