Revenge of the Latina Wolf

Champagne, lies, and the death that’s coming. Catalina Vega—or, as Hollywood knew her, Lucas Reed’s wife—stood at the edge of the second-floor balcony of her Beverly Hills mansion, her fingertips tracing the cool metal railing. Below, the noise of her twenty-seventh birthday party hung in the air like a layer of expensive frosting. Jazz. The clear clink of crystal. Hollow laughter. The air was thick with the smell of expensive perfume, cigars, and roasted ribs—Lucas knew she hated ribs, but his producer from Texas loved them. “Hiding up here, Cati?” Cat didn’t turn. She knew the voice. Maya Scott. Her agent. Her “sister” for ten years. Maya’s footsteps stopped softly beside her, a cold, gardenia scent cutting through the smoky air from below. “Breathing,” Cat said, a hint of exhaustion—and the East Los Angeles Spanish accent she usually worked so hard to hide—slipping into her voice. It only surfaced when she was tired. Or with Maya. “Two-thirds of the people down there wish I’d never come.” Maya chuckled, offering a champagne flute. Cat didn’t take it. “You have to get used to it, darling,” Maya’s voice was sweet as honey, yet it sent a chill skating down Cat’s spine. “This is the life you chose. Lucas’s world needs this. And you are his wife.” Wife. The word was a rusted thumbtack, pressing into the same sore spot in Cat’s heart it had for ten years. She looked down. By the pool, her husband—thirty-two-year-old Oscar winner Lucas Reed, Hollywood’s “golden standard”—was leaning in slightly, listening intently to the elderly Academy chairman beside him. His blond hair was almost blinding under the lights, his profile perfect as a marble statue. He didn’t even glance up to seek out his wife, the supposed guest of honor. Five years of marriage. Ten years of knowing him. She’d learned to critique Burgundy wines, to smile appropriately from the front row at Paris Fashion Week, to bleach and dye the thick, dark-brown curls she’d inherited from her mother into the platinum shade Lucas preferred. She’d stuffed herself into a mold called “Mrs. Reed,” sanding down every rough edge—her accent, her roots, her entire history as the daughter of a cleaning lady. All to be worthy of him. Or rather, worthy of the role he needed her to play. “I’m just tired, Maya,” Cat whispered, more to herself. Tired of being the pretty accessory. Tired of the tabloids’ cruel headlines: “How the Latina Gold-Digger Climbed the Ladder.” Tired of how, at every event requiring a couple’s appearance, Lucas’s gaze always lingered longer on his “muse”—the ethereal, talented Vivian Lane. Most tired of all was the fact that her stupid, foolish heart still tripped over his occasional, frosty glance. “Hey, look at this.” Maya suddenly moved closer, holding up her phone. The screen’s cold light washed over Cat’s face. A TMZ alert from three minutes ago: [EXCLUSIVE] Lucas Reed & Vivian Lane’s Mexican Getaway? Insider: “They’ve been ‘discussing the script’ in Cancun for a week!” The attached photo was blurry but unmistakable: Lucas’s tall frame, Vivian leaning close, her wide-brimmed hat nearly touching his shoulder. Ocean waves, sunset. An intimacy that stole the breath from Cat’s lungs. Time of posting: 4 PM today. It was now 9 PM. Her birthday party had been in full swing for two hours. Lucas had arrived on time, wearing his signature, impeccably perfect smile. Cat’s breath hitched. Her blood seemed to freeze in her veins. “Fake news,” Maya said briskly, swiping the screen away, her tone light. “Those paparazzi are just making up stories again. Lucas is right here, isn’t he? He threw this party for you.” For her. Cat watched the man downstairs. He was accepting a whiskey from a waiter, clinking glasses with a bald studio head, his smile measured as if drawn with a ruler. Did he even remember it was her birthday? Or had Maya reminded him, the PR team planned it, and he was just fulfilling a schedule, like another movie promo stop? “Maya,” Cat heard her own voice, distant and thin. “Do you remember when we first met?” Seventeen, fresh out of community high school, selling popcorn at the run-down cinema on the corner. Maya was the intern then, trailing a talent scout looking for “exotic faces.” She’d bought Cat a cheap coffee, said in broken Spanish: “You deserve better, Catalina.” Ten years. Maya was silent for a moment. When she spoke again, her voice had dropped, taking on a strange, cloying softness Cat had never heard before. “Of course I remember, Cati. I remember everything about you. How naive you were. How easily you trusted. How… generous.” Cat wanted to pull away, but Maya suddenly grasped her hand. The grip was strong, nails digging almost painfully into Cat’s skin. “Come with me,” Maya said, pulling her deeper onto the balcony. It was darker here, the railing lower. Below was not the soft blue of the pool, but the hard, unforgiving marble edge of the patio. “I have something to say. Just to you. Just us.” The night wind turned colder, lifting Cat’s platinum hair. At the roots, a stubborn inch of dark brown showed through, like a truth fighting to break free. “What do you want to say?” Cat asked, a thread of instinctive alarm tightening in her chest. Maya didn’t answer immediately. She released Cat’s hand, turned, her back to the dazzling light below. Shadows swallowed her face, only her eyes glinting oddly in the dimness. “I want to say…” Maya began in Spanish, slow, deliberate, savoring each syllable, “…you’ve done well enough, Catalina. Too well.” Cat took a step back. The low railing pressed against the small of her back. “Well enough that Lucas thinks you’ll always be there, no matter how he ignores you. Well enough that Vivian thinks stealing your husband is as easy as taking candy from a baby.” Maya took a step forward, her voice dropping to a serpent’s hiss. “Well enough that I think… it’s time I took over everything you’ll leave behind.” “Maya, you—” “That supporting role you lost last year? Vivian had her sugar daddy pull the strings. Your mother suddenly getting fired from that hotel last month? Because ‘someone’ reported her for stealing—an anonymous call I made, Cati.” Cat’s blood ran cold. A scream lodged in her throat, trapped in a vise of horror. “Your brother’s college scholarship had issues, right? That was me too. A little tweak.” Maya’s smile bloomed in the shadows, beautiful and horrifying. “You were so busy learning French, busy maintaining a twenty-two-inch waist, busy waiting for a man who never came home. You never had time to notice what was really happening, did you?” The railing’s chill seeped through the thin silk of her dress, into her bones. “And Lucas…” Maya tilted her head girlishly. “He knows. About everything Vivian and I do. He even hinted that as long as you ‘behaved,’ he didn’t care. To him, Catalina, you were always just a… PR contract. A living certificate proving he had a heart, a sense of responsibility, that he wasn’t a racist.” Contract. The word finally shattered the last pane of self-deceiving glass around Cat’s heart. The fifty-page document the night before the wedding five years ago. Lost in a fantasy of love, encouraged by Maya’s gentle urging, she’d signed without reading a word. “Why…?” Cat’s voice was the sound of breaking glass. “Why?” Maya repeated, as if it were a fascinating question. “Because you’re in the way, darling. My way. Without you, I’m Lucas Reed’s most trusted partner. Vivian Lane’s sole agent. I’d own the next decade of Hollywood. And you?” She moved closer again, so close Cat could smell the faint, sweet champagne on her breath. Her hand came up, landing with deceptive gentleness on Cat’s shoulder. “You’ll just be a soon-forgotten tragic footnote. A pathetic Latina girl who tried to climb too high and fell.” Cat tried to struggle, but Maya’s hand was an iron clamp. This woman who worked out four times a week was far stronger than she looked. “Goodnight, Catalina.” It wasn’t a push. It was a fluid, precise, premeditated motion. Cat felt an irresistible force on her shoulder, her body instantly off-balance, falling backward. The railing only came to her waist. In the split second before the fall, she saw the perfect, sweet smile snap back onto Maya’s face, a mask never removed. She saw Maya quickly pull Cat’s phone from her own small clutch—the phone Cat distinctly remembered leaving charging in the bedroom. Maya’s fingers flew over the screen. Then the phone was tossed, casually, camera facing out, into the soil of a large potted plant on the balcony corner. A tiny red light glowed on it. The live stream indicator. Time stretched, thin and slow. Wind roared in her ears. A diamond earring scraped her cheek, sharp. The terrified shouts and screams below grew distant, distorted. She watched the gorgeous chandelier rush away, saw the cold marble ground rushing up to meet her. Not the pool. The hard, iron-like marble edge. Crunch. The sound of her own bones breaking. Muffled, yet terribly clear. Agony flooded her, a white-hot tide drowning all thought. She lay on her side, warm liquid gushing from beneath her, spreading rapidly across the white marble in a sticky, crimson pool. Every attempt to breathe brought the splintering pain of ribs piercing organs and the metallic tang of blood. Her vision swam, then darkened at the edges, fracturing into splinters of light and shadow. Chaotic footsteps. More screams. “Call an ambulance!” “Oh God!” Then she saw him. Lucas Reed burst through the crowd, his face a shade of pale she’d never seen. His blue eyes—the ones countless magazines called “holding entire galaxies”—were now wide with pure, undiluted panic. He was running toward her. Cat’s fingers twit