Buried (Hiding From Love #3) (24 page)

I lunge for him, my chest is breaking open, my blood is spilling on the cold, hard ground beneath me, and my screams sound like they come from something inhuman, some creature being tortured.

“Juan!” I wail as David wraps both arms around my waist to keep me from pursuing the man who’s just deceived me in the coldest, harshest way. “Don’t do this, Juan. Please don’t do this,” I sob uncontrollably, my voice becoming hoarse as I shake and struggle against the gentle but firm restraints my brother places on me. I have never felt anything like this in my life. It hurts beyond what I ever could have imagined it would. If this is what becomes of love, I will never love again.

People along the sidewalk and even in their cars are slowing to look at me now. Juan is almost concealed by his men who’ve closed in around him as he briskly walks farther and farther from me.

“Beth,” David says in my ear. “It’s time to go.”

“No!” I scream at him, kicking and hitting wildly, my insides crumbling like a day-old sandcastle left to dry in the unrelenting sun. “Let me go! Let me go! Juan! Oh, oh God, no. Juan.”

He disappears into the tunnel, and something deep inside of me breaks. He never once looks back. He never slows. He leaves me standing on the sidewalk between two countries, my brother’s arms the only ones to hold me.

And as I fall into a million pieces, my big brother picks me up and takes me away from the heart I’ve just handed to a man who doesn’t want it.

“Y
OU
okay,
Señor
Juan?” Ryan asks me as I climb into the car for the drive back to my father’s house in Leon.

“Yes, I’m fine,” I tell him with a voice so cold I don’t even recognize it. “Let’s go home.”

“Yes, sir,” the driver says as he starts up the engine.

Beth’s screams echo in my ears, and I feel a sharp pain in my chest. I rub at it as I lean back against the heavily padded leather seats and close my eyes under my sunglasses. The image of her eyes as she begged me not to leave her dances in front of me. The look of sorrow on David’s face mixes with it, and I suddenly feel sick. I remember his voice on the phone when I called him to explain how it would go down.

“You’ll break her heart,” he told me.

“This is the agreement,” I answered.

I could hear him take a deep breath in and then release it. I felt the moment he realized what I’d done, what I’d traded for Beth’s freedom. My compliance for her release
—
my life for hers.

“Thank you,” he said simply.

“I love her.”

“I know you do, hermano. I know you do.”

“Stop the car,” I demand as I yank at the door handle.

The driver pulls to the side and slams on the brakes, blocking part of a lane of traffic because we’re in town and there’s no real shoulder.

I throw open the door, stumbling out as I bend over and vomit, my stomach heaving and roiling over and over. I stay there, hands on my knees, dry heaving when there’s no food left. All three of the cars in my entourage have stopped, and one of Miguel’s men—one of
my
men—has gotten out to direct traffic past us while the others take up stations around me and the vehicles to keep anyone from approaching. Ryan stands nearby, staring stoically ahead, while I choke and gasp in the gutter.

When I finally quit retching, I run my arm across my lips and stand up shakily.

“Are you ready to go, sir?” Ryan asks.

“Yeah,” I mutter.

He raises his arm in a gesture to indicate to the rest of the troops that we’re loading up then waits as I get into the car. He gets in after me, sitting in the front passenger’s seat. “We’ll get you some water, sir, and maybe a little dinner. There’s a place on the edge of town that will work well. The owner is an old friend of your father.”

“Okay,” I answer. I look at him gratefully, and he tips his head just a fraction to indicate that he understands.

I lean back against the leather seat once more and close my eyes. This time, I can’t see Beth’s face at all, and that might make this the saddest moment of my life.

When I return to Leon, where my father’s compound is, I throw myself into the work immediately. I learn every detail of my father’s business. I study, I listen, I observe. I sit in on meetings with distributors. I sign off on arrangements with port officials we have on our payroll. I become the perfect heir apparent. I dress the part, I talk the part, I live the part.

Until I get back to my suite in the evenings after dinner.

At night, I strip my clothes off, my cartel clothes—fitted dress shirts, custom-tailored pants, gold watches, wingtip shoes, silk ties. Then I crawl into the bed I shared with Beth, the sheets I haven’t allowed the staff to change. I bury my face in the pillow she slept on and breathe in her scent, the cinnamon that drifted from her hair, the fresh tanginess of her skin. I close my eyes and I dream. Her eyes. Her lips. Her breasts. Her legs. Her slick, hot center. Being next to her. Being on her. Being in her.

And in those moments at night, in the tropical paradise my father has created—the cold, distant, cruel paradise—I feel like my heart can’t possibly beat one more day. But in the morning, I wake, still alive, and I do it all over again.

A
FTER
David gets me through customs at the border, he loads me into his car, against my parents’ objections. My mother is adamant that I need to come home with them. I know she thinks I was harmed at Miguel’s, given my state of mind. I see her surreptitiously looking me over from head to toe, searching for some signs of physical harm. What she can’t understand is that what Miguel and Juan have done to me is so much worse than bruises or cuts or broken bones. They’ve taken my trust, my self-determination, my love, and destroyed it all like I was disposable, something to be tossed aside when used up.

I stare out the window of David’s car as south Texas rushes by in a blur of brown turning to green, agriculture turning to buildings. I quit crying an hour ago, and now I’m just empty, void of anything except a sick ache in the pit of my chest.

“He did it because he loves you,” David says softly.

“Don’t,” I warn.

“Beth. You need to listen to reason here. He didn’t have a choice. It was the only way to get Ybarra to agree.”

“Fuck that, David. And fuck Ybarra. Fuck Juan, and while we’re at it, fuck
you
.”

He shakes his head but keeps his mouth clamped shut.

“How could you have done that to me?” I turn to him, so angry, so powerless that my breath is coming in gasps. “How could you have agreed to that when you knew damn well it would kill me? The two of you treated me like I was a fucking child, like I don’t get any say in what happens to me. Like I’m some sort of Barbie doll to be manipulated and arranged and tossed from place to place without a thought as to what
I
might want. Such typical alpha male bullshit.”

“Seriously, Beth? You’re going to pull the damn feminism card right now? This was your
life
we were dealing with. What the hell was I supposed to do when Juan told me the arrangements? He said it was what had already been agreed to. I told him it would break you, but he said there was no other way. I couldn’t just leave you there. Tell me, what the hell would you have done if it was Alexis down there and you were the one up here negotiating for her life?”

I pause, my younger sister’s face floating in my mind. Her sweet smile and sparkling eyes. The times I tended her cuts and scrapes as children even though I was hardly any older than her. The times I held her while she sobbed her heart out as she struggled to come to terms with the choice between my parents’ approval or Gabe, the love of her life. I think of the way I felt when she was missing in Afghanistan during a military operation. I would have agreed to anything at that moment. Anything to get her home where I could see that she was alive and safe. That she hadn’t been changed in some fundamental way.

I swallow, look down at my hands in my lap. “Okay. You’re right. I would have done the same thing, but that doesn’t mean I like it.”

“I know, and if it’s any consolation, I hate it. I hate seeing you hurt like this, Beth. It tears me up inside to know what you’re going through right now. But I had to get you home safely. I just had to.”

I feel the tears start up again, spilling down my cheeks like tiny pieces of my soul rolling out of me.

David reaches over and takes my hand in his, rubbing his thumb across my knuckles as he steers with his other hand. “I’m so sorry,
hermanita
.”

“I know,” I whisper.

“What can I do?”

“Find a way to get Juan back,” I tell him, looking him in the eyes. “Please help me get him back.”

David sighs, defeat masking his features. “Jesus, you’re stubborn. It’s Miguel Ybarra, Beth. International crime syndicates, the federal justice system. Juan’s wanted in the US right now. And working for his father, he’ll be wanted in Mexico and half of Central America in no time. You’re asking the impossible.”

I give him a watery smile.

“God, I know I’ll regret this,” he says, shaking his head. He rubs a hand across the stubble on his chin and groans. “Fine. We’ll get him back, all right?”

“Thank you, David.
Te amo
.”

“I love you too.”

When I get back to Austin, my sister and Jill are waiting for me. They gently send David away, bundling me up in cozy clothes and putting me in bed with a movie playing on my laptop. Alexis climbs in on one side of me, a tray of tea and ice cream on her lap, and Jill climbs in on the other, a hairbrush in hand so she can braid my hair out of my face.