Page 8 of The Complete Truth Duet
Besides, my feeling sorry for the new girls wasn’t going to keep them safe.
Which reminded me…
“You need to replace Hugo.”
He slowly turned to face me with a scowl. “Don’t push your luck with me.”
I shrugged. “Okay. But he’s been fucking the girls in exchange for repairs.”
His body jerked, and then the muscles at the base of his neck strained against the collar of his pressed white button-down.
If I had led with this problem, we’d never have gotten to Chrissy. Marcos didn’t give the first damn about any of my girls being taken advantage of. He did, however, care about his cousin blatantly breaking one of his precious rules.
For the Guerrero men, pride and control were everything. And disrespect—family or not—was a mortal sin.
Chrissy he’d take care of. She’d be put out to pasture, as Nic had often called it. Basically, she’d be left on a corner and ordered to never come back. Though, if I knew that woman at all, she’d join another stable before the sun went down. But Hugo… Well, his life hung in the balance of how generous Marcos was feeling that particular afternoon.
With long strides, he stormed from my apartment. Outside, four men fell into step behind him. His entourage changed so fast that I didn’t bother learning their names. Not that I needed to. They didn’t talk to me.
“Don’t forget about Chrissy!” I yelled after him.
He didn’t acknowledge me directly, but he snapped and flicked a finger to the beefy guy on his left as they marched down the stairs single file.
“Oh my God,” Savannah breathed when we were alone. “I’m so sorry, Cora. Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m good,” I replied on pure instinct before I did the physical inventory. My head was pounding, my eye was aching, my vision was partially filled with black dots, and my nose was still messed up from earlier that morning. But overall, I was as fine as I was ever going to be.
“Go to your room and lock the door,” I ordered.
“I…I…um,” she stammered.
Smoothing my pale-pink tank top down, I snapped, “We’ll talk later.”
“But—”
“Later,” I repeated. “Now, go.”
Thankfully—or my head and my slipping patience—she didn’t argue any further. With my back to her, I listened to her footsteps move down the hall. Then there was the click of her door shutting followed by the tick of the lock, the clack of the deadbolt, and then the slide of the chain. Only then did I leave the apartment.
The sound of yelling greeted me before I hit the breezeway. Usually, the chaos was a hacksaw to my nerves, but after the day I’d had, it was music to my ears.
Chrissy shouting.
Marcos cussing.
Hugo lying.
It was the raging winds of the sweetest storm.
And like the princess they claimed I was, I stood at the rusted railing that overlooked the parking lot of my castle, my long, blond curls whipping in the wind, my body aching, but not nearly as much as my heart. I sucked in a deep breath and got lost in the maelstrom of my kingdom.
I felt nothing as I watched Marcos land fist after fist against Hugo’s face. The only thing that could have been better was if Hugo had landed a few punches of his own.
“Cora!” Chrissy screamed as Marcos’s man guided her to a car with his hand in the back of her hair. “Cora, please!”
I wanted to feel guilty. Maybe I hadn’t tried hard enough to make her understand how serious I was about Savannah, but I refused to drown myself in the cesspool of what-ifs.
I couldn’t save everyone, regardless of how hard I tried. Women like Chrissy were destined to destroy themselves, and I wasn’t about to stand by and allow my girls to be slayed by her shrapnel.
Emotionless, I watched them sling her into the back seat of a black Mercedes, and seconds later, Hugo’s unconscious body was unceremoniously tossed into the trunk.
In the commotion, most of the girls had emerged from their apartments.
None of them spoke.
Nor did any of them step up on Chrissy’s behalf.
The few I could see on the bottom floor were huddled together like a team in pajamas, their hair up, their faces clean of makeup.
All fights were momentarily forgiven.
Problems forgotten.
Enemies becoming sisters.
And as the car kicked up a cloud of dust, we’d lost one of our own, but we were stronger than ever.
Or at least they were.
“Cora,” someone called.
“Cora,” came another voice.
And then another. “Cora.”
With my head spinning in a million different directions, I ignored them and walked back to my apartment, making a beeline straight to my bedroom.
Calmly, I shut the door, locked all three locks, and then—careful not to let Savannah hear me—slid the rocking chair over and propped it under the doorknob.
No sooner than I nabbed a pillow off the bed and brought it to my face, the floodgates opened.
