Captive

chapter 3

Natalia

10 hours earlier…

Knots twist and tangle in my stomach as I look at my reflection in the floor-to-ceiling mirror in Adriana’s dressing room and scan over the beautiful wedding dress I’m wearing.

I’m in this dress again.

Herwedding dress.

Adriana walks around me scanning me from head to toe in deep scrutiny as she looks me over. I keep still and pretend I don’t know what’s wrong.

Even though we’re virtually the same petite size, my hips are curvier and my breasts bigger. Since the f*****g dress is supposed to be tailored to fit, it’s more suited to my body than hers. That’s why we’re having problems, and there are going to be more problems that won’t get fixed in time.

Herwedding is now a week away, yet she wants me to do the fitting with the seamstress again so she can go on a date. Not with her fiancé. Oh no. This is with some new guy she met in a club last week.

The dress is beautiful and not just the most gorgeous dress I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s the most beautiful everything I’ve ever seen. I’m sure any woman would love to be in my shoes. Just the chance to try it on would entice anybody.

Anybody who isn’t me.

Every time Adriana makes me put it on, it feels like an anchor to my hell and the omen of the darkness and death that await me once she says ‘I do.’

I think she knows how I feel about wearing her dress, and outside of the convenience of having me here, she does s**t like this to taunt me.

Once she gets married, I’ll be sold. Owned by someone else.

Her father plans to sell me as a s*x slave in the virgin auction for what I know will make Raul a pretty penny. So, if I don’t find a way out—and escaping is near impossible—in approximately one week’s time, I’ll become some rich bastard’s pet. A s*x slave. That’s what I need to worry about. Not this.

The thought makes the backs of my eyes sting, but I hold back the tears. I refuse to cry in front of these people. I refuse to cry at all, because I know I won’t come back if I break down.

She stops in front of me, tosses her long black hair over her shoulders, and strikes a pose worthy for the cover of Vogue.

“I need you to tell the seamstress to make the cleavage deeper and take in the waist so it shows off my hips.” Her voice is heavy with her thick Spanish accent.

Speaking English is the one mercy I’m grateful for. My mother was from San Francisco. We spoke English most of the time at home, although my father was Mexican, and I was born and raised here.

I speak Spanish just fine, but when my fate was sealed to the Alvarez family, I pretended not to know the language as well as I do because I wanted them to speak to me in the language I was most comfortable understanding.

Speaking English reminds me of my mother and days of my childhood when my parents were still alive and I was free from this life in the cartel. It reminds me of hope, although with the threat looming over my head, every trace of anything that resembles hope fades with each passing day. For most of my nineteen years, all I’ve known is pain and suffering.

“Are you sure you shouldn’t go to the fitting?” I offer, not because I care one way or the other. I’m only saying it because I know what she’s like when things don’t go as she wants them to. She ends up taking out her frustration on me or someone else.

“No.” She waves me off with a flick of her wrist. “Obviously, I’ll be away for the day.”

Translation, she—the supposed virgin bride—is going to be out f*****g this new guy senseless most likely until tomorrow morning. The last guy was one of her bodyguards. Raul killed him when he found out what was going on. He didn’t want Felipe to know he wouldn’t be getting a virgin on their wedding night. As if Felipe wouldn’t discover that for himself or know what his wife-to-be is like.

That bastard knows and is just as disgusting as Adriana.

“I’ll also need you to polish my shoes when you’re done,” she adds.

I frown. “I did them this morning.”

She sets her hands on her hips. “Clearly, you haven’t polished them properly if I’m telling you to do it again.”

Bitch.

She’s just f*****g with me because she hates me. I’m a joke to her. We both know there are only so many times you can polish shoes and so much you can do to them to make them shine. This is just one of the host of games she’s played with me since that ill-fated night when her father ordered the killing of mine and made me her slave.

She treats all the servants who work here on the estate like s**t, and they do as they’re told because they know the consequences.

Displease her, and you’re dead. It’s as simple as that. I’ve watched her order the deaths of many for petty things like dropping a bag or missing a spot of dust on furniture she’d ordered to be cleaned.

That’s the kind of evil b***h Adriana Alvarez is.

She only plays with me like this because her father’s plans for me mean she can’t kill me.

Adriana slips the shoes onto her perfectly manicured feet, and even I have to admit they look good on her. I’d love to wear a pair of shoes like those instead of these tattered plimsolls I’ve been wearing for the last few years.

“Got it?” she asks cutting into my thoughts.

“Yes, Señorita Alvarez.”

My voice sounds way too calm for the annoyance I feel. But I’ll be the obedient servant if I can avoid being punished.

The last time I defied her, Raul starved me for a week and locked me in the dungeon for a month. That was terrible, but not as bad as when he whipped me for trying to escape after my father died.

Both instances were enough to keep me in line.

“Good girl. The seamstress should here in about five minutes. Don’t keep her waiting.”

“Okay.”

A knock sounds at the door just as she grabs her little Prada purse from the dressing table. She calls out to come inside in Spanish, and the door swings open.

When I see it’s José, I feel some ounce of relief.

“Oh good, you’re here,” she says to him. “I need shelves done in the back.”

“Sure,” he replies, and we both watch her as she strides away like she’s walking the runway.

He walks in, and as soon as the door clicks shut, I rush over to him, hoping he has some news for me.

He promised to help me escape, pursuing my father’s dying wish. José has been my only hope for the last two years of my sentence here.

Nothing could explain the pain I feel for being the cause of my father’s death.

After Raul r***d and killed my mother right in front of us, Papa wanted to get me out of this hell. He was trying to do just that when our plan was discovered. José has been Raul’s senior lieutenant for over twenty years, but there was nothing he could do to save my father as Raul ordered Felipe to kill him with my father’s own gun.

When José takes both my hands into his and a solemn expression washes over his face, I know any news he has for me is not going to be the kind I want to hear.

With the shake of his graying head, he confirms I’m right.

“Lo siento, mi amor,” he says, telling me he’s sorry in Spanish. It’s times like these when I appreciate how he always speaks to me in a mixture of Spanish and English. Just like my father did. It’s as if he wants to keep his memory alive for me. “I’m still working on a plan. I promise you I am. It’s just hard.”

“I know,” I reply. I do know. What we’re discussing is no mere thing. It could mean death if anyone even heard us.

Raul would kill him because he’d lose too much if I died.

Sometimes, I wonder if death might be my only way out of this hell.

I pull in a deep breath and try to clear my head. I can’t think like that. My parents would never want me to think like that, so I can’t just give up. Not when they went through so much to keep me alive.

José, too.

He touches the edge of my cheek and gives me a warm smile.

“Be strong, mi amor.” He lowers his voice. “I will die before I allow Raul to sell you.”

“I don’t want you to die.”

“Do not worry about me, child.” His pale brown eyes stare back at me with a fatherly warmth that worries me because I know he means what he said. He’ll give his life for me. I don’t want anyone else I love to die. “Go now. The seamstress is already here.”

I nod, and he gives my shoulder a reassuring squeeze.

When I leave the room, I steel my spine and summon strength. The seamstress isn’t going to like seeing me again.

When I get down to the hall where we do the fittings, her angry face is the first I see when I step through the grand oak wood doors. But I’m more concerned about the s**t-eating grin spread across Felipe Naveed’s face to worry about how angry the seamstress is or what she might say to me.

He’s standing next to her dressed in his suit. It almost makes him look like a human being. Almost.

Felipe is Raul’s second-in-command and just as evil.

I don’t think I could be fooled into thinking this man was anything other than the bastard he is. Every time I see him, I remember how he placed that gun to my father’s head and pulled the trigger.

He killed my father on Raul’s orders, but he hated my father enough that he didn’t need any orders to kill him.

“Wonderful. Leave us,” he says to the seamstress with a taunting vibe laced through his voice.

I’m a joke to him, too, but he doesn’t want to kill me. He wants me in other ways. He hasn’t f****d me because he wants me sold in the auction as well, but that hasn’t stopped him from playing with me.

The seamstress opens her mouth to protest, but she wouldn’t dare say anything besides what she says now.

“Si, Señor Naveed.”

As soon as she walks out the door, casting me a look of disapproval as she passes by, that smile on Felipe’s face widens.

“Come here to me, Natalia,” he says, and I make myself move.

I will myself to move for the same reason I obey Adriana’s orders.

It’s his fault, though, why her dislike for me turned to hate. She hates that he wants me and only wants her because she’s his path to the empire. As much as she screws around with any man who will have her, she wants Felipe to want her and only her. She likes his power and what it means for her future as the Cartel Queen when Raul hands over the kingdom to Felipe.

When I reach him, I make sure I stop a few paces away, but the bastard knows what I’m up to and steps forward, closing the space between us.

The closeness makes my skin crawl, but I root my feet to the ground and try to look like I’m stronger than I am.

“Adriana sent you again?” he asks.

“Yes.”

“I’m sure she didn’t say where she was going.”

“No.”

He smiles wider to reveal straight white teeth, reminding me of a well-dressed shark.

He cups my face and lowers his head to brush his lips over my forehead.

“I know she’s spreading her legs for that cunt at the club,” he whispers. “No matter. I get to play with you.”

His large hand covers my right breast and squeezes. When I try to step away, he slips his arm around me and holds me in place.

“Let go of me,” I cry, trying to break free of his grasp.

“f*****g stop fighting me.” A harsh laugh rumbles in his chest, and he crushes his lips to mine.

As soon as he forces his disgusting tongue into my mouth, the crash of the door makes us jump apart. Or rather, he releases me, and I move away from him at the sound.

We both look toward the door as a man walks through it.

A tall, tall man I’d place to be around six foot six with the kind of muscle you’d find on a military man. He’s gorgeous. Breathtaking even, and despite the danger rippling off him, I’m captivated by his beauty.

His face with its sun-kissed skin and deep angles and planes looks like it was carved by the gods. And the thick locks of wild, unruly obsidian hair covering his head and a neatly trimmed beard give him a rugged edge. The gold hoop looping through his ear makes him look like one of the pirate captains of the old world who sailed the Caribbean.

What gets me even more is his eyes.

The color and the emotion.

They glow like a warm honey, but there’s nothing warm about them. The emotion I detect is ice-cold hatred.

It makes the hair on the back of my neck stand to attention, and my soul cowers as he takes measured steps toward us.

“Impossible,” Felipe gasps, looking like he’s just seen a ghost.

I’ve never seen him look so scared. Even I know that when the monster who terrifies you gets scared, you should be worried about the thing that’s scaring him. In this case, it’s this man. This man I’ve never seen before.

“Y-you,” Felipe stutters.

“Yes, me,” the man answers, speaking with a hint of an accent I can’t quite place over the drumming of my heart in my ears.

“You’re supposed to be dead.”

“Clearly, I’m not. But you will be.” The man pulls two guns from his pockets, and before Felipe can do anything, the echo of bullets bounces off the walls as the man shoots him.

I scream and back away, knowing I have to get the f**k out of here.

The man doesn’t look at me. Instead, he continues to shoot Felipe.

I run toward the doors at the other end of the hall, hoping he doesn’t shoot me down as I run away. I just make it through the doors when I hear him coming.

“There, there, princess, run as fast and as far as you can. You won’t escape me.”

His voice carries down the passageway.

He’s right, too. I don’t get far, and I know I won’t escape when another man—this one masked—jumps out from behind one of the columns and elbows me so hard in my face the impact knocks me out.