Page 47 of The Love Language of the Cartel

He shot me a half smile, but his eyes were haunted. Drained, but not just from sleeplessness. There was a heaviness to them, an unspoken load he’d chosen to carry for us both.

“W-where are we?” I croaked out, sounding like a frog.

My voice was dry and unfamiliar to my ears. He quickly grabbed a cup of ice water and placed the straw up to my lips so that I could rehydrate. After a moment, I pulled away and cleared my throat. “Thank you.”

He dipped his chin with hesitation. “Still in Mexico City. You’re safe now.”

“What happened?”

I watched his Adam’s apple bob up and down inside his throat as he went back and forth inside his mind on what to say and what parts to omit. His chest inflated with a slow, deep breath as his fingers tightened around mine. “Your father hurt you, Demi. The doctors had to operate to stop the bleeding from the gunshot wound. They got the bullet out, but they couldn’t save . . .” He paused as he looked up at me. “They couldn’t save the baby.”

My heart ceased to beat. “The baby? What baby? I-I was pregnant?” I whispered as my mind raced with a million questions.

Pregnant?I hadn’t even known. I hadn’t felt different. There hadn’t been a sign or an inkling.

Ozias nodded, his own pain carved into every line of his hauntingly handsome brown face. “You didn’t know. Neither did I. But—” He hesitated, and it wasn’t hard for me to see the pain in his eyes. “There’s more. The damage was severe. The doctors said there might be permanent scarring, and there’s a chance you might not be able to have children.”

The words struck me like a bodily blow to the gut, each one plummeting deeper until I felt nothing but emptiness inside. Without warning, tears gushed from my eyes, but I wasn’tsure if they were from my sorrow, rage, or utter disbelief. I gently pressed a trembling hand to my flat stomach, and the hollowness there suddenly became excruciatingly hard to process.

The baby had been collateral damage in my father’s campaign for power and control. I felt robbed of something precious, a life snuffed out from my womb before I even had the opportunity to appreciate it—before it even had a chance to blossom fully. Ozias’s words echoed in my mind:You might not be able to have children.

And then, the realization hit me like a second tidal wave, more violent than the first. Cyrus Malone. My father. The man who’d brought me into the world and tried to take me out had been the puppet master in my nightmare. Even after all his greed and shady business arrangements, he’d come with his men, one of them being my cousin Dominic, knowing full well the violence and bloodshed that would follow. And now, because of him, the life growing inside me had vanished, leaving my future as a mother with a permanent question mark.

I parted my lips to speak, and my voice was barely a whisper. “H-how could he do this to me?”

Ozias’s anger was apparent in the way his bearded jaw tightened. “Because he doesn’t give a fuck about anyone but himself, Demi. Now you know that firsthand.”

The walls seemed to close in around me, suffocating me in its stillness. My father—the man whose blood flowed through my veins—had orchestrated all of this. And for what? A power play to see whose balls were bigger? An alliance that would lead to more bloodshed and treachery? I couldn’t even begin to wrap my head around the depths of his sickening betrayal. The man who bought me a pony on my fifth birthday, who called me his “princess,” had disowned and tried to murder me in cold blood without a second thought.

I stared up at the ceiling, trying to slow the tears from slipping down my cheeks. A wave of emotions overtook me—grief for the innocent baby I’d never get to meet, hate toward the man who was supposed to always protect and put me first, and a painful, troubling sadness at the prospect of never being able to experience motherhood. How could I ever forgive him? The question lingered in the forefront of my mind, weighty and unanswerable.

My voice quaked as I broke the silence between us. “Is he . . . dead?”

“He killed our child,mi amor. I would never let him off so easily as to reward him with death. He deserves to suffer.”

“Where is he?”

“Locked away on my compound.”

“I want to see him,” I said firmly, my gaze stationed on his.

“No. I went against my gut and listened to you once. I’m never doing that again. Not after what he did to you.”

“I want to see him, Ozias. I deserve to face the man who tried to kill me.”

Ozias’s expression darkened before he sighed heavily. “When you’re strong enough,mi amor.You have my word. But I’m not letting you go alone, even if that means handcuffing your wrist to mine.”

He gave my hand a squeeze, but it barely registered. My thoughts were too busy spiraling inward.

“And my cousin Dominic?” I inquired with hesitance, unsure if I could take any more bad news.

Ozias’s expression remained cold. “My men and I went to war against your father after he shot you. None of his men survived in the crossfire. If he was there, he’s dead. I’m sorry.”

We both knew he wasn’t sorry, but I nodded anyway. My chest instantly tightened, and my throat burned with even more unshed tears. He was the only loyal family member I had left.Icouldn’t help but think of my cousin and the fact that my father’s recklessness had extinguished his life in the blink of an eye. Still, he’d chosen a side, and it was the opposite of mine.

Rage boiled inside me, mingling with my heartache until it became something distorted and unrecognizable. My father had been right about one thing: Blood was the love language of the cartel, and I intended to make him pay me back in his. I wanted to scream, to bawl, to rip out his heart and feel its last beat in my hand. And yet, I knew I needed answers. I needed to look him in his eyes and ask him why he’d chosen his own selfish desires over the betterment of his flesh and blood. But most of all, I needed to tell him that, despite everything he’d taken from me, he hadn’t won. The queen remained the most important piece on the board.

Ozias

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