the door, but Adelita stepped in front of me before I could get there. Her hands planted on my chest and she shoved me back. She weighed almost nothing. I stepped back as she came for me again.
“Hijo de puta!” she hissed. I had no idea what the hell she just said, but I knew it wasn’t good. It only served to piss me off even more. Her hand came up out of nowhere and sliced me across the face.
I was fucking done.
When she came for me again, I grabbed her wrists and shoved her back until she slammed against the back of the door. She tried to fight me, but I lifted her hands above her head and got right in her furious face. “Stop, bitch!”
“You stop!” she snapped. She fought against my hold but she couldn’t move. She screamed in annoyance and I smiled. “I hate you,” she spat. She thrashed in my arms, but I held her tightly. “You have no idea what it was like with you gone!” Her voice cracked and she fought hard to breathe. “I hadn’t heard from you. I didn’t know if you still wanted me, needed me. My father and Diego decided for me that I would marry. I had no choice!” she shouted. “I was trapped, with nowhere to go and no one to go to for help!”
“I was coming back for you! I just needed fucking time! I was almost ready!”
Adelita’s chest rose and fell with how fast she was breathing. Her tanned cheeks were red with anger and her eyes were wide and furious. She leaned forward and snarled, “You told these men—my father’s enemies, my enemies—how to find me. You led the wolves straight to my door. How is that protecting me, Tanner Ayers? How is that helping me?”
“We were told it was some fucking random cousin who was getting married. They came for her. I never for a second believed it would’ve been you!”
Adelita shook her head while I tried to regain some kind of sanity, before I smashed my hand through the door. “My father trusted you. I trusted you, and you join the men at war with my people?” Freezing, I laughed. I fucking laughed. Adelita’s lips grew tight. “Do not laugh at me!”
She arched her back from the door, her tits scraping against my hard chest as she tried to escape my hold. But I barely noticed it. I was too consumed with the fact that she thought we—the Hangmen—were the bad ones. “You have no idea,” I growled close to her face. “You have no fucking idea what you’re talking about.”
Adelita’s eyes widened. “What do you mean?”
“You wanna know what deal our fathers were making when we were in Mexico?”
Adelita froze. “Drugs. Papa said it was drugs.” She said it with such trust toward her father that some of my anger fell. He was all she had, all she’d ever had . . . and she had no fucking idea what a sadistic cunt he was.
“No,” I corrected, my voice less vicious than it was before. “It wasn’t fucking drugs, princess.” I made sure to look her dead in the eye when I said, “It was women.”
Adelita gasped. Her head started shaking in disbelief. “No,” she denied, with conviction. “What are you talking about? Papa would never deal in that!”
I moved closer to her, pinning her against the door so she would listen. “Your papa did. And so did mine.” Her head started shaking again. She was getting ready to argue; I spelled it out for her so she would believe it. “They steal women, drug them with your papa’s heroin, transport them to camps, and then let men pay to fuck them. And they earn a pretty penny doing it.”
“No!” she cried, her eyes filling with tears. “Why are you saying this?” Her whisper became harsher when she raised her chin, and countered, “It is this club. These men. They are lying! My father would never—”
“He fucking sells women off to fuck knows who. To be slaves, or whatever they want from them.”
“That is not true!” A tear fell down her face, but she flicked her head so the rebel tear would fall to the floor and not show her weakness.
“It is—”
“I said it FUCKING ISN’T!”
My whole body shook with rage at her shitty attitude. Not saying a word, I kept hold of one of her wrists and opened the door, dragging her down the hallway. I didn’t care if it