came to my chest. “You were the resolution to a deal gone wrong.” He shrugged as if my life was nothing. “I don’t know the full story. But I know your biological father owed Quintana a lot of money. Your father—Quintana—was about to ruin him and his organization.” He met my eyes. “You were the solution. You for the organization to survive.”
“I don’t believe you,” I replied, but my gut told me he was telling the truth.
“Your mother—Quintana’s wife—discovered where you came from. And she couldn’t live with it. She wanted to return you to the woman you were ripped from. Stolen from. But, by then, Quintana had become too attached. So he killed her.”
“No . . .” I said, but everything started to make sense. The lack of pictures. The fact he wouldn’t talk of my mother. “But Carmen,” I said. “Carmen told me I looked like her.”
Diego laughed and shook his head. “You’re so na?ve, Adelita.” My stomach fell. “Everyone who worked for your father was paid to say whatever he wanted them to say. To ignore whatever he wanted them to ignore.” Diego got to his feet and came toward me. He picked up a piece of my dark hair and ran it through his fingers. “You were the first child he trafficked.” He dropped my hair. “Adelita, you inspired the business that followed.” He flicked his wrist in dismissal. “It’s simply import and export. Of what was never an issue. You proved selling humans would be lucrative. Women and children, at least.” Diego’s hand lay on my cheek, softly, as gentle as a lover’s touch. “This empire . . . all the money . . . it would not have happened if not for you.”
My head was spinning, too full with information. I was stolen from my real mother. Who she was, I had no idea. And my father . . . was not my father.
I was payment to him for a debt? I was nothing more than a pet? A thing he bought and raised, crafted to be his perfect cartel daughter?
I could see the happiness on Diego’s face. The satisfaction that he had been the one to tell me this secret. And he had shot my father . . . removing the only person who could have given me answers. The only person able to tell me the person I really was, who my parents were.
“I hate you,” I spat out, and pushed him from me with my hands on his chest. Diego fell back a few steps, and his smug smile melted away. He struck out and sliced his hand across my face. My head snapped back with the force of the blow. Before I even had a chance to recover, he slammed me back against the wall, knocking the air from my lungs. “You think I don’t know you’ve spread your legs for the Nazi?” His words quickly cleared my head. I met his eyes. They were furious. “You think I don’t know the great White Prince of the Ku Klux Klan killed Vincente?” My pulse and heart raced in one fast beat.
But this time it was my turn to smile. Diego would kill me. I knew that. I had nothing left to lose. “I love him,” I said boldly, and felt myself calm as those words came from my mouth. I leaned in close. “He is everything to me, and no one, not a single person, could ever compare.”
“He’s dead,” Diego threatened. I rejoiced that my words had hit their intended target. The triumph was short lived. “The Klan are here in Mexico. We are readying to destroy the Hangmen. And I’ll be the one to take that cunt out.”
Instant fear for Tanner suffocated my heart. “You are no match for him.” I looked him up and down, seeing him for the wicked man he was. “In any way.”
Diego’s fist flew out, and he punched me. He hit me over and over until my ears rang and the world tilted. I could taste nothing but blood in my mouth. Diego gripped my hair and dragged me through the hacienda. I tried to take in what was happening. Bodies littered the floor. I saw Carmen’s lifeless body on the mezzanine outside my rooms. Diego opened the door and threw me inside. I hit the floor with a thud. “I’ll be back for you,” Diego promised. “And I’ll enjoy every minute of killing you, princesa. Every last fucking minute.” His threat washed over