Kiss_Bang (Lost Devils MC #1) - Madison Faye Page 0,3

walked through the door someone had left unlocked to one of the large garages on our expansive property and saw the endless tables full of cash and white powder. My father isn’t a liar, for all of his faults. When I asked, he told me plainly what we did. I got older and told him that drugs were bad. He shrugged and told me about pharmaceutical companies selling Oxy through doctors.

“They’re allowed to sell drugs. Why shouldn’t I? Because I’m not on the board of directors at a company that has the okay from the government to sell it?”

It’s not a totally flawed argument, to be fair.

That was our old life though, when my father still existed in society. Back then, my mother was just sick—really, really sick, but “just” sick. It was after she died that he became the man he is today.

My mother died, and I was whisked off to boarding school for the world’s elite in my mother’s native France. I’ve heard the story a million times of my father, then a young up and coming “businessman” seeing my mother in a small movie role and deciding then and there that she would be his wife. A week later, he arranged to meet her in Los Angeles. A month after that, she was in Mexico with him, and not long after that, they were married. Nine months almost to the day after that, I was born.

I spent adolescence in France, and then college in the States, at Columbia.

…Only the best for dad’s princess.

Now I’m twenty-two, and recent graduate. But, what does someone like me do with a communications degree from an ivy league school? What does it matter? My trust fund is worth more than anything I’d make in my lifetime with my degree. Not to mention that no one is going to hire the daughter of Jorge Del Campo, famously closed-off and ruthlessly dangerous leader of one of the bloodiest and richest cartels in Mexico. That’d be like Bin Laden’s daughter trying to get a job at Starbucks.

Good fucking luck.

So, I’m back here, as of two weeks ago. But here isn’t the home I grew up in. After my mother, my father moved out to the desert. He built this fortress, next to this weird creepy old fort he bought. The whole province is paid off by him—politicians, policemen, all of it. Out here, he’s a king, and I’m the princess locked in a tower.

“Oh, hang on,” Elena clucks her tongue as her eyes sweep over me. “Is that what you’re wearing tonight?”

Elena is young, and gorgeous, and super cool and hip. I mean she lives most of the time between New York and Madrid, dates gorgeous, rich men, and seems like a freaking movie star to me. She’s taken me out to exclusive cocktail bars back in the city, I can talk pretty openly with her, and she’s even taken to giving me her already read trashy romance novels.

But at the same time, sometimes she still has this old-school formality to her. Like now, with my clothes.

I frown. “Is there a dress code for bareknuckle fights I’m not aware of?”

My aunt rolls her eyes. “Yes, and it involves a lot less cleavage than that.”

“Huh?”

“Catalina, it’s a venue full of drunk, angry men. Put the girls away.” She frowns. “Of course, your father would cut the tongue out of anyone who even said anything to you so, never mind.” She waves her hand. “Wear what you want.”

I sigh. “He would, too.”

She smiles. “My brother just wants to protect you. Boys suck, mija.”

“Yeah, well, I wouldn’t know if boys suck or not because I’ve barely ever even had a conversation with one before my father or my bodyguards made them piss themselves. Let alone date one.”

Elena sighs and gives me a sympathetic look.

“So,” I mumble. “They suck, huh?”

She grins. “Only if you tell them where and how hard to.”

I turn pink sand so does Elena.

“Dios mio!” she gasps, laughing and bringing a hand to her mouth. “I never said that.”

I giggle.

“Look, your dad and I’s father, he was far, far stricter than your farther is to you. Believe me.”

I frown. “Bullshit.”

“Watch your mouth,” she mutters with a frown before she shrugs. “I couldn’t date until…” she frowns. “Well, I didn’t date until he died, actually.”

“When you were eighteen.”

“Yes.”

“I’m twenty-freaking-two.”

She frowns. “Look, I know there hasn’t been many—”

“None,” I mutter. “There have been zero boys.”

She sighs. “Your father… he’ll find the right—”

“Who, another drug kingpin’s son?”

She smiles thinly.