King's Baby - A Bad Boy Romance (19 page)

“Do
you know who?” I ask, trying like hell to keep my tone even and controlled,
when inside I want to pummel him for allowing this to happen. Three of my key
people are dead, and it could be an insider who’s responsible, so Carlos has to
live until I get all the facts.

“We’ve
been questioning the whole staff, and there’s a waiter named Sanchez who looks
like he could be dirty, but he’s also Juan Martinez’s nephew.”

“That
doesn’t make any sense. Why would he kill his own Uncle?”

“I
guess Sanchez wanted to be part of the business but Juan wouldn’t let him. He
told him it was too dangerous or some shit, made him mad, so he took em all
out. He’s a waiter, and I swear, Boss, his psychological testing was all
totally normal, and he’s never done an illegal thing in his life.”

“Why
suspect him then?”

“There’s
no other explanation except . . . I think Sebastián knows something. He won’t
tell me, though.” Sebastián? I just left him, and he never mentioned anything
about an inside job. Carlos glances over, raising his eyebrows, and a knot
starts to form in my stomach. I need to talk to Sebastián now.

I
jab Sebastián’s number on my contact list and grip the phone hard. What’s he
keeping from me, and why? He informs me of every infinitesimal detail of the
business, but something about this smells really really bad.

Smokes.
I need my smokes. Patting my chest with my free hand, I find them inside my
breast pocket, shake one up, and take it between my lips. I hardly notice when
Carlos reaches across the front seat and lights it for me. Dragging long and
hard, I smoke half the cigarette in one inhalation while waiting for Sebastián
to answer.

“Hey,
Boss, how’s everything going down there?”

“I
have three dead men and I’m being told it’s an inside job. You know anything
about that?”

My
body vibrates waiting for Sebastián’s response while the palm trees of Ocean
Drive slide by.

“What
are you really asking, King? Do you think I had something to do with it?”

“I
don’t know, Sebastián, did you?” The silence that hangs on the line between us
tells me one of two things. He’s hiding something or he’s shocked and fucking
pissed as hell. I’m praying it’s the latter.

“King,
I have been loyal to the Romero family since I was seventeen when your pop took
me in and gave me a job protecting a delivery from Columbia. I would never do
anything to jeopardize you or your business.”

For
the first time in . . . hell, my entire life, I doubt him. The outside of my
fist connects with the car door at the same time my heart sags in my chest. He
has been keeping Candy a secret. What’s to say he isn’t hiding something else?

I
take a deep drag off of my cigarette and blow it out vehemently.

“Prove
it.”

“Prove
it? What are you talking about, King? I’ve been ‘proving it’ for thirty years.
My whole life has been spent protecting you and your parents.”

“All
right, I’m just going to come out and say this. You’re keeping something from
me. What is it?”

Sebastián
clears his throat and that seals the deal. Here it comes.

“I’m
doing what I always do, King. I’m protecting you. I’ve never seen you fall so
hard for a woman, so I of course did a background check on Holland.”

“A
background check, so?” How could that possibly matter?

“King,
she’s a teenager.”

His
voice fades, and I drop my hand holding the phone in my lap. I can’t fucking
breathe
. No way. I met her in the club. She had to be
twenty-one to get in. We have a foolproof way of checking IDs. She can’t be a
kid. She’s so mature, and the sex—God, the sex . . . he has to be wrong.
This can’t be true. He was supposed to tell me about Candy or the insider who
murdered my distributers. He wasn’t supposed to tell me that the first woman
I’ve ever given a shit about isn’t even a woman but a teenager.

“Wait,
wait, you said a teenager. Exactly how old is she? Please, don’t you dare say
she’s
fifteen.
I may have a stroke, Sebastián.”

“Nineteen.
And King . . . she knows about you.”

“Turn
around, turn the car around, Carlos. Turn around, turn around,
turn
around! I scream as a billion thoughts fight for the
lead on the stage of my mind. Carlos obeys, whipping the car in a U-turn right
in the middle of Ocean Drive, nearly causing a ten-car pile-up. Maybe he did
cause an accident—who knows?

I
can deal with nineteen.
I mean, I don’t like it.
She
lied to me, and she’s six years younger than I am, but if she knows what I am,
I’m sure it’s over.

“Uh,
Boss . . . the phone.” Carlos risks a few words to bring my attention back to
the phone in my hand. Sebastián is shouting my name. I can’t talk. I press the
red
disconnect
button.

“Airport—just
get me to the airport,” I say, and Carlos increases our speed exponentially.

The
battle in my head continues. She plays the violin like a professional. How can
a nineteen-year-old be so incredibly talented? We have things in common. She
fucking stops my heart with her smile.

I
roll down the window and gulp the muggy air into my lungs. She’s young and
talented, with an unparalleled career in music ahead of her, and she knows I’m
a drug lord. As hopeless as it is, I need to get to her. I need to explain. She
has to understand how much I care for her and that I had every intention of giving
up the Romero
empire
if it meant she would stay with
me.

Chapter Fifteen

Holland

“I
didn’t want you to know about my business. I didn’t want you to think I was
that kind of man.” His voice catches as I push my hands against his chest and
see the misery in his glassy eyes.

“But
you are that kind of man. You sell illegal drugs to people and they ruin their
lives with them. You kill people, and God knows what else.”

“It
was my father’s empire. He died and left me to deal with it.
I
had no choice
,
you have to believe that
. I
would give it all up for you. I want you. I want to prove to you that I’m not
who you think I am.”

“I
can’t.” It kills me to say those two simple words, but I have to. I have to let
him go.
     

His
chin drops, and I feel his soft hair feathering against the damp skin on my
chest as he begins to rock our joined bodies back and forth. There isn’t a
thing I can say to fix this—a gesture, a word, a thought—nothing.
It is what it is, and it’s terrible.

A
knock on the bathroom door jolts me back to reality. King and I are in
Savannah’s bathroom, where our mama’s could easily find us. I can’t add my
parent’s devastation to the mounding list of heartache that this two-day-old
relationship has caused. I may never find a man like him again, but my age and
his ‘career’ won’t ever allow us to be together, period.

“Holland.
Are you okay in there? Holland, answer me. Your mama’s
gonna
be here any second,” she says into the crack of the door, rapping several times
in between words. “She’s gonna fuckin’ kill you both if he doesn’t get outta
here.” Rap-rap-rap-rap. “God, King, if you care about her at all, you’d leave
so she doesn’t get punished for the rest of her life.” Rap-rap-rap.

King
untangles himself from me. He stands and pulls me off the floor in front of
him, but he won’t meet my eyes. I even move an inch in his direction, but he
intentionally looks the opposite way. With wide, tear-filled eyes, I watch as
he tucks his shirt into his pants with shaky hands, not bothering to wipe the
tears from his face. Savannah keeps up her incessant knocking and verbal
protests while I stand naked, dripping wet in front of this man turned zombie
who can’t even look at me.

“King?
Please, I . . . I know we can’t fix this, but please don’t leave like this, please
. . .” I don’t even recognize my own voice, it’s so small and weak and
desperate. I frown when I think about him lying to me. He’s a damn drug dealer
or lord or whatever he is. This isn’t my fault, not really . . . is it?

I
lean my ass against the vanity and feel the sting of the cut on my back and the
knife in my chest while King absently reaches around me for the towel I was
looking for earlier. He presses it against my belly and my arms float to grasp
it while he leans in, enveloping me with his familiar smell of soap and a hint
of cigarette smoke. He presses a kiss on my forehead, and still avoiding my
eyes, he turns to open the bathroom door. Savannah falls in against him, still
knocking and fussing. King rights her and slips past without a word. Just like
that, he’s gone from my life, taking a colossal piece of me with him that I’ll
never be able to get back.

My
world tilts, and Savannah sounds like she’s talking through the end of a tin
can when she rushes in
, shutting
the bathroom door.

Her
hands hover an inch off of my skin and her eyes dart from my face to my hands
clutching the towel. She assesses my shaking legs and snaps her eyes back to
mine.

“Are
you hurt?” she asks, unaware of the weight of her question.

I’ve
never hurt more. Every hair on my head needs him, every cell in my body wants
him, and every ounce of happiness evaporates, leaving me void of all the
pleasures he brought to my life.

This
is heartbreak . . . how do people survive it? I’m not equipped for the highs
and lows of such a powerful relationship. Why has life sucker punched me so
hard in the heart? This is
Romeo and
Juliet
dramatic, Cleopatra and Mark Antony miserable. Shit, if Edward
hadn’t saved Bella with his venom, it would be
Twilight
tragic.

I
nod silently, and Savannah snatches the towel from my hands, patting and drying
me in her protective, motherly way. How did she get to be so maternal? She
doesn’t have any little brothers or sisters. She never even babysat the kids in
the neighborhood, but she sure knows how to mother hen me to death.

“I
can do that,” I say when she is about to discover the gash on my back. I wrap
the towel under my arms and tuck a corner between my breasts to hold it in
place.

“What
did he say?” she asks.

“He’s
a drug lord . . . it’s over.” My last two words catch in my throat, and
Savannah wraps me in her arms while I let go of the sobs I’ve been holding
back.

“Oh,
sweetie, I’m so sorry, really I am. I see how nuts ya’ll were for each other,
but it’s for the best. It could never go anywhere, you know? He’s just too . .
. too . . . I don’t know . . . too everything. Too old, too illegal, too
gorgeous, too rich . . . I’m not helping, am I?”
       

Her
shoulders slump and I shake my head. She is definitely not helping at all. I
need to think about something else—as if that were possible. I have to go
to practice and my mama’s coming, I have to get dressed and put on my game
face. ‘Suck it up, buttercup,’ she would say. I know I can never go back to
being the naive virgin violin prodigy that I was two days ago. My time with
King changed me forever, but somehow I am going to try and put this behind me
and start again, focus on my future, and put all of my attention back into my
music.

Mama
is in the driveway ten minutes later, and I numbly slide into the passenger
seat dressed in Savannah’s clothes. I try like hell to act normal. Mama’s
usually very observant, but thankfully today she’s on the phone discussing
hotel reservations with my daddy, who’s still out of town on business. After a
quick ‘hey honey’, she backs the car out of the driveway and chats while we
drive to
STRINGS
. Her voice is a
muffled background noise until my ears perk up when she mentions a trip to New
York. Crap, I almost forgot that we’re going for a weekend to tour Juilliard
again and settle all the final arrangements for my move in two and a half
months. We fly out next Friday to meet Daddy in the city so he doesn’t have to
come the entire way home from Atlanta.

A
trip . . . just what I
don’t
feel
like doing, but honestly, it’s probably the best distraction I could ask for
right now.
Concentrate on your music.
Think about your future and practice
, I tell myself.
Shut up!
I shout at the levelheaded alter ego in my head. I’m
dying. I don’t want to think about my future. I want King. I want to be a
twenty-one-year-old woman, and I want King to be an upstanding member of
society so we can be together forever and live in the suburbs and have babies.
I’m not asking for anything out of the unusual, really. It’s the American
dream, but that’s the problem. Just like the American dream, it’s unachievable
and unrealistic.

I
turn and watch the houses in my neighborhood whiz by and prop my elbow on the
edge of the car window to wipe away a tear sliding down my cheek. As much as
this hurts, part of me is really pissed too. How did I let this happen? I made
choices, stupid choices that come with consequences, and now I have to pay. I’m
not a sniffling, whining baby. I shouldn’t be crying in the car over a man I
met two days ago, wishing for things that can never be. But I am.