Page 45 of Married with Blood
Arturo might never contact me. But this old Cartel contact was. And I’d take it as a step in the right direction.
15
MAKSIM
“Maksim?”
I frowned, ignoring the sound of the man’s voice on my phone. He was looking into whether a leak happened from the seller’s side. But nothing he said could rip me away from the surprised expression on Carina’s face.
She’d done well.
Diving to safety. Not fighting me about driving. And not taking offense when Dean automatically assumed any security threat had to have come from her. The entire Bratva was taking their time to get used to Carina and see her less as a mole or spy and more as my wife and our newest strategist.
I’d been on task, calling this incident in and trying to figure out who could have thought it was a good idea to sneak up with a drive-by like that. My focus wasn’t on her while she drove, but on solving this problem.
That didn’t mean I wasn’t watching as she got out of the car. Or how fucking gorgeous she was as she walked across the drivetoward the house, her hips swaying and her ass so tempting in those tight pants.
I’d noticed how she stopped and glanced at her phone. Then how still she went until she spun and sought me out. Phone in hand, lips slightly parted, and an awareness in her dark eyes, she looked like she’d landed on something. Something intriguing and worth investigating.
“I’ll call you back.” I hung up on the man, uncaring what sentence I was cutting him off from finishing. Instead, I got out of the car and approached her.
“Look.”
No hesitation. No doubt. She thrust her phone up into the air and showed it to me. She never needed to. The day she’d arrived, I’d instructed my security team to track anything that came or went from her phone. With the hidden layers of that firewall, I bet she didn’t know I was watching for any sign of her sharing or getting intel. But she didn’t care—not if she was fully and willingly handing over her device like this.
I read it quickly, but she urged me to follow her into the house as I read. Maybe she was more rattled than she wanted to show after that shooting. I wouldn’t fault her for not wanting to stand around outside, even though my property was secure.
Unknown:I need to let you know that he’s rerouting business to a third party.
Unknown:A contractor who controls him with blackmail and blood.
Unknown:And he’s going to ruin all that your father worked to build. E-
I reread three more times.
“Someone from the Cartel,” I surmised.
She nodded, entering through the front with me. “Yes.”
I didn’t need her to explain that. It was obvious with the part about someone ruining what her father had built. Miguel Garcia had made the Garcia Cartel into the powerhouse it was. Or had been? “He’s saying that Arturo is?—”
“Ruining it,” she insisted. “He’s bound to ruin the Cartel.”
I faced her, caught off guard with how vehemently she said it. In the month and a half that she’d been here, she never spoke about her brother. Her father, yes. The memories of her father were prominent, especially when she explained where she’d learned something about a smuggling avenue or what kind of tricks worked best at the border. Even her mother came up. She’d told me that her mother was the one who first taught her how to hold a gun and then shoot.
But never her brother.
She sat through an initial questioning about that ill-fated shipment. Within the first week of being my wife, Adrik and Viktor and I sat her down and asked her to verify what happened that day. She’d been upfront, even adding to our suspicion that Arturo had the intention to perhaps let our trade agreement fade and fall apart—much to her dismay.
Other than that, she didnotbring up her brother.
It made my worries grow. Like she didn’t talk about him because she was hoping to talktohim. I didn’t know when I’d stop stressing about the chance she could be a spy or a mole when I had no proof that she was. She wasn’t contacting anyonefrom the Cartel. She wasn’t meeting up with her brother or any liaison. And she wasn’t probing for intel that Arturo Garcia might already know. All she did was act as a quality check for our smuggling operations, and she’d provided vast insight so far.
Her letting me see these texts was another mark on thetrustworthycolumn.
“Arturo is going to ruin the Cartel?” I checked.
She shook her head, more emotional and peeved than she’d let me see her like before. No more ice princess. She was distraught. “He’s impulsive and so prone to acting without thinking. Without me there right now?—”
