Page 5 of Making the King

I was only nineteen myself, but fuck, I’d been with the Diamond Crew for a while by that time, and had spent life on the streets for a number of years before that, so I knew how to bury my fear deep and only show the world a hard exterior. It’s how I learned how to survive the cruelty of adults that thought their needs, their desires, meant more than a child’s consent.

The large metal gates come to a clanging stop, the tall wire fencing built right up to them like a cage rattles as a gate further in opens.

Shit. How can one chick make me so fucking nervous?

The Cara Rodríguez I met when she was sixteen was a contradiction. Her features were everything soft, from her satin smooth cheeks and large doe eyes, and how fucking soft and plump her lips looked. And fuck, they felt it too, something which fucking pisses me off.

Not the fact that her lips were soft, but how it was nice kissing them.

Like what the fuck? She was sixteen. And while there are only three years between us, I was still classed as an adult that day, so I should never have liked how her lips felt against mine.

It was torture enough having to fake that I was excited about consummating the marriage, and fuck, even having to slap her ass felt so fucking wrong.

So why was she a contradiction?

Because as sweet as she looked with her long silky dark hair, big eyes, and those fucking kissable lips, she had the fire of a warrior princess inside her. A warrior princess who saw an opportunity to take matters into her own hands, and fucking killed her dad in front of everyone, including the cops.

Now, here I am, three years later despite the fact she refused to see me the entire time she was locked up. I kept trying for the first six months, but I eventually gave up. I turned my attention to helping our crew, while our Aussie associate, Baz Marx, worked tirelessly to get Cara’s murder sentence reduced to manslaughter, and get her released early.

Yeah, we had to pay off a judge, a couple of cops, and even the prison warden to remove the murders Cara committed while inside, but we couldn’t leave her in there when we were meant to save her.

A group of women start walking down the caged tunnel, and I hear some excited gasps around me from others who are waiting for their loved ones to be released.

I stand taller, pushing off my truck and rolling my shoulders back as I watch the women get closer to the exit.

I’m not even sure if Cara will recognize me. She wasn’t present during the closed hearing last week where the judge ordered her to be released into my care as part of her parole terms. I’ve seen her though. Well, a picture of her. A prison headshot. I’ve studied it daily for the last few months, conjuring scenarios in my head as to where the innocent-looking girl that I met three years ago went, because staring back at me is a woman. A hard woman. A woman who, like me, has learned how to survive.

A couple of prison guards move to the wire gate at the end of the cage and unlock it, pushing it open where the first woman steps out toward her freedom.

There are some squeals from a few cars down, and then they run into each other’s arms and hug.

I ignore the commotion and focus on the gate, watching as woman after woman steps out, but none are my wife.

Where the fuck is she?

Frowning, I take a few steps forward to get a better view into the cage and see a tall figure strutting down the path as she talks to a female prison guard. The closer they get I can see a cigarette being shared between them, before they hug each other.

The moment Cara Rodríguez steps out of the cage and into the parking lot, my lungs fucking forget how to function. That definitely is not a child. That is a woman, curvy in all the right places, holding herself tall and proud and so fucking full of confidence, the same confidence I got a brief glimpse of at our wedding.

She glances around the lot, her body stiffening when her dark gaze lands on me, and she takes one last drag of her smoke, before dropping it to the gravel, and using the toe of her shoe to stub it out.

Jesus, where did she even get those clothes? She went to juvie in a fucking wedding dress, and walks out of prison in booted heels, skintight leather looking pants, and a fucking cheetah print cropped tank.

If I thought Cara needed saving from prison, I’m getting the feeling that I was very fucking wrong.

Her heels click as she walks over to me, one foot in front of the other, her hips swaying in a way that reminds me of catwalk models doing their strut.

Fuck. Do they teach them that in prison?

“Who did you fuck up the ass to swindle this?” she asks, coming to a stop in front of me.

I’m speechless for a moment as I take her in. She’s still there, that innocence from the child she once was. But either she’s covering it up to appear stronger, or, she’s been hardened in such a way that even though you can see signs of the nineteen-year-old in her features, her soul is ten years older.

Given the teardrop tattoo under her eye, something I know she got after committing murder while in prison, I’d say that I’m looking at the latter.

“Don’t I get a thank you? You’re free now.”

She scoffs. “Hardly. I’m going from one prison to another.”

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