[ COMPLETED ]
[ 2021 WATTY'S SHORTLIST ]
❝ You've never been loved like this? ❞
Twenty-nine year old Monique Harper is a senior VP travel advisor. Great at her job, she is sent to Valencia, Spain to vet a chain of hotels owned by billionaire Matteo...
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I don't know why I couldn't say the words to Monique as she stared me down, her eyes pleading for me to say something.
I wanted to — every bone and nerve in my body urged me to tell her what I should've told her from the moment I professed my love for her.
I've been lying to her this whole time — but not because I wanted to. Because I had to. My past is my past but our relationship is more than just shoving things down and hoping that they don't resurface.
Especially since Santiago has made it his life's mission to antagonize us — I should've told her the same time I tried and failed to enlist my father for his help and connections in taking a certain villain down.
Now, having Monique walk away from me, a look of disappointment on her face, it's like I'd been shocked from the inside out to do what I should've done when she was standing in front of me.
Maybe I was scared — of how she'd react when learning that I have connections to certain people that I shouldn't be connected to.
That I'd spent most of my teenage years hiding away in meetings with my father and my 'uncle.' I was old enough to know we had no relation to that man and that what my father was caught up in wasn't just the oil business.
From what I had learned, my father was the second-in-command in the Sombra (Shadow) Mafia. While he'd pulled out to raise a family with my mother, he still got caught in the undertow for a couple more years — but he got out, leaving with his pride and power.
And now, he focuses more on his oil business.
But, you know what they say — you never really leave the mafia.
"Fuck," I hiss and hit my hand against the desk, frustration running through me, "I'm so stupid."
I should've told her.
It was the sound of one gunshot after another that drew me back to earth and into that office. My head shoots up and I move quickly, screams and shuffling motivating me to open the doors of the office and run outside into the hall.
People gather in the center of the room while some run away, the orphans among that group. Diego leads them out making my heart beat a little faster.
A dead body lays on the ground, a bullet wound in his head and blood pooling from it. A jagged scar spans from his hairline to his eye and security is moving quickly to kick his gun away.
