With Cora sitting so far away, he didn’t even know why the fuck he’d bothered to come. She must have felt some of his frustration—she kept glancing at him from under lowered lashes when she must have thought he wasn’t looking. But he was always watching. Would always be watching. He’d been a fool, thinking his obsession with her would end once she was safe. Because where could a cartel princess ever be safe? Unless she renounced her family name forever, forged a new identity far away from cartel business…she was destined to be a part of its violence until she was murdered in cold blood one clear summer’s day.

“Fantastic!” Javier called out from the other end of the table, forcing conversation to lull for a brief second.

Cora looked uncomfortable with the sudden interest in their side of the table, and ducked her head as she ate some of her fruit salad.

He’d never know what was so fantastic—he was leaving.

“Coming?” he asked, downing the last of his coffee and leaving his mostly uneaten piece of toast behind on his plate.

“Seriously, do you run on fumes?” Lars muttered. He’d only just finished his first plate of food, and had been staring at the table as if wondering what he hadn’t tasted yet. “Just let me get some of those amazing looking muffins—”

“See you in Albuquerque then.” Finn turned, and was almost through the archway that led into the villa’s courtyard when Javier called after him.

“Mr. Finn! Mr. Eklund! Please, a moment of your time before you leave. If you’d be as kind.”

The sudden urge to correct the man who took such great pleasure in correcting others was near impossible to resist. As was the urge to just keep walking.

We don’t want to leave, his beast hissed at him. Not if we can’t take her with. We’re not done with her yet.

His beast should have been sated. He shook away the voice, its amoral insinuations, and turned to Javier. The man rose and waved toward a small gazebo on the other side of the swimming pool.

Lars was a step behind him as he followed Javier to the ornate structure. He could feel eyes on him—several men at the table were watching their progress across the swimming pool’s paving stones—and a pair of them left half-eaten plates behind to casually follow along behind Finn and Lars.

Because Javier always needed protection, didn’t he?

The gazebo had been built to afford whoever inside it an unobstructed view of both the swimming pool and the sweeping lands of Javier’s compound. The man stood surveying that endless terrain, favoring them with a wide, amiable smile when they stepped into the gazebo’s shade.

“Please, take a seat.” Javier waved, and Lars immediately slunk to the closest cushioned seat and slumped in it.

Finn paused, and then perched judiciously on the bench opposite. Javier walked between them, taking one of their shoulders in each hand.

“You will forever be in my debt for returning mi reinita to safety,” Javier said. As if she was his daughter, not Swan’s. Finn purposefully smoothed his frown, trying to give the man nothing in return for his strange remark.

“Just doing our job,” Lars said, corners of his mouth up. If the man didn’t want you to know what he was thinking, he just turned on one of his ready smiles and you’d have no idea you were walking into a knife until its blade scraped along your spine.

“Yes, but…” Javier trailed off, and then sank down on the bench beside Lars. First, he fixed Finn with a long stare, and then an unreadable glance for Lars beside him. “When Antonio contacted me that night and told me he’d hired someone to replace Bailey…I didn’t know what to think. Here he entrusts his only daughter to a complete stranger. I know Antonio would not have selected you as her bodyguard if you did not have a stellar record, but there was always the thought…” Javier tapped his temple with a dark finger. “Everyone has a price, yes?”

“I would never—” Finn began in a tight, rough voice, but Javier’s short burst of a laugh cut him off.

“Of course. You would never. Never, ever.” Javier said all this through a smile as fake as Lars’s. “But the thought did cross my mind. As it must have Antonio’s.”

Javier nodded a few times, glancing between them as if considering something monumental.

Finn itched to be away. The time he’d had to himself, even the distance at the patio table, they’d all helped to pull him out of Cora’s spell. But the longer he spent here, within sight of her, the more his determination to leave wavered.

“I’ve seen you with her,” Javier went on in a low musing. “You…cherish her. Like a precious gift.” He formed his hands as if he was holding something. A crystal ball, maybe. Or one of those big fucking bird eggs. “That—” he tutted a finger at Finn and sat back on the bench, sliding his arms out to either side along the armrest. “That is something that cannot be bought. That kind of loyalty is what I look for in a sicario.”

A cartel hitman? Finn shifted, giving Lars a circumspect look that Lars missed because he was grinning at Javier like the man had lost his mind and this was the best entertainment he’d had all week.

“I had some of my men asking around the past week,” Javier said. “So far, the only lead they have on Antonio is the suspicion that it was in fact Plata o Plomo—” he spoke the name with unveiled disgust “—who took him captive. Where, they have been unable to deduce. The tracker he wears has been disabled. And there were only two eye witnesses at the funeral. Both of whom turned up dead the next day.”

“Do they think he’s still in Mexico?” Lars asked.

“No one can say for sure.” Javier looked away, and ran a hand through his hair while still resting his elbow on the back of the bench. “I am told they are doing everything they can to find him. To bring him back…” Javier’s face hardened then. “Whether he’s dead or alive.”

Silence filtered between them until Lars sat forward and half-twisted to face Javier. “So what, you want us to go look for him? Cross the border and go interrogate some ‘spics the good old-fashioned way?”

And he sounded as if he was ready to leave in the next hour. Lars, unlike him, enjoyed violence more than any man should. Finn detested it, because there was always the chance it would get out of hand. That he’d slip—just for a second—and his beast would take control. And that he’d never find the reigns to his own goddamn soul again.

Javier laughed. “Not at all. My men can get into places you two gringos could not dream.” Javier pressed his lips together, shifting in his seat as if he hadn’t been happy with the word ‘gringo’s slipping into his speech. “No, I need something else from you. Something I am sure you would find very agreeable.”

His eyes sparkled with knowing. Like they shared a secret.

“Eleodora has a long, arduous path ahead of her.”

The statement came out of nowhere. Lars and Finn shared a quick look between them, and he could see his own confusion mirrored in the man’s eyes.

“Ominous much?” Lars said.

“If Antonio is not recovered,” Javier said simply, with a twist of his hand as if the man’s fate had already been decided, “then she will inherit his position in the cartel.”

Behind them, someone jumped into the pool. A volley of laughs and at least one giggle reached them before Finn gripped his hands in a fist and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “His position?” he asked quietly.

“El Calacas Vivo works like—” Javier waved a limp hand, as if searching for the right word “—a monarchy, I believe it is called. Power is passed from father to son…in this instance, father to daughter.”

Again, that cold light slid into Javier’s eyes, but as soon as he smiled it disappeared. “Antonio should have tried for a son. His Naomie should have born as many children as it would have taken for that to happen.” Javier’s mouth formed a line. “But he gave up. After the two girls, he didn’t want to bring any more children into this world. After his wife and daughter were butchered, he turned into a scared little rabbit, bolting into America to hide.”

Finn’s hands tightened around themselves until his knuckles went white. Even Lars had gone silent, his body rigid as he listened to Javier’s words. He couldn’t understand how what Swan had done was any different to Javier. Wasn’t the capo hiding here, in his palace, in the middle of no man’s land? If anything, he’d dug himself even deeper, like a rat in its nest.

“He ran away—” Javier mimicked someone running with his fingers “—to America. Sought comfort and safety in her rich bosom. Even when I told him it wouldn’t help. He quit the cartel, but that lasted less than a month.”

Javier sat forward, matching Finn’s posture. “You see money, Mr. Finn, when you have as much of it as Antonio, is like a sickness. An addiction. The more you have, the more you want. He kept telling himself he’d stop, but he never could.”

“Cora won’t be part of it,” Finn said. His voice rang out dead and cold. He almost added, “I know she won’t,” but something told him to seal his lips before those words could leave him.

“Yes?” Javier cocked an eyebrow, and settled back again, once again relaxed. “You think she will toss away her life of luxury and be satisfied with a minimum wage job and a shitty apartment?”

Javier waited for Finn to answer, as if that question was far from rhetorical or theoretical. But when Finn opened his mouth to answer, the man cut in.

“She won’t,” Javier said. “Eleodora was born with a golden spoon in her mouth.”

“Silver,” Lars muttered under his breath, and Javier threw him a brief, scathing glare.

“You think she wants a target on her back her entire life?” Finn asked. “Why would anyone want to live like that?”

“Because it’s worth it.” A flick of Javier’s hand took in the villa, the pool where Ana and two men frolicked, apparently in a game of tag—fuck the thirty-minute rule—and the massive stretch of land behind them.

“No, it’s not.” Finn began to stand, but Javier’s voice halted him.

“She doesn’t have a choice.” That previously warm voice, oozing with courtesy, turned hard. “Antonio’s seat is empty. And she’s next in line—”

“For the throne?” Lars cut in with a laugh. His smiling green eyes met Finn’s, lips turned up in a grin as if he could just imagine Queen Cora and the thought made him want to roll on the floor laughing.

“To sit at my right hand,” Javier said.

Was he fucking joking? Finn’s forehead crumpled, despite how he tried to keep a neutral expression.

“And do what?” he asked slowly.

“She’ll do what her father did.” Javier put his head to the side. “Which is cartel business, and none of yours.”

Finn opened his mouth to tell him exactly how much it was his business when Javier held up a finger.

“But…” He tapped Lars on the knee, and then pointed casually toward Finn. “I have an offer. For both of you fine gentlemen.”

Finn could see Lars forming a question, but spoke before he could. “No.”

Javier gave him a smile. “But you have not heard my proposal yet.”

“I don’t get into bed with snakes,” Finn said.

“Just with Eleodora?”

And there it was. Finn shifted on his chair, drawing a breath deep enough to stretch his lungs to their limit. Javier had known all along.

“Just like cartel business, that’s none of yours,” Lars said.

Always so quick of tongue, was Lars. Finn hated it most times, but there were times when it saved him the effort of speaking. Like now, when he was concentrating on keeping his creaking fists well away from Javier’s smug fucking face.

“Oh, but it is most certainly my business.” Javier sat forward with a grim smile, lacing his hands and letting them dangle between his knees. “That is my goddaughter you two are fucking.”