Javier’s distant figure led Lars and Milo to the villa and through a different set of hallways until they arrived at a study. Lars gave a low whistle, which Finn didn’t seem to appreciate. The study was filled with modern furniture and a state-of-the-art Apple computer. The capo sat on the office chair that looked as unused as the computer and the sleek desk it occupied.

For the first time, Lars could take a good look at the man. He had dust in his hair and on his clothes. Some blood on his shirt. But otherwise, he looked uninjured.

Javier flicked a hand and said, “Let me see it.”

Lars sank down in one of the chairs arranged in front of the desk and looked over at Finn. The man wore a scowl as he handed over that perfumed envelope, like he was loathe to close the distance to hand it to Javier.

Milo was about ten seconds away from ending El Guapo. That fierce protectiveness he’d sensed the first time Finn and Cora had been in the same room together—the one Milo had given him when he’d been standing over Cora’s hogtied body in the cabin—that possessiveness had transformed into something animal.

Mine.

There was silence in the room while Martin read. Perhaps he read it a few times, because there wasn’t really that much on that folded note.

“¡Traidor!” Javier spat, crumbling the note in his hand and tossing it across the room. “Me cago en la madre que te parió!” he uttered with feeling, and then looked disgusted at himself for speaking out loud.

His furious eyes settled first on Lars, and then Finn. People had a habit of addressing Milo when the two of them were together. Perhaps it was the fucking alpha wolf vibes the guy gave off. Something he was fine with, because you could figure out a lot about a person when they weren’t focusing on you.

Like Javier’s fear. He certainly didn’t have the usual tells; shaking hands or a stiff, defensive posture. But his mouth quivered and he moved too fast, as if barely containing the urgency bursting through him. He also began twisting a ring—one with a large ruby—around his finger with his thumb.

He wanted this issue resolved. And Lars already knew he would be willing to sacrifice Cora to keep his haven safe. Because, as much as he wanted her to be his right hand for whatever nefarious purposes he’d schemed up in his megalomaniac brain, she was expendable at the same time. A pawn in this chess game of life he played. And while pawns were valuable, they were also easy to sacrifice.

Javier looked past them to the pair of men that trailed Javier everywhere he went. “Search her room.”

One of the men disappeared, the other shifted his stance and adjusted his grip on his AK47.

“You won’t send her,” Milo said, sitting forward. “I won’t allow it.”

Javier laughed, but it wasn’t a pleasant sound. “You won’t allow it? You have no say as to how I operate my cartel.”

Lars was sure he wasn’t the only one that heard ‘my’ instead of ‘our’. The letter was proof Cora’s father was alive.

But what Javier had said earlier came back to him. Knowing where El Guapo lived didn’t matter. If Javier was killed, the cartel would split and form new, smaller, possibly even more violent cartels in its place. In effect, creating even more competition for rival cartels.

“What’s this archive he’s talking about?” Lars asked.

Milo glanced over at him, a brief crease between his brows as if wondering why he hadn’t thought to ask the question.

Because he was too close to this. Too close to Cora. And whenever she came up, Milo’s brain went soft. Sure, he’d protect her like a bear with a cub, but he wouldn’t be winning any fucking spelling bees at the same time.

Good thing he was here. He could still keep a cool head. Try and figure out what seemed like a very convoluted time bomb ticking above all their heads.

Javier didn’t seem keen to answer the question. He put his fist against his mouth, and studied Lars for a few seconds with a vague smile on his face. Then his hand twitched, and he laid his fingertips on the desk, sliding them around as he spoke. His rings scraped over that wood and made Lars’s hackles stand up.

“Financier. This was Antonio’s role in the cartel.”

“So he handles the money,” Milo said, sounding irritated.

“No.” Javier tutted him with a finger. “He never came in contact with the money. This is important. But he oversaw the laundering operations. The false fronts. The…” Javier’s fingers flicked and his eyes wandered around the room for a second as if he was searching for something. Then they settled back on Lars. “In-betweeners.”

“The what?” Lars asked with a frown. “In-betwee—” he cut himself off with a laugh. “That sounds like a fucking kid’s movie.”

If Javier was offended by the comparison, he didn’t show it. He seemed to have gotten hold of his emotions now that the dust—literally—had settled. “They are the people who connect everything.” Javier paused, touching his lip with a thumb, and then added, “like grease.” He interlocked his fingers, jerking them hard enough to make his rings clang together. “Without them, nothing turns.”

Lars supposed people like that could exist. Their sole purpose to convey information or instructions from point A to point B so that never the twain would meet.

“And this is what ‘Z’ wants?”

“Zachary West,” Javier supplied, but with a mouth twisted with condescension. “Fucking ‘El Lobo.’” And then he seemed utterly please with himself at the analogy, going so far as to smooth his fingers down either side of his face.

Lars didn’t look away from Martin’s face. Something toxic and unpredictable swirled in his eyes. He might have had a short fuse, but it wasn’t just a stick of dynamite it would set off. No, it would detonate something nuclear that would leave the surrounding area dead with radioactive fallout.

“What happened to Cora?” Milo asked.

A brief flash of confusion, then irritation, immediately smoothed over with a glib smile. “Her horse threw her.”

“She said she fell.”

“I wasn’t there,” Javier said calmly. “I was racing back to see about this—” he waved a hand “—message of yours.”

“You left her—” Milo began, his voice at that rasping edge where Lars could already hear bones breaking in the future.

“How badly injured is she?” Lars cut in.

“Pah. Scrapes and bruises,” Javier said with a wave. “She may need a few stitches in her knee, but she’s far from death’s door yet.”

That, ‘yet’, seemed to make Milo’s hackles rise even more. “Does she know about any of this?” he rasped.

“What?” Javier laughed.

“Her father. That he’s still alive?”

“There was no time,” Javier said simply.

Lars looked down at his wristwatch. It was almost noon. “So, we have a little over five hours, depending how far out those co-ords are.” His eyes scanned the study, hunting for the note Javier had tossed away. “We should put together a team, someone to negotiate and handle—”

“There is no negotiation,” Javier said calmly. “He will not get his hands on the archives.”

“Cora’s father will die,” Finn said.

“That wealth of his comes with a price,” Javier said, but quietly as if his mind was on something else entirely.

“Jesus, don’t sound so broken up about it,” Lars said under his breath.

Javier slammed a fist into the table and rushed to his feet. On instinct, Lars and Finn both drew their pistols from their holsters. In all the confusion when they’d arrived, no one had disarmed them.

Finn became acutely aware of the sound of assault rifles being cocked behind him. He froze, as did Lars.

Javier took a step up to Lars, putting their faces an inch away from each other. “You will not insinuate I have anything but deep concern for Antonio Rivera again. Do I make myself clear?”

If Javier had grabbed at Lars, or shaken a fist, the threat would have been nullified. Instead, it looked as if he was holding himself back from violence. A show for the pair by the door, or was Javier truly concerned for Cora’s father?

And here he’d thought Martin would have welcomed Antonio out of the way so his daughter could take his place. A puppet for the puppet master to play with.

It was the only conclusion he’d been able to draw so far.

“Now,” Javier went on, “You have my thanks.” He glanced down at himself as if noticing for the first time how dirty he was and began dusting himself off. “But this is cartel business. Your services,” and he sneered as if he hadn’t just offered them a job less than an hour ago, “are no longer required.” Then he waved an indolent hand toward his guards. They left the room, but not without giving Javier a frown.

Milo was up in an instant. “If you think for one fucking second I’m leaving—”

Lars grabbed Milo’s bicep. It writhed under his grip as if the man was holding back a punch with every ounce of willpower he possessed. Just because Javier’s guards weren’t in sight, didn’t mean they wouldn’t dash right back if they thought Javier was being overpowered.

“She won’t tell you where it is,” Milo said.

“Excuse me?” Javier put his head to the side, eyes wide as if he couldn’t believe Milo had the nerve to challenge him.

“Cora.” Milo stepped forward so that they were now nose and nose. “Even if she has the archives, or knows where they are, she won’t give them to you.”

Lars took a step back—not only to get out of the way of the two, but so that he could snag the envelope Javier had left on the table. He slid his phone from his pocket and took a discrete shot of the ransom note as it lay open on his palm.

Javier let out a laugh. “She’s my goddaughter. She will do whatever the—”

“Think about it,” Milo said, leaning closer still. Javier stiffened, but didn’t shrink back, which was pretty fucking impressive. “If her father had given her something so valuable, so important…why wouldn’t she have told you about it? Why wouldn’t she have handed over cartel documents the moment she set her pretty brown eyes on you?”

“Antonio would not lie.”

“And Zachary?” Milo murmured. “Do you think he’s an honest man?”

Javier remained silent, but his dark eyes darted over Milo’s face as if he was trying to find the lie in his words.

But there weren’t any. What Milo said made a shit load of sense. Either Cora didn’t trust Javier as much as she’d claimed…or her father hadn’t given her anything…or Zachary was lying. But whether Javier had come to the same conclusion or not, it didn’t look like he was budging. He met Milo’s glare with one of his own. Silent, both as unmoving as a pair of very dissimilar statues.

“Milo,” Lars murmured.

The man subsided, but with trembling reluctance. They both took a step toward the study door, Milo moving as if he was trapped in maple syrup.

Javier watched them for a moment, a crease between his eyebrows, and then his face lit up like a goddamn Christmas tree.

“Let’s ask Elle, shall we? If she doesn’t have the archives, then you will find them for me.”

“What the fuck makes you think we’ll suddenly become your bloodhounds?” Milo asked.

Javier smiled at them, and then headed for the study door. “Because, once I have them, Eleodora will then be free to leave.”

Lars’s chest grew tight. Free to leave? Which meant—

He put out his hand as Milo surged after Javier. Beating the man to a pulp wouldn’t help. It would likely just make him more unreasonable. Milo must have realized that, because he took a step back and slammed his fist onto the table hard enough to make the computer’s keyboard rattle.

“Care to join me, gentlemen?” came Javier’s infuriatingly smug voice from the hall.

Angel forced his eyes open when a sound echoed down the dank passageway. He pushed into a sit, wincing as his muscles complained. Javier’s cartel men had put bruises on his bruises, and there was something terribly wrong with his left ribcage. Every breath came with a horrendous price.

He slid a little closer to the grates, and then grabbed the metal to drag himself the last foot.

Voices. Footsteps.

Angel wedged his face between the grates of his cell, trying to see as far into the passage as far as possible. Eventually, a pair of silhouettes appeared. The main gate leading from the cells was opened, and a pair of men walked inside, trays in their hands.

Plastic slid over concrete. Then the men came up to his cell and pushed a plate through the bottom of the grate.

Angel ignored it. He clung to the grates, squinting to make out the features on his jailer’s face.

“Please! I must speak with El Guapo!” Angel called out in Spanish.

His jailer paused. “You must?” The man let out a cruel laugh. “You must do nothing but rot down here.”

“I have information for Don Javier.”

“Information?” This seemed to intrigue the man. He stepped closer as his friend moved to the next cell and crouched to slide a plate to the prisoner. “What kind of information?”

Angel shifted a little, trying not to grimace at the stab of pain that brought. “It is for Don Javier’s ears.”

Miguel glared at him through the grates, and then left with a wave for his friend to follow him out.

“Please!”

Angel heard a snatch of conversation before they were out of earshot.

“…too busy to—”

“What if he knows something of use? Little rats like making friends. If he thinks jefe will go easy on him…”

“Fine. But jefe’s going out early tomorrow. We’ll need to tell him tonight…”

In the distance, a gate slammed shut. Angel flinched and sank to the cold floor.

He had to get out of this cell. Had to find Eleodora again. If he didn’t, Zachary would do unspeakable things to his brother. Which, he’d said, he would record and force Angel to watch. What would happen to him after that… the wolf had left that to his imagination.