Victor raised a brow. “Pointless? He killed my brother. But I am curious, chiquita. Why do you care what happens to this man? Is it because he killed for you? Because he means something to you?”

  When her heart started pounding and she had to resist the urge to fidget, she worried he could see right through her. “He means nothing. I merely prevent you from making a stupid mistake. I told you he is not a man to cross. If you do not want to fight him while doing the far more important work of deposing Geraldo Montilla, forget this man.”

  “He fucked you.”

  Oh, he did much more than that.

  Heat rushed to Laila’s face and she hoped Victor didn’t notice. “Of course he did. He is a man—a very large one. I had no way to stop him from taking what he wanted.”

  Never mind that, last time, she had ached to give herself to him.

  He shrugged, as if the possibility that someone else had raped her meant nothing to him. “Why do you care whether I seize Geraldo Montilla’s throne? Are you hoping for money?”

  Dipped in rivers of innocent blood? “No. I want peace. If you rule the cartel, the threat to my family is gone. You become rich and powerful beyond your dreams while Valeria, Jorge, and I are finally free. Our paths will not cross again. I believe it is, as the Americans say, a win-win. Do you not agree?”

  Victor stared so long she felt dissected. Could he see through her, down to her half-truths and lies? The urge to squirm rode her, but Laila tamped it down and waited, preparing arguments in case she needed them.

  “You are right,” Victor conceded.

  Somehow, she kept in her giant sigh of relief. “As soon as you leave, I will call you with the first piece of information you need. Every few days, I will deliver more until—”

  “You negotiated your terms. Now I will negotiate mine. I have only one.” The way he smiled told Laila she would hate it. “You come with me.”

  Horror gripped her until she couldn’t breathe. “No. Impossible. This man—”

  “Forest Scott?” She must have looked surprised because he slanted her a superior glance. “Did you think I wouldn’t learn about my adversary before I came to kill him?”

  Of course he would. Victor wasn’t lazy, just half-witted. “He is very dangerous. He will come for me.”

  “Because you mean something to him?” Victor sauntered closer, his stare speculative.

  I love you, Laila.

  The memory of Trees’s sweet words made her heart ache. Would she ever hear them again?

  Probably not, and she couldn’t let her anguish about that make her decision. Survival didn’t care about her feelings. Or his. Saving her family, Kimber Trenton, and Trees was more important. Someday, Trees would move on. Since he was a good man, he would find someone worthy of his love. Her heart would be a casualty, but for his safety and his future, that was a small sacrifice.

  “Pay attention. I told you he is merely paid to keep me here, but he values his job. He is a professional. He will not admit defeat.”

  “So we’ll make him.”

  “Are you listening? He will be a thorn in your side you do not need while you must concentrate on taking down Montilla.”

  “If Mr. Scott is a problem, I will dispatch him quickly.” Victor shot her a speculative glance. “Unless you can think of some other way to keep him at bay? As you pointed out, it would be better for my focus. I know it would be better for his health.”

  A chill shot through Laila. How could she prevent Trees from doing what he would inevitably do and rescuing her?

  “Another reason you should leave me here, so no one is wise to our plan. I can continue to extract more information from him you can use to your benefit and—”

  “You coming with me is a nonnegotiable term. It is the only way I can hold you accountable if your information is, shall we say, ineffectual. If you refuse, I will set this house on fire with you inside, turn all my attention to killing your sister while holding your nephew hostage. After I’ve dispatched with Mr. Scott, of course.”

  With her thoughts racing and her panic climbing, Laila tried to think of a way around Victor’s demand. But there wasn’t one. As much as she wanted to cry about that, it would do her no good. She would rather protect Trees than herself. “You understand that if I come with you, I will not be able to overhear any more valuable information.”

  It was a last-ditch effort. She prayed it would succeed.

  Once again, the world was against her.

  “You are resourceful, Laila. Much smarter than your sister. If I need more information, you will find a way—spreading your legs again for Mr. Scott, perhaps—to procure it. But for now, you will come with me.”

  Laila held back the insane and detrimental urge to sob. She would probably never see Trees again, much less have the chance to tell him she had feelings for him, too. Maybe that was for the best.

  She swallowed everything back but her determination. “All right. I will go with you.”

  The two hours since the alarm had alerted Trees that someone had infiltrated his property had been among the worst of his life. He’d tried a hundred times to call Laila. Nothing. And he had no idea what the fuck was going on. The intruder had shot out every surveillance camera inside the house. So all Trees knew? An asshole wearing a ski mask had shattered his living room window, then climbed in through the gaping hole. Twenty minutes later, he’d walked out with Laila at his side—no struggle, no gun, no coercion necessary. She’d merely climbed into the passenger’s seat of the bastard’s black truck with its hidden plates. Then the vehicle had screeched away, taking Laila—and his heart—with it.

  Who the fuck had abducted her? How had he coerced her compliance? What was she enduring now?

  The intruder had to be someone she knew. Trees was convinced of that.

  Since she’d tried to escape two nights ago for a clandestine meet-up with Hunter Edgington to help save the man’s sister, as well as her own, Trees would have suspected his boss. But all of the douche buckets he worked for, Hunter included, had been thirty thousand feet in the air with him when Laila had been taken.

  So whoever had her captive wasn’t a friendly, which made the fact that she’d left without being forced even more baffling. Worse, he suspected it was someone from either Geraldo Montilla’s or Victor Ramos’s orbit.

  One thing he knew for sure? Laila would never comply merely to ensure her own safety. But for Valeria’s? For Jorge’s? They were her weakness. Whoever had taken her probably knew it.

  Fuck.

  “Anything, buddy?” Zy burst in through the back door, stopping short in the portal, staring at the shards of glass everywhere.

  Trees didn’t understand the destruction. Had Laila fought in the kitchen but given up by the time she’d been dragged to the front door? “Nothing. I’ve looked all over the house for clues to understand what happened and who took her.”

  Laila hadn’t taken a single one of her possessions. Not her clothes or her phone. Not even a nightlight. But two SIGs were missing off his wall in his underground panic room, along with a box of ammo. That scared the shit out of him.

  “Are you sure Laila walked out of her own free will?”

  “It fucking looks that way.” Trees tried to stifle both his alarm and impatience and tossed Zy his phone, screen open to the feed from the front porch camera. “Here. Watch. This is all I’ve got.”

  As Zy did, Trees paced to Laila’s room. He couldn’t watch the video again, not without wanting to tear something apart and kill a motherfucker.

  Inside her room, he found far fewer signs of struggle. In fact, her bed wasn’t even rumpled. The only hint he had that she’d been here? The towel wadded up in the bathroom sink, as if she’d dumped it there in a hurry. The middle was still damp.

  He lifted the terry cloth and inhaled. It smelled like Laila. As her scent filled his nose, he tried not to lose his shit or start tearing down the world to find her.

  Somehow, someone had swooped in and taken her from him. He was going to fucking get her back—no matter what.

  “I don’t understand.” Zy frowned from the doorway of Laila’s bathroom. “But you’ve got to hold it together, buddy.”

  Reluctantly, Trees dropped the towel. “How would you be doing right now if someone had taken Tessa?”

  “I’d be somewhere between falling apart and wanting to rip a motherfucker into pieces, too. Point taken. So where do we go from here? Do you have any theories about who has her?”

  “My best guess? Victor Ramos, mostly because Geraldo Montilla should have been in Florida for that classic car race.”

  “Unless it was a ruse.”

  It was possible, but Trees’s gut said no. “If Montilla had done this, he would have sent more than one person to abduct Laila. Victor, on the other hand… Now that I’ve offed his brother, maybe he’s alone? I’m not sure how the fuck he found me. And how did whoever this son of a bitch was make it ten feet across the yard without Barney ripping out his entrails?” Trees said of his big-ass Rottweiler.

  “Fucker came prepared. He tossed your four-legged mooch a raw steak slathered in something I suspect put Barney out for a while. I found the steak bone and a loopy dog.”

  That pissed Trees off. “Is Barney okay?”

  “Yeah. He’s up and walking. A little sideways, but walking.”

  At least that was one less worry. “Maybe I should call the bosses.”

  But what could they do when all their resources were stretched thin, trying to bring Kimber home?

  “To confirm that Laila is long gone? I think they know, buddy. But I’ll advise them. Why don’t you grab your computer, see if you can catch her trail?”

  Probably his best course of action, but the last damn thing he wanted to do was sit on his ass when someone had their filthy fucking hands all over his woman. Was she screaming? Crying? Terrified? Begging? Being forced? Violated? Tortured? Was she even alive anymore?

  God, he couldn’t stand not knowing.

  Suddenly, Zy dropped a hand to his shoulder. “You’ve got to do something constructive. Gnashing your teeth and wishing death on whoever took her isn’t it.”

  Trees had no idea what his friend meant until he realized he’d gripped the pedestal sink and, in impotent fury, pulled it from the wall. With a curse, he released the fixture, leaving it balanced precariously, and zipped past Zy, stomping his way to his home office. There, he grabbed a computer, stalked to the kitchen, and shoved all the broken glassware and china from the table with a sweep of his arm. He lifted the chair and emptied the shards from his seat, then plopped down and pried the machine open.

  Where the fuck should he start? What scan could he possibly run that might lead him to Laila?

  Apprehension gnawed at his gut as he stared at the blank screen with its blinking cursor. Traffic cams. Police communications. Maybe that would turn up something. Or maybe he should work backward, follow his hunch, and see if he could track Geraldo Montilla’s and Victor Ramos’s last known locations.

  Trees launched multiple searches, then spoke to Zy without even looking his friend’s way. “Call the colonel for me. Ask him if he knows anyone on the Lafayette PD who’d be willing to put out a BOLO for Laila. Or better yet, report her kidnapping.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea. First, I’m not sure they’ll take you seriously since it looks like she walked out. Second—and more important—she’s someone the Tierra Caliente cartel would love to get their hands on. So if Geraldo Montilla doesn’t already have her, he soon will.”

  Trees snapped an angry glare at his best friend. “Not because he wants her. Only because she’s a direct line to Valeria and Jorge.”

  “I know, but if you want to attract all the wrong kinds of attention, go ahead and advertise that Laila is flapping in the wind. I don’t think it will help her.”

  Zy was fucking right.

  Trees pounded a fist on the table. “Goddamn it!”

  “I know. It sucks. It’s fucking awful. But let’s talk about what we should do. How can I help?”

  Trying not to lose his shit while he waited for his computer to finish, he shook his head at Zy. Hell, Trees barely knew how to help locate Laila. What useful task could he tell his friend to handle? Zy was a demolitions guy. There was nothing to blow up.

  Trees’s heart was already doing that on its own.

  “I don’t know. I don’t…” He tried not to give in to panic. “Something. I don’t fucking know what.”

  “Okay.”

  Zy’s tone was placating, and it rubbed Trees wrong. Irrationally, he knew that. Zy wasn’t the one he should be pissed off at. “Just do…anything.”

  “After I check in with the bosses, I’ll have a conversation with Valeria. She might have some idea where Victor would hole up or take Laila.”

  Actually, that was a great idea, and Trees was kicking himself for not thinking of it. “Yeah. Good. Thanks.”

  “I’ll be back. Call me if you find anything. In the meantime, keep it together. We’re going to find her.”

  Trees sure as hell hoped so. After less than a week with Laila, he had no idea how he’d ever live without her again.

  Yeah, he was so in love he was fucked.

  In the distance, he heard Zy drive off. Trees clung to hope—that his buddy would get Valeria to cough up something helpful, that one of his scans would turn up a needle in a haystack, that they would uncover anything that led them back to Laila.

  Six hours later, he still had nothing because that’s what Valeria knew. That’s what his scans showed. That’s the communications he’d received from Laila’s abductor. That’s how much hope he had left.

  Chapter Two

  Florida

  “Laila, your scheme isn’t going to work,” Victor snarled as they approached the garage on the outskirts of the racetrack shortly before dawn the following day.

  Her heart stopped. Had Victor already figured out she was playing him? “I do not know what you mean.”

  He huffed. “This scam to take Geraldo Montilla’s Ferrari… If I want to unseat him, stealing his car does nothing except piss him off.”

  She let out a silent sigh of relief that Victor hadn’t caught on to her ploy. “My plan will achieve everything you want while making him come to you—if you do not mismanage this. But in order to take down Montilla, you must first send him—and everyone—a signal that you are a force to be reckoned with. Stealing his most prized possession will do that. After all, he paid fifty million dollars for it.”

  “Fucking insane.” Victor shook his head, as if he could not fathom spending that kind of cash on a mere car.

  “The money for such toys will soon be yours.” If Montilla does not kill you first. “You simply have to find the cojones to take it.”

  “You already know how big my balls are.” He glared her way. “But poking the bear will only make Montilla angrier and more difficult to overthrow.”

  She pretended to heave a long-suffering sigh, but for once, Victor’s logic wasn’t totally wrong. Very little else he’d said since they’d left Trees’s house and driven all night down the highway before finally reaching this Florida racetrack had. At least he’d lived up to his word and kept his hands to himself. She could probably thank the guns she kept constantly at hand for that.

  “Montilla will not recognize the threat until it is far too late. He will fixate on the loss of his precious car. He will devote his resources to recovering it. While he is distracted, you will make your next moves to dominating the cartel.”

  “Using that bargaining chip you keep talking about?”

  “Exactly.” Either Victor would kill Montilla while rescuing Kimber or the Edgingtons would follow him in and handle them both. Either way, her family would be safer.

  Victor merely grunted as if he wasn’t convinced. “I need to know more about it.”

  “After you have stolen the car. The bargaining chip I speak of will be of no use until Montilla’s attention is diverted. Then… Well, you are more ruthless.” That might be true. “And smarter.” But that wasn’t. “You will succeed.”

  In trying to fabricate a supposed plan for Victor to take over Tierra Caliente, she’d read online that the driver Montilla hired for this classic car race yesterday had fallen hours before the start and broken his arm. Montilla had been forced to withdraw his 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO from yesterday’s competition. It seemed likely the drug lord would transport his ridiculously expensive car and fly back to Mexico today, so she and Victor had only this small window of opportunity.

  They tiptoed closer to the garage that housed the prized vehicle. When Victor peeked around the corner of the storage unit, he quickly reared back, plastering himself against the side of the building. “Fuck. There are two armed guards standing outside. We did not plan for that.”

  A problem she hadn’t foreseen…and probably should have. “Are they male?”

  “Yes. And big. I will have to kill them.” He reached for his gun.

  That horrified Laila. The last thing she wanted was for anyone else to be hurt.

  She grabbed Victor’s arm and held him back. “We cannot leave bodies. That will alert the local authorities and bring attention we do not need. Let me handle them. Once they are distracted, you take the car and drive it to the U-Haul. Then it will be yours.”

  He scowled. “You will distract both of them? At once?”

  “How many times did I handle you and Hector together?” she snapped, then wished she’d held her tongue. She didn’t want to remind him of all the times he had violated her. She also didn’t want to remind him of his dead brother. Being careful and strategic was key.

  He leered her way. “Many. You were our favorite toy.”

  “Now I am your partner,” she reminded him, reaching under her tank top to unfasten her bra. After some finagling, she pulled the undergarment free through the side and shoved it at Victor. “Hold this and watch for your opportunity.”