Chapter One

 

“You are an overbearing, controlling ass, Rafael!” Snapped a young Ignacio with a glint of rage in his amber-colored eyes. “None of this shit you are doing is for my benefit and you know it! How dare you even suggest something like that when we all know you only give a damn about yourself and what you can get out of other people?”

 Rafael, always a stoic and solid man, looked at his younger brother with a mixture of anger and disappointment. Apparently, the look enraged Ignacio all the more because he let out an exasperated and growling sigh, and throwing his hands into the air before launching into another angry lambasting.

“You are unbelievable, Rafael. You try to act like our Father, but you are nothing like him.” Ignacio spat, throwing up his hands. “Father would have never done something like this to me… and that poor girl! I can’t believe you would do this to some young woman you don’t even know.”

“Ignacio, you need to calm yourself down,” Rafael finally said, his tone deep with a hint of irritation in his Spanish words. “Everything I do, I do for the betterment and advancement of this entire family…and you know it.”

Rafael stood from his previously seated position behind the desk in his home office, pressing his hands flat against the desktop as he stared down his little brother with those same amber eyes. He was tired of this argument. Ignacio would learn his place within the family and do his duty to further their name.

“You are acting like a selfish, spoiled brat and I am done listening to you whine and cry over being an adult!” Rafael shouted. “You need to learn what it means to sacrifice for this family, once and for all. I am DONE listening to your complaints and excuses. Elena will be arriving within the week and I expect you to be prepared. End of discussion.”

“By the time she arrives… I will be long gone, Rafael,” Ignacio said in a low and ominous tone, his jaw clenched in anger. “My life is not yours to live.”

Without another word, Ignacio stormed out of the room and slammed the door as he went, leaving Rafael alone in his office. Rafael let out a heavy sigh, shook his head and sat back down at his desk. He doubted that Ignacio would keep his word and leave. Ignacio knew well and good that if he left home and shirked his duty, Rafael would cut him off for good. It was a harsh ultimatum, but Rafael knew his younger brother needed a firm hand to guide him. Just as he got himself settled back into his chair, he heard Ignacio holler from the hallway.

“Mateo! Get back here!” Came Ignacio’s voice from just outside the door, followed by heavy footsteps leading away.

The memory of his last conversation with Ignacio came flooding back to him as he sat in his chair, eyes locked on the desk calendar laid out before him. His younger brother had always been an insufferably willful boy with his head in the clouds and it had always infuriated him. Even for a dragon, Ignacio was far too flighty and let his emotions get the better of him way too often. With a scoffing laugh and a shake of his head, Rafael stood from his desk chair.

He paused a moment, gazing off into the middle space, as he wondered if Ignacio would ever come back. Doubtful. Ignacio probably felt as though he was right in all of this. He probably felt as though Rafael was just that, an overbearing and selfish asshole. If only Ignacio could see past his own selfish nature and realize Rafael had only done what he thought was best for the entire family. Rafael slammed his hands against the desk and swore under his breath. Damn Ignacio… damn him and his foolish, reckless choices. He never understood that his actions affected more than just himself.

“Damnit, Ignacio,” he muttered to himself. “You know Mateo always has to copy you…”

A soft, sad sigh slipped from him and once again he shook his head. He knew better than to dwell on this subject. There was little to nothing he could do to change what had happened in the past… and it seemed the ability to bring his brothers home was just out of his grasp. After all, he had spent the past five years trying… and he hadn’t managed to find even one of them yet.

He finally moved away from the desk, straightening his suit jacket as he crossed his office to the door. He had spent enough time today agonizing and lamenting the loss of his brothers. His wife was waiting on him for their daily lunch date… and Camilla was not a woman to keep waiting.

*

Ensenada was a bustling and beautiful port city along the northwest coast of Mexico just a mere 50 miles from the US border, and never in a million years would Maia have guessed that a place like this would come to represent salvation for her. Yet, there she stood… looking down at the bustling coastal city from the surrounding foothills. With Ignacio at her side and a city of safety below them, Maia finally felt a sense of relief from everything they had been through. Maybe it really was all over. Maybe they really could start a life together without worry.

As they made their way into the city, it was clear this was a place meant for tourism and Maia was convinced that was a major part of why no one seemed to bat an eye at them. Their trek from the rolling foothills surrounding the city had taken them a few hours and it was just after lunch when they got into the center of the city. As much as her stomach was rumbling, neither of them had a penny to their name and so Maia decided to try and distract them both from thoughts of food. At least until they got to his family’s place and could eat for free!

“So… has your family always lived in this city?” She asked with a glance towards Ignacio.

“Uh…. yes. I mean, no,” he stammered in an answer, oddly thrown off by her question. “Not always, but we have been here for a while, I suppose.”

Maia gave him a sidelong look, wondering why he was so weird about the question. Being the sort of woman she was, she continued to ask him questions about his family rather than let it go and fall into silence.

“How long? Tell me about them!” She chirped with a smile on her face, slipping her hand into his for encouragement. “Please?”

He couldn’t resist Maia when she smiled like that. With a soft sigh, a little laugh and a smile of his own, Ignacio gave her what she wanted and dove into a condensed story about his family.

“Well… I have two brothers.” Ignacio started, keeping his eyes focused on where they were headed as he spoke. “My little brother, Mateo, who is about three years younger… and then there is my older brother, Rafael.”

Maia noticed a slight change in his tone at the mention of Rafael, but decided not to press too hard on that topic. Instead, she asked about other things. As she asked, her attention was slightly diverted when she noticed how nice the houses were getting as they continued to walk. At first, she had assumed his family lived in a nice upper-middle class suburb or something. But the homes they were walking past were just a bit nicer than that.

“Do you have any sisters?” was her next question. An innocent one just to keep the conversation going.

“No, no sisters. Though I do have a sister-in-law named Camilla who is married to my older brother,” Ignacio answered. “They got married about… 10 years ago, almost.”

They walked, he talked, and she asked little questions here and there to keep him going. She learned that his great-grandparents had moved the family to Mexico over 60 years ago and that his grandfather had started a business that his brother Rafael still ran to this day. He told her of his little brother Mateo and his wild-child antics and Maia couldn’t help but imagine the three of them as kids. Rafael all stoic and trying to wrangle the younger two. Ignacio ignoring them both in favor of a book while Mateo wrought havoc. The mental image made her smile.

With every block put behind them, the one ahead became all the more affluent. Maia was starting to have trouble holding back her questions about where this family house was, exactly, but she wouldn’t have to ask them. Ignacio offered them up freely.

“So… I suppose I should explain something before we get there,” he said in a low tone, glancing towards Maia with those amber-colored eyes.

“Uh oh…” She responded with a mock look of worry. “I knew it. Your family is actually a cult and I’ve been chosen as your next sacrifice.”

Ignacio just looked at her for a moment before rolling his eyes with a laugh. One of the many things he loved about her was her quick, albeit morbid, wit. Something about it just made her seem all the more… real. For her part, Maia just liked poking fun at him. After all, she knew he was a dragon and assumed his family was, as well. What else could possibly be more difficult to explain, than that?

“No, no cult. Sorry to disappoint you.” He flashed her a smirk and a wink to go with it. “Honestly, I think a cult might be better than the truth…”

She gave him a weird look at that, quirking an eyebrow before laughing softly. She could tell he was starting to loosen up around her a bit more and she liked that. Of course, his soft and poetic nature was one of the main reasons she cared for him so much, but to hear him toss off a fun little quip was refreshing. It meant she was rubbing off on him.

“My family has money. Old money,” he said it almost as if it was a plague. “And we have everything that goes along with old money. The attitude, the expectations, the demands, the backstabbing… and of course… the house…”

As his words trailed off, he came to a slow stop in his walking, his eyes looking across the street as if his worst nightmare sat just across those two lanes of pavement. Maia followed his gaze with her own and the guffaw of a laugh that spilled from her couldn’t be helped at what she saw. A massive home, something that could really only be described as an estate, took up what she could only assume was the entire block they stood on. Tall, thick shrubbery lined the sidewalk atop a 3-foot-tall stone wall. Directly across from where they stood, a huge black iron gate stood looming as it guarded the driveway entrance. Even over the shrubs, she could see the second and third story of the main house. It was huge.

For a moment, she just stood there staring before she shifted her eyes to Ignacio and then back to the house again. Yep… he meant that was his family house, for sure. She started to laugh, shaking her head as she brought a hand up to her forehead in disbelief.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she exclaimed with laughter.

“What?” Ignacio asked, turning towards her with a confused look on his face.

“You’re telling me you grew up a rich kid… in that house…” She pointed to the estate across the street. “And yet you chose to spend the past however many years… living in the desert outside of Vegas?”

Her tone was one of amused disbelief and once again she shook her head. She couldn’t believe it… but it made her wonder what in the hell had happened to make him want to leave this kind of life behind in the first place.

“Gotta admit… not once did you ever strike me as some spoiled rich brat,” she said with a playful, sidelong look towards him. “I guess that’s a few points in your direction.”

He smirked and rolled his eyes at her just as playfully before his attention went back to the estate across the street. His body language made it clear he had little desire to actually cross the street. Maia could tell.

“Well? I’m starving, my feet hurt, and I am more than ready to get in a shower and some real clothes,” she quipped at him with a smile, tugging his hand to get him to cross the street.

He didn’t fight her even though part of him wanted to. She could tell by the look on his face that he wasn’t feeling totally confident about this. But she would be right there with him and she tried to reassure him with that smile of hers.

They came to a stop in front of the gate and Ignacio sucked in a deep breath before glancing briefly towards her. As he exhaled, he reached out and pushed a call button on the side of a 6-inch-wide screen built right into the gate. After a moment, the screen flashed to life and the face of what Maia assumed was a security guard, greeted them.

At first, the guard’s face was slack and looked like he was bored… but then a look of recognition and shock came over him. He even gasped before speaking, his voice unnervingly clear through the tiny speaker on the box.

“Oh! Uh…welcome… welcome home, Mr. DeLeon,” the guard said, his words followed by a buzz as the gate clicked open.

Ignacio seemed almost ashamed as he reached for the gate and pulled it open for the both of them to pass through. Maia just watched, making no effort to hide the look of surprise and amusement on her face. She had a feeling that it was a look she was going to be sporting quite often during this visit.

She could see his shoulders growing more and more tense with every step they took up the curved driveway. A light squeeze to his hand would give him a little encouragement, or so she hoped, though she wasn’t able to do much more than that before the massive front double-doors of the house flung open with a deep creak and snatched Maia’s attention.

Coming through the opened doors, as if making the perfect dramatic entrance for a telenovela, was a beautiful young woman dressed in a pastel blue sundress. Her hair was long, wavy and so dark it almost seemed blue. A knock-out hourglass figure and even from the short distance between them, Maia could tell she had brilliant silvery-blue eyes. The most shocking part of it all, though, was when the woman threw her arms around Ignacio while exclaiming his name with excitement.

Maia just stood there a moment in pure shock as she watched. The young woman started to speak to Ignacio in rapid Spanish, seeming to go from happy to angry and back again more than once as she spoke to him. Maia watched Ignacio’s face and it seemed like he understood what the woman was saying to him but at the same time was shocked and confused all the same. That only made Maia’s confusion deepen… but then it got worse.

Without warning, the woman pulled Ignacio close and planted her lips against his. She kissed him firm and hard… and that was all it took to snap Maia out of her shock-induced daze. Her eyes went wide, and she took a step towards the woman.

“Whoa, whoa! What do you think you’re doing, lady?” Maia snapped as she grabbed the woman’s shoulder and tried to pull her away from Ignacio.

The young woman rattled off something snappy to Maia in Spanish that got Ignacio to look at her in astonishment before looking at Maia as if he was floundering in this situation. Before Maia had a chance to do anything more about it though, she heard someone clearing their throat from the front stoop.

“Elena…” The man from the stoop said.

He said nothing else… but it didn’t seem he had to. For a moment, the young woman who was apparently named Elena, looked as though she wanted to protest. But she gave in with a sigh, dropped her arms from around Ignacio and scurried back up into the house.

Maia came to stand close against Ignacio, glancing between her lover and the older fellow on the doorstep. Ignacio looked at her, tried to give her a reassuring smile that only succeeded in making her nervous, and nudged her along towards the door. She wasn’t so sure about this whole thing anymore. Who the hell was that woman? Why had she kissed him? Maia was afraid of the answers… and she knew they were just inside the house she was walking straight into.