Page 13 of Chris

Yes, well … she knew how that worked.

How this life of theirs worked.

Look at her.

Valeria said nothing.

Abril didn’t seem to mind.

Spanish flowed around the table between the men, but the women at their sides kept quiet, and focused on the meal. It was what the Lòpez men expected from their wives, or sister, in Abril’s case. They weren’t interested in hearing a woman’s perspective on their business, and they didn’t want opinions.

Valeria didn’t care.

She used that time to make sure Maria ate enough of her food that she wouldn’t be asking for a snack every five minutes after dinner ended. And when her attention was on her daughter, which she didn’t get often because Jorge was an asshole, no one seemed to pay any mind to Valeria.

She considered that a win.

Right?

Maria sat between her mother, and Jorge. She called him Papá because Jorge refused to answer to anything else, but God knew Maria didn’t like the man who had helped to give her life. It didn’t help that the child had a front-row seat to the horrible treatment her mother received from her father daily.

Not to mention, until this last year, Maria hadn’t known her father at all. So, they forced the girl out of America, put her in front of some man who behaved like a monster, and expected the six-year-old to love him.

Okay.

Valeria did her best to make sure Maria behaved and gave her father the attention he wanted. It was easier on all of them that way, but in private, she let her daughter hug her tight, cry, and beg to go back to America, and Haven. Away from these people who she said were mean and hurt her mom.

What else could she do?

“Is it good?” Valeria asked.

Maria nodded. “I like it.”

“Good.”

“This will be a good deal,” Martín, her father-in-law, said with a pointed finger moving between Abril and Roberto sitting side by side across from Valeria and Jorge. “It is a good match, and it will bring our organizations closer … more money, more power, sí?”

Jorge smiled tersely. “Absolutely, Papá.”

Across the table, Roberto chuckled. “The Garcías never thought we would see the day when we made peace with the Lòpez family, but as they say, all wars must come to an eventual end, right?”

“That’s what they say,” the man next to Roberto muttered.

Samuel.

The other Lòpez son.

No one paid him any mind.

Valeria was a little distracted by trying to ignore the hand that came to rest behind her chair. Jorge’s fingers curved around her shoulder, his fingers digging in painfully. Still, she managed a smile across their daughter between them, just enough to make him assume she was fine with his touch.

She wanted to puke.

Still, Jorge’s hand flexed against her shoulder again when his father smiled at the man who was now arranged to be his future son-in-law because of the upcoming marriage to Abril. Even if she didn’t sense that tension in her husband’s hand, she would know the truth. In private, Jorge didn’t shut up.

His father had taken a step down from running the cartel a while back. Jorge was the one who had the major control of the operation, but that didn’t stop his father from stepping in occasionally, to remind everyone that the king wasn’t truly dead.

Like this deal with their enemy.