As soon as Lars closed the door behind Neo, Cora clapped her hands over her eyes. Scorching tears squeezed their way out of her lids, despite how hard she tried to keep them back.

“It’s good you didn’t show emotion,” Finn said, his voice moving as he came to sit beside her in Neo’s chair. “Weakness will always be exploited.”

“Weakness?” Cora tugged her hands away, giving Finn an incredulous glare. “He fed—” her voice broke “—he fed her to some animal.”

“Pretty sure it was a lion,” Lars said, taking the seat to the left of Cora.

Her gaze switched to him, now wide eyed with shock. “How…how do you—”

“He overheard Gabriella and Bailey talking,” Finn said. “They were in Javier’s zoo.”

“Should you still call it a zoo if there was only one animal?” Lars asked, and then crossed his arms over his chest when Finn threw him a glare. “Jesus, just asking.”

Cora wiped her eyes with the heels of her palms and sat back in her chair. “So that went well,” she muttered.

When her men had suggested this meeting with Neo, she’d known it would end in a shouting match. From the few brief encounters she’d had with Neo, she knew he was far from a gracious man, but she hadn’t expected his overwhelming anger.

“He blames me,” she murmured.

“He should blame Javier,” Finn said, reaching for her hand.

“But I killed him.” She moved her hand away. “Now there isn’t anyone else to be pissed at.”

“I’m more worried about the fact he made it pretty fucking clear he’s going to fight her for control of the cartel,” Lars said, directing the comment at Finn.

“Which puts us in a tight spot,” Finn replied, looking straight at Lars. “If he refuses to annul the—”

“I’m down here,” she said coldly, glancing first at Finn, and then Lars.

The men looked at her. Lars had the decency to look abashed, but Finn just regarded her with that speculative look he’d been wearing around her lately.

“Look, it’s all about trust, right?” Lars said, drawing her eyes reluctantly back to him. He gave her a small shrug. “You gotta figure out who you can trust.”

“And Neo shouldn’t be on that list,” Finn said.

“Which is something I’ll decide,” Cora said, giving Finn a curt, thin-lipped glance. “But you’re right—I don’t trust him.”

“And Bailey?” Finn asked quietly.

“You know the answer to that,” she murmured, looking down at her hands as she twisted her fingers together.

“Was it your heart or your head that decided that?” Lars asked.

“Both,” she said, glancing at him. “He did what he had to, to protect the people he loved.”

“And now he loves you, apparently,” Finn said.

There was venom on that last word. Turning, she grabbed Finn’s hand and squeezed it until he stared her in the eyes.

“Javier’s gone,” she said.

Finn’s blue eyes narrowed a little, but he remained silent.

“Which means you can leave any time you want to.”

A flinch touched his face, and his lips thinned.

“I won’t tolerate jealousy. Not from you—” she turned and looked at Lars “—or from you.”

She sat back, hugged herself, and glanced between the two men. “I don’t want you to leave, but I don’t want you to feel obligated to stay, either.”

For a moment, the only sound in the room was the aquarium bubbling behind her. Lars stared at it, but Finn’s eyes were fixed on her. When she turned to him, she expected anger. Or, at least, nothing short of frustration. After all, she was asking him to share her with two other guys. One was his best friend—and she wasn’t sure if that made it better or worse—and the other pretty much an enemy. And, if not an enemy, then definitely a stranger.

But how could she explain to them what she felt? How her heart sang when she looked at Finn, filled with warmth whenever Lars was around, and felt ready to burst when Bailey held her?

She’d like to think this was all some small recompense for everything she’d suffered as a child. Hell…maybe there was more suffering to come in payment for these hedonistic desires.

But if she’d learned anything in the past two months of her life, it was that death was as close to anyone as their own shadow, and it followed them as religiously, ready to claim them when the last light trickled from their lives.

“I don’t expect an answer now,” Cora said, when neither man looked willing to speak. “But I need you to know where I stand.” She tilted her head toward Lars. “And thank you. I think I finally got what you were saying about…taking charge.”

“That was you?” Finn said, his voice tight.

Lars grinned, but it had a forced look to it. “Did you want Cora to start whipping us in the bedroom too?”

Finn made an unhappy sound in the back of his throat, but didn’t argue.

Cora stared at him, her lips parting. “You don’t think I’ve got it in me, do you?”

Finn sighed heavily, and rubbed his eyelids with his fingers. “Cora, I—”

“You think I’ll fuck this up.”

“Language, young lady,” Lars murmured, but he sounded as if he was enjoying the fact that her attention had turned back to Finn. She gave him the finger without looking away from Finn.

“Be honest, Finn. You think I can’t handle being capo.”

When Finn took his fingers away from his eyes, he looked tired. Worn down. Almost resigned. “I’ll stay at your side, no matter—”

“Answer me!” She got to her feet, taking a step closer to him. “You just said I have to figure out who to trust. How can I trust you if you don’t believe in me?”

His face hardened. Slowly, he rose, which meant she had to crane her head to look up at him. It wasn’t his fault—he was just huge—but it felt like he’d done it on purpose.

Trying to look down your nose at someone didn’t work when they were more than a foot taller than you.

“If you’d asked me two days ago, I would have said no.”

Her stomach grew tight. Her mouth opened, ready with a retort, but Finn slid his fingers around the back of her neck and brushed the pad of his thumb over her lips.

“But that was before you stabbed that motherfucker through the heart on your own wedding day. And then sliced his throat.”

“Don’t forget about the eye,” Lars added. “She had that knife through his eyeball like a Margarita olive on a toothpick.”

Relief washed through her like a warm champagne wave. Her lips trembled into a smile, and she nestled her head into Finn’s cupped hand.

“So yes, Dona Cora,” Finn murmured. “I believe in you.”

Her vision became blurry, but she blinked away her tears before they could fall. Her chest was so tight, it felt as if it would split open. She tried saying something, but her throat had closed.

Finn must have noticed—he kissed her.

She swooned against him, sliding her hands up his chest and gripping his shoulders. He hoisted her up, urging her legs around his waist, and moved his lips to her ear.

“But just because I believe in you doesn’t mean I’ll always agree with you,” he whispered.

She drew back, glaring at him. “But I’m—”

“Quit while you’re ahead,” Lars chimed in.

She glanced over her shoulder. He’d come up behind her, but stood a few feet away with his arms crossed over his chest.

“But you said—” Cora began.

“You make the decisions,” Lars cut in, “but at least let us advise you. We’ve got a few years on you, bunny.”

She should have reprimanded him for calling her that, but she could feel pride coming off him in waves. So she smiled and reached for him. Finn shifted her weight, keeping her hoisted with one meaty arm as he held out the other for Lars.

A cocky grin sprang up on his face. “Aw, you guys!” He charged forward, gripping them in a fierce embrace that made Cora squeal.

He pressed his lips to Finn’s and then ducked his head to kiss her too.

The door opened, and they all three turned to it.

Bailey’s silhouette stood outlined against the late afternoon sun filtering into the villa’s garden. The hand he’d used to push open the door dropped to his side.

“I’ll come back later,” he said in a thick voice.

“What? No.” Cora wriggled until Finn let her slide to the ground. She went around him and headed for Bailey, who was already drawing the door closed behind him. She caught it with her hand and pulled it open again.

He had his face turned away, but there was a deep sadness etched in his eyes and on the unhappy curve of his mouth.

“Hey…are you okay?” She grabbed his arm, trying to keep him from walking away.

He paused and then looked back at her. “I thought I was interrupting.”

“You’re not.” She gave him a small smile. “Come inside.” Taking a step back, she held out her hand to him.

Bailey’s eyes flickered over her face, and then behind her. His lips twitched as if he was biting the inside of his bottom lip, and then he looked back at her. “I can come back la—”

“No. There’s a lot we need to sort out. Come on.” She took hold of his wrist and guided him back inside the conference room, closing the door behind him.

Lars and Finn had taken their seats on either side of the head of the table. As she led Bailey back inside, Lars pulled out a chair beside him and waved graciously toward it, giving Bailey a shark-like smile.

“Ignore him,” Cora said, glaring at Lars. “His bark’s worse that his bite.”

Lars shot her an offended look, and rocked back on his chair so he could rest his ankles on the table.

She took her seat and put her hands flat on the table in front of her. Bailey took the chair beside Lars and gave her a small frown when she turned her attention to him.

“How well did you know Gabriella?” she asked.

It took Bailey a few seconds to respond. At first, his frown deepened, but then he smoothed his face and cast a glance at Finn and Lars. “She was like a sister to me.”

Cora’s eyebrows shot up before she could control her expression. She dropped her gaze and murmured, “Oh,” while she tried to sort out suddenly muddled thoughts.

It would explain Bailey’s reaction to Neo’s news.

A cold weight settled in Cora’s stomach. She swallowed hard, pressed her palms down, and forced herself to look Bailey in the eyes.

“It’s my fault she’s dead,” Cora said.

Finn growled, and Lars hissed out a sigh as his head sank into his raised hand.

“I mean it,” she said, raising her voice as she shot the two men an angry stare. Then she turned back to Bailey. “It was because of the tracker, wasn’t it?”

Bailey shrugged, and then nodded reluctantly. “That’s all I can think.” He cleared his throat, his hands clasped together and dangling between his legs as he sat forward. “When you came back from shopping, Javier found the tracker on her car. That’s the last time I saw her.” And then he frowned at her again. “But that wasn’t your fault. How could you possibly—?”

“Because I should have told Javier where it came from.” She looked down, rubbing a finger down the bridge of her nose. “I was going to…but…”

“You threw up, hit your head, and passed out,” Lars said.

When her gaze shot to him, he shrugged and pointed to Bailey. “Hey, that’s what he said.”

“Well…I didn’t say anything,” Cora muttered. “And now—”

“Where did it come from?” Finn cut in.

She turned to him, taking a deep breath before replying. “I saw someone put it on her car.”

Obviously, something was wrong with her. The man she suspected of putting the tracker on Gabriella’s car—hi handsome face haunted her at night. But what should have been a nightmare, transformed into an erotic fantasy she never wanted to end. Each a teasingly lucid dream where he pinned her against the wall, his hand over her throat, vowing to do abominable things to her while she squirmed and yelled at him to stop.

She always woke up wet—from sweat and arousal—knowing she’d been lying. She wanted him to do all of those things to her…that and more.

Cora pushed away the thought, shifting in her chair. “There was a man, in the restaurant.” She lifted her fingers, glancing at Finn. “We stopped to eat after shopping. Some Italian place down the road.” Then she turned back to Bailey. “One of the customers, he kept staring at us.”

At her. He’d kept staring at her.

“He left before us. It was raining hard outside, but…” She ran a hand over her hair. “I think I saw him put that tracker on Gabriella’s car.”

Where she’d expected a thousand questions, she was met with utter silence. She looked at each of them, and moved her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “I know I should have said something sooner, but then it was the wedding, and—”

“It’s not your fault,” Bailey said quietly.

Her eyes were on Finn when Bailey spoke, and he must have seen the relief on her face because something changed in his expression.

“But I should have—” Cora began, spinning to face Bailey.

“Javier had threatened her before,” Bailey said in a monotone. “Over the years, I guess I became her confidant. He’d already given her two strikes during their marriage. Once, for having a miscarriage, which he claimed had been intentional.”

Cora’s skin grew cold at Bailey’s emotionless retelling. She sat back in her chair, her fingertips touching her lips as he went on.

“The second…” Bailey paused and swallowed hard enough she could see his Adam’s apple moving. “That was for refusing to fuck him. She’d been sick—flu, I think—but that never bothered the prick. That was when she arranged for Sylvia, his first mistress. A year later, when she turned forty, she introduced him to Ana.”

Cora felt bile rising in her throat. “Why didn’t she—?”

“It was dangerous for us to text. Javier kept a close watch on her cellphone, even to the calls she made. Sometimes, we had to meet each other in person, very last minute.” Bailey washed his hands over his face. “We’d find a place where we could talk—usually somewhere in Phoenix on my day off—and sometimes she wouldn’t have had time to put make up on. She often had bruises on her.”

“She should have left him,” Cora said, her voice shaking. “She had money, didn’t she? Why—”

“Because of Neo,” Bailey said quietly. “That was always her answer. She couldn’t leave Neo with Javier, because then he’d take his anger out on her son.”

The aquarium’s bubbling filter filled the silence after Bailey’s voice faded.

“Now, aren’t you so glad you killed that piece of shit?” Lars murmured.

Cora’s glanced up at the ceiling, nibbling at the inside of her lip. “Yes.” She looked down at Bailey. “But I should have done it sooner. Before he—”

A hand grasped her, and she cut off to look at Finn. “Enough,” he rasped. “It’s time to look forward, not back.”

“But—”

“This guy,” Bailey said, drawing her eyes. “You remember what he looks like?”

“A little,” she lied.

His face had been branded onto her memory. Each night, it grew more vivid and detailed. The faint scar beside his mouth. The set of his eyes. Long, untidy hair she wanted to run through her fingers.

“Brown eyes. Black hair.” She gestured at her own face. “Squarish jaw.”

“Sounds dreamy,” Lars murmured, just loud enough for her to hear.

She pointedly didn’t look his away, because if he was wearing one of his omniscient grins, she would break down and confess every dirty, filthy thought she’d had.

And that would shatter them, she knew it. They’d call her a slut, and they would be right.

“Why?” she asked, trying to force her voice out as evenly as possible.

“We should try and figure out who he is.”

“What are you thinking?” Finn asked. “Rival cartel?”

Bailey pressed his mouth into a line, shaking his head from side to side.

“The law?” Lars asked, cupping his hands behind his head and stretching in his chair. It looked about to topple over, but he didn’t seem to have a problem keeping his balance on the two back legs.

“Maybe.” Bailey looked up at her. “He didn’t say or do anything else?”

She shook her head. The fact that he’d been sketching was completely irrelevant – he could have been sketching anything.

She had no proof it was her.

“Try and remember more details. In the meantime, I’ll see if I can get hold of my guy.”

“Your guy?” Lars asked.

Bailey turned to look at Lars, hesitating before saying, “He knows someone in the DEA’s office.”

“You know a guy that knows a guy in the DEA?” Lars cocked a pale eyebrow at him. “My, my, my, aren’t you full of surprises?”

Bailey blushed.

He actually blushed.

Cora’s lips squirmed into a smile. She could remember almost everything of that hedonistic afternoon they’d spent in Javier’s room right before the wedding. Bailey taking instruction from Lars had been such an unexpected—and fucking hot—surprise. Was that what Bailey was thinking about?

And then her cheeks burned, because her insides were writhing at the memory of Bailey going down on her, lapping her with tongue as—

“Head in the game, people,” Finn said. “Who’s this connection?”

Cora cleared her throat, giving Finn a quick, guilty glance before focusing on Bailey again with a purposeful frown.

“Does it matter?” Bailey asked, sitting back and crossing his hands over his chest.

“Oh, this is gonna be good.” Lars’s chair thumped back onto all four legs as he rested an elbow on the table and his chin in his hand.

Bailey looked up at the ceiling as if in silent prayer, and raised his hands. “Look, my family’s always had ties with them. It doesn’t mean anything.”

Lars clapped his hands together and let out a laugh. “Fuck, it keeps getting better.”

“Shut it, Lars,” Finn said.

Lars sat back in his chair, giving Finn a wide smile and a mock salute before turning back to Bailey.

“Bailey?” Cora asked, sitting forward in her chair.

“It’s no big deal,” Bailey said. Then, carefully, he added, “I know a guy in the Irish mafia. And he knows someone in the DEA’s office. Someone they’ve paid to look the other way, I guess.”

“The mafia?” Cora said, her voice at least three octaves higher than usual. Finn let out a rough snort, and Lars cackled like a witch before Cora thumped a fist on the table to quieten them down.

“The mafia?” she said again, when Bailey still hadn’t said anything.

“I said it’s not a big deal.”

“Do they know—?” Cora pointed her fingers between her and Bailey. “Me, us, the cartel?”

“No!” Bailey sat forward in a rush, holding out a hand to her across the table. “Cora, no. Why…I would never—”

“You’ve been branded a turncoat, Bailey,” Lars said, mirth still evident in his voice. “Gonna take a while for the stink to rub off.”

Bailey’s mouth went into a line, and he pointed a fist at Lars before facing Cora again. “I never—”

“Answer the question,” Finn said.

The quietness of his voice made her turn to him. He wore no expression, but his jaw bunched.

“I’m sure they’re aware of you,” Bailey said carefully. “I mean, Javier would sometimes supply them with heroin, and they have eyes and ears everywhere.”

“But are you one of them?” Lars asked with a sigh. “Seriously, just answer the fucking question.”

“No.” Bailey shook his head. “No. I haven’t been in contact with them for like three—maybe four— years.”

“Did you tell them anything about the cartel back then?” Cora asked. As hard as she tried, her voice was still unsteady.

Lars was right—she knew Bailey would never hurt her, but he had been spying on her family. How could she blindly trust him without proving himself to her? Maybe she was going with her heart, instead of her head.

“They’ve never been interested in you.”

“In me?”

“The cartel, I mean. They deal coke. Massive volumes of it. El Calacas was done with coke over a decade ago.”

“Just heroin now,” Finn said.

Cora’s skin broke out in goose bumps. She knew how he felt about the drug—especially since his sister was an addict. But, just like her apparently unlimited supply of lust, selling heroin came with the territory.

God, she felt like such an asshole.

“Okay,” Cora said, very fucking eager to change the subject. “So, they don’t care about us, which is great. You say you can find out if this guy was DEA?”

“Yeah,” Bailey said, nodding. “But if he’s not, then he could be FBI.”

“FBI,” Cora repeated slowly.

“’Cos what you’re doing is kinda illegal?” Lars quipped unhelpfully beside her.

She glared at him, and pointed a trembling finger his way. “Enough,” she said.

Lars’s eyelids drooped, and he gave her a serpentine smile. “Your wish is my command, La Sombra.”

A tingle spread through her at how he caressed those words with his tongue. She tilted her chin up, and forced herself to look at Bailey. “Contact your guy and find out who’s been sniffing around my cartel.”

She looked at Lars. “You, get rid of that lion.” She waved a hand. “Set it free or something.”

Lars cocked his eyebrow at her. “Like…in the grounds?”

“Send it back to Africa!” she snapped. “Or…wherever lions go back to. I don’t want it in a cage.”

“They’re usually put down, once they’ve tasted human flesh,” Finn cut in.

She glared at him. “Then let’s keep that fact to ourselves. I won’t let it suffer because of Javier.”

Finn shrugged, and gave Lars a long, unreadable look.

“Why me?” Lars asked sulkily.

“Because I said so.”

Lars rolled his eyes. “Fine. But I’ll have you know, boss, tonight…?” He leaned across the table, and ran a finger down her arm. “I’ll be lashing you to the bed.”

He rose, followed a second later by Finn.

Bailey watched them head for the door, and then turned to her. “Cora, can we talk?”

The men froze in their steps. Bailey glanced to the side, but didn’t turn his head. “Alone,” he added in a murmur.

“Buddy, you obviously don’t realize how this—” Lars began, taking a step back to him.

“Yes,” Cora cut in, lifting a hand to Lars.

There was something in Bailey’s eyes. Darkness, regret. She had no idea why he wanted to speak to her alone, but if it was to confess something, then he deserved to do it in private.

When she looked up at Finn and Lars, they were both waiting, as if expecting her to change her mind.

“I’ll see you two later,” she said, giving them a warm smile. “Be safe.”