Bound to the Crime Lord (Dark Mafia Tales #2)

Chapter 20

Chapter Twenty

Manuel POV

F or the first time since I had taken over the organization, I took a day off. Of course, it was a forced day off seeing as my girlfriend wanted me to heal from the cold.

After she administered more medication and made me some hot soup, I felt more like myself. But that may have had to do with the fact that not only did I get to take my woman in the shower a few times, I also got to eat her sweet pussy for breakfast while I watched her come undone.

It was one of my favorite awakenings.

I had always prided myself in never needing anyone in my life to help stabilize me. But ever since this woman had walked into my life, I could not fathom the idea of living it without her. She had become a central point in more ways than one.

Juliette lifted her head from her files and gave me a strange look.

We were in my bed, going through some files. I was working in a new shipment line for some new drugs we wanted to peddle into the streets of Chicago. She was going over files for some of her patients.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

Her hair was in a messy bun on top of her head, and her face was bare of any makeup. She wore one of my large hoodies with nothing but her underwear underneath.

It was her best outfit yet.

“Nothing.”

I leaned toward her and pressed my lips against hers for a few seconds. Kissing her was like touching sunlight for the first time. She was warm, pleasant and calming. “You look gorgeous this morning.”

She gave me a deadpan look. “Why are you lying? I have no makeup and I’m in a baggy hoodie and messy bun.”

“Exactly.” I pecked her lips again. “Gorgeous.”

I was used to women coating their faces in makeup. They wore the most revealing clothes for the male gaze and left all sense of self-respect out the door. She was a breath of fresh air in my otherwise perverted world.

When I pulled away, her cheeks were tinted pink and her eyes moved to the mattress, breaking our gazes.

I had seen this woman bare-butt naked, and I had plunged my dick into her like a drill machine. And yet she still shied away when I said things like that to her.

I moved my files to the side and pulled her to my chest.

“Manuel,” she whined as if she didn’t like me holding her this way. “I have work to do.”

“Work can wait a minute. If I’m going to be forced to have a sick day, then I’m going to make you have a sick day too.”

“Whatever.” Her tone screamed annoyance, but she still burrowed her way into my neck and draped her legs over mine in a tight cuddle.

If my men could see me now…. They would never believe that I was cuddling with a woman. They would never believe that a woman would have the capabilities of entrancing me the way Juliette Ballard had.

“Tell me something you never told anyone before,” she hummed into the crook of my neck.

I was a large vault of secrets. No one really knew who I was beyond what I portrayed to them. I didn’t trust anyone well enough to let them in. But for some rather terrifying reason, I trusted her. So, it was no real surprise that, when I opened my mouth, the first thing that came out was the very secret that had thrown off my entire equilibrium.

“I had a meeting with Savina and Andres Valdez. They’re part of the New York syndicate. They run things on that side.”

She stared up at me, but I kept my eyes trained on the ceiling. I rarely got vulnerable with people, let alone a woman I had only met three months prior.

“They told me that my mother was assassinated by The Triad.”

Saying those words with my own lips made it all the more real. My father had never remarried, as he was too grief-stricken by my mother’s betrayal. But now, to learn that she’d never cheated on him and instead was killed by the very people after me…

I was not an emotional man, but the revelation of this did move something within me.

“Manuel,” she called my name, wanting to draw my attention, but my gaze stayed firmly on the ceiling. “Look at me.”

Her delicate hand cupped the side of my face. She pulled my jaw in her direction with a soft strength that I didn’t fight.

My eyes connected with hers and I could see the shine in her beautiful blue seas. There was something about this woman that was so captivating. It was more than just her beauty; it was her pure essence. She exuded the kind of warmth that eradicated the cold that riddled my world.

She was a drug.

Addictive. Powerful. Lethal.

“I’m sorry for your loss. Not only your mother, but your father as well.” Her thumb stroked the side of my cheek. “I don’t know much of your world, but I have seen more loss than I care to think of, and I know what grief looks like. It’s painful, it's heart-wrenching and life-altering. I’m sorry you’ve had to deal with this pain all on your own. No one deserves that.”

My throat tightened, my voice shrinking back into its box. Her words threw me.

Never in all my life had anyone ever looked at me with that much sincerity and honesty.

“Thank you.”

The tips of my lips tilted up ever so slightly into a small smile. Her eyes radiated light and warmth like I had never seen before.

“Thank you for trusting me with your pain.” Her voice was barely above a whisper, yet her words echoed loudly throughout my silent room.

One word in particular stood out to me. Trust .

It was such a simple word, yet so costly in my world. I had been taught not to trust anyone, and yet here I was, trusting her.

We stared at each other, the air between us growing thicker.

Her eyes wandered slightly to my left at the nightstand and she paused. I looked back to see what she was staring at and found the picture of my mother, father, and me when I was about four or five years old.

“Is that her? Your mom?”

I reached behind me and plucked the frame out. I stared at the picture that was taken in Mexico. I was originally born in Guadalajara, but my father wanted to move us to the United States to expand.

I didn’t remember much of that time, but from what my father had told me, it had been beautiful. He always felt most at home in Mexico.

“Those are my parents.'' I looked from my mother's face to my father’s. “I don’t remember much from my time with them, but from what I do remember, they were happy. They loved each other, and my father doted on my mother.”

Love . It was such a fickle and weak thing, at least in the view of the world I lived in. Love made you weak and vulnerable to your enemies. I could never afford the luxury of something like this in my life.

Juliette kept her eyes on the picture. I could practically hear the wheels in her head turning.

“What?”

“When did you say your mother died?”

“Almost twenty years ago now.”

She blinked, her eyebrows pulling together in a frown. “I don’t know how to tell you this, Manny, but… I think your mother is alive.”

My heart thudded clumsily in my chest. “What?”

She turned her head in my direction, our gazes locked firmly. “I did a medical tour five years ago when I was in my second year of residency, in Mexico. Your mother worked in the very same clinic I worked in.”

No, that couldn’t be possible. My mother was assassinated after her affair went public and my father left her in Mexico. We had buried her body, and I had thrown a white rose over her coffin at the tender age of 8.

“She’s alive, Manuel. I remember her well. She was always so kind and warm to me. She said her name was Rosaline, but she liked everyone to call her Rosa.”

My heart stopped in the middle of my chest. “That’s the name my father gave her. He always said she was as beautiful and as lethal as a rose.”

My mother was alive.

A million and one thoughts were racing in my mind, but the loudest one was the fact that I needed to find her, no matter the cost.