The Billionaire's Step - Complete Series (Forbidden Billionaire Stepbrother Romance) (11 page)

Three

             
Knock knock!

              Gloria’s head shot up at the sound.

              Sitting up in her bed, she was covered in bandages. Although Cora’s status was much more dire, one would think the opposite when looking between the two women. Only Cora’s head was swathed in bandages while Gloria’s leg was strapped to some kind of splint, her wrists bandaged, her face greasy with salves the nurses had smeared on to heal the small cuts and bruises she was covered in.

              But the woman’s eyes were bright and alert. She was very much aware of the precarious situation she was in.

              Lowering his hand from the door, Julian walked in without waiting for an invitation.

              Gloria’s eyes widened as she took in the sight of the man who had rescued her and her daughter. That night in the shack had all been such a blur, she hardly had enough sanity to recognize Julian for a man, let alone
this
kind of man.

              Standing at well over six feet tall, he clearly had a commanding presence. His broad physique and large hands spoke of an undeniable strength. But it was the rough stubble and steely eyes that made Gloria’s heart skip a terrified beat. He looked like raw rage incarnate. There was something primal in the man that made him seem more dangerous than Carlos could ever have been. It was hard to believe this man had ever been her stepson.

              “Gloria.” Julian’s deep voice held no sympathy or warmth.

              “Julian,” Gloria said after a moment’s hesitation. “Would you like to sit down?” she asked, motioning towards the two chairs next to her bed.

              Maraño had a much bigger hospital and had much more equipped facilities. But they were no strangers to violence. After taking in the bloody sight of Julian, Gloria, and Cora, they immediately went to work. Cora was whisked away to an intensive care unit for special monitoring while Gloria was taken into another wing to be examined.

              A nurse tried to pull Julian into another room to attend to what she had assumed was a grave injury of his, considering the amount of blood on his shirt. But Julian had resisted and instead had stood right outside the ICU with his cell phone in hand. He needed to make some calls but he would make them where he could hear a nurse call for him in case Cora took a turn for the worse.

              Gloria saw that Julian had somehow gotten a clean shirt but he obviously hadn’t had a chance to shower. Flecks of blood still painted Julian’s neck.

              “No,” Julian said, not even glancing down at the offered chairs. “I won’t be here long.”

              Gloria looked at him assessingly. At one time, she had been the only mother he had. Would he turn someone like that over to the police? After all, she had been consorting with a notorious drug lord for over a decade, even running deliveries for him. That kind of illicit behavior could land Gloria in a Mexican prison for life.

              She knew she had to play her cards carefully.

              “You’ve certainly grown up, haven’t you?” she said in what she hoped was a motherly tone.

              But instead of softening him, Julian’s eyes only blazed hotter. He didn’t ask how she knew who he was. Gloria literally gulped as she felt herself pinned by his gaze.

              “I’m here to tell you that this is it, Gloria,” Julian said, his voice hard as steel and sharp as a razor blade. “You are no longer allowed to have any kind of contact with Cora from here on out. Until she decides to see or talk to you, you are to remain far away from her.”

              Gloria bit her lip and gave him a quick mousy look that made Julian think of a rat trying to find his way out of a sinking ship.

              “That’s not really for you to decide, isn’t it?” she said. “You can’t separate a mother from her daughter.”

              Julian snorted. “A mother and daughter, huh?” he echoed. He gave a quick look around the room to make sure it was just the two of them before leaning in and saying, “It was
you
who told Vilas it was Cora who was taking those ‘stolen’ drugs and selling them in the US, wasn’t it? Needed a fucking scapegoat and when you couldn’t find a good one, you sold out your own fucking daughter, didn’t you?”

              Gloria gave him a look of feigned motherly indignation. But under Julian’s cold stare, the façade melted and her true annoyance and calculating face revealed itself.

              “I really
had
been robbed,” she said with a huff of irritation at her failed plan of wooing Julian with some motherly distress. “But Carlos was just too crazy at that point to listen. Too many knew about his breakdown and his paranoia and were taking advantage of it by robbing his deliveries mid-route.”

              Julian could hardly stand to look at the woman. Did she feel no empathy for the fact that her daughter had taken a bullet to the head and was now in ICU fighting for her life all so that Gloria could get another chance at
her
life?

              “When Carlos went into his paranoid spirals, he would really spin,” Gloria said, wincing a little at the memory. She then lifted her chin so the light of the hospital room could perfectly shine down on her mottled and bruised face. “He would get violent,” she added unnecessarily.

              Julian remained silent and stoic as granite. He felt no sympathy for a woman who seemed to thrive on dangerous and reckless behavior.

              “One night when he was beating me
real
bad, I said that maybe that was how Cora was surviving in the States. Maybe she had gotten a hold of some of the rival dealers and had partnered up and were robbing him….” Gloria’s voice and gaze trailed off. She gave a small shrug as if her actions were only inevitable given her circumstances.

              Julian could feel the rage boiling through his body. He had seen the little shoebox of an apartment Cora had been living in in New York. She was paid well at JB Enterprises—Julian made sure of it—and yet her apartment was as sparse as an abandoned lot. Clearly she was not spending any of her salary on herself. He imagined how hard and frightening it must’ve been to crawl from the belly of Mexico all the way to the border and then to cross with nothing but guts and gumption.

              Julian reached into his pocket and pulled out Cora’s secret battered and worn cell phone. The only link between Gloria and Cora. He threw it onto her bed where it landed with a soft plop next to her knees.

              Gloria stared at it but didn’t pick it up. She understood what this meant. Without Cora, she had no more safety nets, back ups, or insurance. Slowly, she looked over this tall, powerful,
wealthy
man.

              “You know,” she started, in a tone that made Julian’s guard immediately rise up even higher, “even this far south we get the news. JB Enterprises is quite a nice moneymaker, isn’t it?”

              Julian felt filthy just being in the same room with this woman. From his back pocket, he pulled out a thick white envelope. He threw that down next to the phone. Gloria immediately picked it up and began counting the bills. She looked up, disappointed.

              “This won’t be enough to—”

              “That’s right,” Julian interrupted. “It’s not enough money for you to go gallivanting around causing more trouble. But it
is
enough money for you to go set up shop in a new town to live a more quiet and dare I say, peaceful, life.”

              Gloria clutched the packet of money and glared at Julian. “I could easily go to the police and tell them Cora was connected to Carlos. I could bring back up the murder charge. She’d be stuck here in Mexico then and even with all that JB Enterprise money, it’d take months, if not years, to fully clear her name.”

             
Oh, a threat?
So that was how she wanted to play it.

              Julian leaned down over the metal side railings of the bed. He carefully placed both hands on the thin metal and squeezed. Not only did this help to demonstrate the size of his defined arms but it also helped Julian from trying to snap this woman’s neck in half.

              “Just try it,” he said in a whisper that could cut through a mountain. “I fucking dare you to. Because Gloria, you have been working inside a drug cartel for the better part of a decade. You knowingly and consciously helped a drug lord distribute his goods. And that murder charge of Cora’s? You were an accessory in helping to organize a bribe to impede charges. Then what about kidnapping? We can contact the authorities back in the good old USA and pull up all the missing persons reports my father had made about you and Cora. How will a case look between a woman like that and a twenty five year old kidnapped daughter who used self defense against rape?” Julian watched Gloria’s face pale and her throat bob as she swallowed dryly.

Julian straightened up. “And just as you’ve so kindly pointed out, with all of ‘that JB Enterprise money,’ I will make sure you are fully, completely, wholly prosecuted for your crimes.” A nurse hurried past the room, charts in hand. He knew he’d have to get going soon. There was still a lot to do. Giving her the benefit one more warning look, he added, “Believe me, you’ll be doing me a favor by going to the police because there is nothing I want more than to throw your ass in prison.”

Gloria sat stunned in her bed, the envelope of money drooping slightly in her hands. The old cell phone lay forgotten by her side.

Satisfied that he had got his message through, Julian turned around and walked away from his father’s ruination and Cora’s nightmare.

Four

              Despite what he had said in Gloria’s hospital room, Cora’s murder charge was still a huge weight that hung over her and her future. He knew he had to have that resolved before they could think about moving forward.

              Julian pressed the most recent and called upon number on his phone. “Paulson, are you here yet?”

              “At the station, chief,” the gruff detective answered immediately. “Requesting Cora’s old files to be sent here to the Maraño police station.”

              Julian felt his chest relax a little bit at hearing the competency in Paulson’s voice. “Good man. I’ll be there in five minutes.”

              “Do you want me to bring you a change of clothes?”

              Julian shook his head. The Mexican heat was no joking matter. He had sweated through his shirt allowing the dirt and dust of the streets to cling that much tighter to him.

              But he hadn’t paid any mind to any of it. There had been so many things to do, Julian could care less what he or his shirt looked like.

              Paulson shrugged and leaned against the hospital room wall, near the door. The older man watched as Julian sat next to Cora’s bed, his elbows on his knees and a clear prayer emitting from his entire being for the girl’s recovery. The love the younger man held for this woman was clear as day. It broke Paulson’s heart to see Julian so enveloped in his grief.

              Not wanting tragedy to take the younger man unawares, Paulson cleared his throat before saying, “The doctors here don’t recommend her being moved. She’s too fragile right now.”

              “I know that,” Julian replied hollowly without taking his eyes off Cora. He watched as her chest rose and fell with each breath. Even taking her on the helicopter to Maraño had been a huge risk and it was only by luck and the skilled people of the Maraño hospital that Cora had survived the journey.

              “They say that with each passing day with her in a coma, there’s less chance of her—”

              “I know that,” Julian interrupted, his voice a little harsher.

              The detective rubbed a hand against his cheek. He did not wanting to be the bearer of more bad thoughts but felt a measure of responsibility in giving his boss a small reality check, if only to save him from more heartache. “Then should we prepare for arrangements to be made…funeral or otherwise…just in case? That way we can have a plane waiting—”

              Julian slammed his fist against a small side table. He glared at Paulson with a rage only barely covering up the deep fear within. He knew what the doctors and nurses had said. They had been very blunt with him. Cora had shown no improvement in the last three days they had been in Maraño.

              But Julian hadn’t focused on that. Instead he had focused on trying to fix everything else. He had turned his attentions instead onto Gloria, Carlos, the murder charges—everything except Cora’s coma. He had worked and worked under the desperate assumption that Cora would wake up. And when she did, she would wake up to a world of no more fear or past obligations. He would make sure of it.

              All of his efforts were for a Cora who would wake up.

              A Cora who would live.

              But if that didn’t happen? If she never woke up again?

              Julian shook his head. Looking blindly at the bed, he said slowly, “No funeral. No arrangements. She will wake up.” He looked at the detective as if trying to force him to agree with him. “She
will
wake up.”

              Paulson nodded, his face showing no flicker of doubt or pity. “Of course,” he murmured.

              The detective leaned his head back against the wall and began quietly planning the necessary arrangements to bring back home a body and a grieving man.