Blood Bound (6 page)

I raised one brow. “Is that an invitation or an order?”

“It is an option.”

“Then this is my refusal.”

He laughed, and Mrs. Cavazos scowled in profile at the room in general. He couldn’t actually order me to sleep with him—or
them
—a fact I reminded him of often. But I wasn’t sure if his wife knew that.

He patted her thigh, bared by the skirt hiked up to her waist and trailing between his legs. When she only leaned down for another kiss, his expression hardened, and the next slap was hard enough to make me wince.

Michaela stood, and her skirt fell to her knees, covering the fresh red splotch from his hand. She straightened the blue gauzy material as she turned to me, dark eyes blazing with a fury she probably had no idea we shared. “You’re late,” she spat, by way of greeting, excuse, explanation and a general “fuck you.”

“Mea culpa.” I didn’t hate her like she hated me. I’d tried, over and over, and failed every time. Instead, I pitied her, and that just pissed her off even more.

“Meika, bring in a glass of Scotch for Ms. Warren,” Cavazos said, and his wife stopped two feet from the door, glaring at me openly.

“Ruben, it’s ten in the morning,” I said, then glanced at her, trying not to let pity leak into my expression. “Coffee’s fine.”

She stomped past me, muttering angrily in Spanish, too fast for me to pick up anything more than
bitch.
I heard that one a lot.

Cavazos laughed. “Close the door,” he called after her, and she slammed it hard enough to shake the framed photos on the wall—a gallery of Ruben Cavazos, pictured with every city official and national and foreign dignitary he’d ever met.

He stood, zipped his black slacks and circled his desk to sit on the fnt corner.

I dropped into one of the leather chairs in front of his desk. “She hates me.”

“With a rather colorful intensity.” He chuckled again. “Do you blame her?”

“I blame
you.
”

More laughter. His good moods were scarier than his anger, at least to those who knew him well. “Think of her hatred as a compliment.”

I thought of it as a problem. Michaela followed orders, just like everyone else bound to her husband. But she also took full advantage of every moment that wasn’t governed by an order and every possibility she wasn’t specifically ordered not to take. If she got the chance, she’d kill me. Or die trying.

Either way, she had my respect.

“What happened with the apartment in Florida?” he asked, all traces of humor gone.

“I got hold of the superintendent two days ago. It’s still rented to a woman named Tamara Parker, and she’s approximately the right age, but the description doesn’t fit. And he’s not with her, Ruben. She lives alone.”

“A landlord never really knows how many people live in a unit. And looks can be changed.”

“Yes, but unless your Tamara Parker gained two hundred pounds and changed her skin color, I think we’ve hit another dead end. She gave you a fake name, and she’s not using it anymore.”

His sigh was so frustrated he almost sounded human. But I’d been fooled by that too many times to let my guard down now. “What about
him?
”

“Nothing new.” I shrugged. “I get a faint tug from the middle name, but without more to go on, I can’t even tell what direction he’s in, much less how far away he is. He could be across the country, or across the street. We’re going to have to approach this from another angle.”
Damned if I know what angle, though…

“Agreed.” Ruben blinked, then met my gaze with fresh determination, and I realized he was about to change the subject. “Why were you on High Street in the middle of the night?” he asked.

He was like a damn spider—his eyes were everywhere. “I was on a job. Got time and a half.”

“From Adam Rawlinson?”

“Yes.”

His frown deepened, and suddenly I wanted the laughter back. “I don’t like you working for him.”

“I don’t give a flying fuck what you like.”

His hand flew, and pain exploded in the corner of my mouth. My head rocked to the side and I tasted blood. But it was an openhanded blow, intended to make a point, not to truly hurt me. “Respect, Olivia. It’s what this syndicate is founded on.”

Funny, I thought the syndicate was founded on
money.
And blood. And ironclad bonds of indentured servitude.

I tasted the cut on the inside of my lip. I could hit him back;

“If I didn’t respect your abilities, you wouldn’t be here,” he continued, and the irony in that fact stung worse than my lip. Was this the reward for being good at my job? Ruben crossed his arms over his chest and stared at me like he might a crossword puzzle beyond his vocabulary. “But I don’t know why you bother with these penny-ante jobs.”

I rolled my eyes. “You don’t know a lot of things.”

“I know you haven’t set foot in your apartment in more than a year.”

“It’s
your
apartment. Mine is the one
I
pay rent on.” On the south side. In a building owned by one of the few men in the city who owed loyalty to neither Tower nor Cavazos. The south fork was as close as I could get to Switzerland.

“I understand that you threw away every cent in your bank account.”

“
My
bank account is fine.” If a little malnourished. “And the account you set up wasn’t thrown away. The money was donated in your name.” I’d withdrawn the five-figure balance in cash and given it to the Catholic-run homeless shelter around the corner from my office. “Sister Theresa thanks you for your generosity.”

His grip tightened on the edge of his desk, and I held my breath. I was poking a lion with a stick, and one of these days he would bite me in half. I knew that. But I wasn’t going to just roll over and play dead for him.

That was his wife’s job.

Besides, as long as he still needed me, he wasn’t going to kill me, and we both knew it.

“Olivia…” he warned.

“I’m not going to stop working, and you can’t make me.”

Cavazos stood and pulled me up by one arm. I didn’t bother resisting—the sooner we got this over with, the sooner I could start Tracking Shen’s killer. With Cam. But thinking about him must have shown on my face, because Ruben’s grip tightened and he pushed me around the chair.

“You want to work? Fine. I have a job for you.” He kept walking—kept pushing—until my back hit the darkly paneled wall. “One of my staff Binders is missing,” he whispered, leaning toward my neck. “Along with the contracts he was working on. I need them back.
Rapido.
”

“Can’t,” I said, as his warm lips brushed the skin just below my earlobe. “I just booked a new client. She’s already paid the retainer.”
Thank goodness.

“This is important. And it pays well.”

It took most of my concentration to ignore how good his mouth felt, and that pissed me off. I didn’t
want
him to feel good. “I don’t want your money.” I wedged my hands between us and shoved him back. “I don’t want anything from you.”

Rtil my u want me to keep my word, don’t you?” he taunted, and my heart pounded painfully, though I recognized the empty threat.

“You don’t have any choice about that.”

He leaned into me again and slid his hands beneath my jacket, pushing it off my shoulders and halfway down my arms, until they were pinned by the material. “And you don’t have any choice about this.”

I’d had a choice, once. A year and a half ago. It was a tough one. No good options at all. I’d chosen the lesser of several evils, but in that moment, with his hands pushing my jacket off, his mouth on my skin, the evil I’d chosen didn’t feel very lesser.

I closed my eyes and tried not to react, not to feel, and when that didn’t work, I pretended. I’d gotten pretty good at that in the past eighteen months. At pretending they were someone else’s hands, and lips, and eyes. Pretending it was okay to enjoy it, because I was with someone I wanted.

Those were the only moments I let myself think about Cam—about what I’d walked away from—because those were the only moments when remembering the past hurt less than living in the present.

The door flew open, and so did my eyes. Michaela stared at us, shaking in a fury so strong the coffee mug clattered against the full pot on her tray.

“Out!” Cavazos thundered, whirling to glare at her while I stared at my jacket on the floor, mortified, and pissed off, and struggling to breathe.

She set the tray on the credenza, then backed into the hall and slammed the door. I flinched. “Why do you do this to her?” I groaned. “
You
told her to bring me a drink.”

“She delayed her entrance on purpose for dramatic effect.”

“Well, can you blame her?” I enjoyed throwing his own words back at him, but he didn’t seem to remember saying them. He just turned back to me with that hunger in his eyes, edged with an anger that seemed to serve as fuel for the fire.

“My marriage is complicated,” he whispered into my ear, his cheek brushing mine. “She punishes me, I punish her, and the cycle continues.”

“What do you punish each other for?”

“For living.”

“That’s screwed up, Ruben.” I tried to push him off again, but this time he wouldn’t go. “Did it ever occur to you that she might prefer a less complicated marriage?”

“
Fidelitas. Muneris. Oboedientia.
She knew what she was signing when she married me….” he murmured, fumbling with the buttons on my shirt.

That was the part I couldn’t understand. Why would someone as smart and fierce as Michaela sign a marriage oath promising fidelity to a husband who wasn’t bound by an equivalent clause? Was the lure of money and status really worth a husband who screwed around right under her nose? In her own house? Right in front of her?

But then, who was I to judge? The specifics of my involvement with her husband weren’t exactly pretty, so maybe the same was true for her.

“Your people are starting to talk, Ruben.”

He shook his head and reached for my waistband, and I let him push the button through the hole. Because I couldn’t stop him. He hadn’t hit that brick wall yet. “My people are bound by privacy clauses. All except you.”

“I’m not yours.”

“Yet.” He stroked the unmarred skin of my left bicep with his thumb. If he had his way, my arm would look just like Tomas’s.

And then there’d be no escaping him.

“Well,
someone’s
talking.” More than one someone. And whoever they were, they didn’t have their facts straight.

He knelt to unlace my boots, then slid my jeans over my hips and let them crumple on the floor. Then he wrapped his arms around my waist, pressing one stubbly cheek against my stomach. “The best way to silence the masses is to cut out a single tongue,” he whispered against my skin. Then he stood slowly and his fevered gaze met mine. “I could set something up. You can use my best knife if you let me watch.”

“You’re a sick bastard.” I bent for my pants, but he pulled me back up by one arm.

“Stay.”

“I have to work.”

“Stay as long as you can….” he insisted. I tried to walk away from him, but again, he pulled me back. “That’s an order.”

Damn it!

“Not today,” I said, and agony exploded behind my forehead, bright white and unbearable. I staggered and he picked me up. Several steps later, he lowered me onto the leather couch, cold against my bare legs, and knelt on the floor beside me.

He stroked hair back from my forehead while the pain raged behind my eyes and my hand twitched on the center cushion. “Why do you do this to yourself? You know you can’t win.”

“That’s exactly why I fight,” I groaned through clenched teeth.

Ruben ran one hand down my leg. “Let me see it,” he whispered.

My temper flared at his touch and I shook my head. The pain radiated toward the back of my skull and my left foot began to jiggle. My whole world was agony.

“Stubborn little bitch…” he whispered. “Let me see it.”

That time I didn’t fight. I’d made my point—he could never truly rule me, no matter what he made me do—and we both knew I wasn’t going to win in the end. So I didn’t resist when he slid one hand beneath my left knee and bent my leg to expose my bare thigh.

He traced the small black ring tattooed there, and my skin tingled beneath his finger, recognizing his touch. Because the ink was infused by his blood. A year and a half ago, when the needle spilled my blood, he rubbed it with his pricked thumb and sealed the binding.

“You’re mine, Olivia,” he whispered, leaning closer. His lips brushed the black ring, and I gasped as it burned hotter. Fortunately, he’d finall hit the brick wall—that was as far as he could go without breaking his word and suffering the same pain I’d brought on myself. But that didn’t make his next words any less true.

“Until you find and deliver what you promised, I own you, head to toe. And I won’t ever let you forget that…”

Five

“Y
ou’re late,” Cam said, as I unlocked the office door and held it open for him.

“Yup.” I’d left with just enough time to get there by noon—Cavazos had to let me go to work for official clients, but didn’t have to leave me any spare time—but I’d stopped by my apartment first to shower. I couldn’t stand the thought of seeing Cam again with the feel of Cavazos still crawling on my skin.

Not with the memory of him calling me “clean” still echoing in my head.

I tossed my scuffed satchel onto the couch and headed straight for my desk.

“You really think that’s the best way to start this working relationship?”

“Nope.” I dropped into my chair and pulled open the bottom right-hand drawer, pawing through the contents as I spoke. “If you wanna work with someone else, I fully support your decision.” In fact, that was the only way I could get out of a direct request from Anne.

“You’re not going to get rid of me again, Liv. Unless you have a new vanishing act you’d like to try out.”

My fingers brushed smooth glass beneath a tangle of holster straps and receipts I’d really meant to file, and I pulled out a half-empty bottle of cheap whiskey. The shot glass in my pencil drawer had eraser shavings in it, so I tapped it upside down on my desk until they fell out, then poured myself a shot.