The Viper (Untamed Hearts #1)(24)

“Oye, Diego!”

Marcos stiffened, stepping past the edge of the alley to look down the road to the club. He recognized the other members of Diego’s gang, now searching for their missing brother. There were four of them. Usually that would be bad odds, but Marcos was fearless, and he knew Chuito was too.

What was the worst that could happen? Death? What did it matter? Neither of them wanted to live with the guilt of knowing those bullets that had killed Juan and Marcos’s mother were meant for them instead.

“I recognize one,” Marcos told Chuito.

Just like he had recognized the guy Chuito beat to death in this alley, because Marcos had dashed out of the house that night as the bullets riddled the house. GLOCK in hand, he’d gone after the two cars on foot, running until he couldn’t see them anymore as they sped off in the distance. Marcos always had a weird memory when it came to cars. All the little details stayed with him. The faces in the windows. The license plates. Maybe it was just everything about that night in particular that was burned into his brain. Whatever the reason, it had made it very easy to hunt down the f*ckers who’d destroyed his family.

Too easy.

“Guy in the red shirt.” Marcos made eye contact with his cousin, who had stepped away from the body. Seeing that Chuito was going to concede the next one to him, Marcos tucked his gun into the back of his jeans, because they’d decided to kill each of those f*ckers responsible with their bare hands. “You can take out the others, but leave him for me.”



Marcos was jerked out of the memory when the front door to the apartment opened. Again his hand acted almost of its own accord, reaching for a gun that wasn’t there. A blessing, he realized, as he caught sight of the long strawberry-blonde hair of Chuito’s neighbor.

Alaine.

She walked in like she owned the place, wearing only a thin white nightgown that was conservative but sheer in the dim light. It left little to the imagination, but this wasn’t Marcos’s kind of girl. Alaine lacked the real curves of a woman, but Chuito had always been strange like that. He’d liked the skinny ones back home too, no ass, but he never cared.

Maybe that was why he fit in so well here in gringo land.

“Toma tu tiempo, Marc.” Chuito’s voice from the bedroom was colder now, more dangerous and calculating. “Haz que el cabrón sufra.”

Marcos flushed, and he looked to the gringa, who hadn’t noticed him. She walked to the bedroom fearlessly, and Marcos realized now why she wasn’t running the other way. She couldn’t understand Chuito. He’d been speaking Spanish the whole time. She didn’t hear him, with harsh, unfeeling determination, tell Marcos to make sure to drag out the pain of death rather than just kill the guy.

“Chica,” he called out, because he wouldn’t want to go into that room when Chuito was having those sort of nightmares. “Hey.”

Alaine didn’t hear him. She just slipped past Chuito’s bedroom door and closed it behind her like she was in a dream too. As if she had done it a thousand times before and didn’t bother to notice the tattooed ex-con sprawled out on Chuito’s couch in his underwear because he wasn’t part of the routine.

He looked to the closed door cautiously, his body tense. He was half expecting to have to go in there and save her from Chuito, who Marcos knew from experience could lash out when he was having a nightmare. He’d shared a room with him for most of their childhood and gotten nailed more than once, because the drive-by wasn’t the only terrible shit that had happened to cause nightmares.

After a few breathless minutes, Marcos started to hear whispers. He couldn’t make out the actual words, but he could hear the tone. Soft, endearing, Chuito’s low voice mingling with Alaine’s gentle one.

What the f*ck?

Marcos knew his cousin wouldn’t lie. They’d depended on each other too much over the years to lie. Honesty was ingrained and bone-deep. If Chuito said he wasn’t f*cking Alaine, then it was true, but what was happening here? A hot preacher’s daughter slipping into his room every night in see-through nightgowns, and Chuito wasn’t doing her.

Had he really been fighting this same battle between conscience and cock over that skinny gringa who just walked into his room like she belonged there? For five years?

No wonder he was talking about moving back to Miami.

That sounded like hell to Marcos, but then he’d never been quite as disciplined as Chuito when it came to things like that. If there was a beautiful woman leaving the light on, chances were, Marcos was going to take her up on it.

Especially one he wanted with every fiber of his being.

Just once.

A single taste to make it easier when he ended up back at the warehouse in the next few days. To last him when he ended up in prison eventually.

Or dead.

He didn’t want regrets, but he didn’t want to hurt Katie for a taste of the other side either. He was searching for a compromise. This conscience thing was new. He hadn’t tested the boundaries yet. He wasn’t even sure where it was supposed to lead. He had been proud of himself for walking out of the diner today, even if he was hard and miserable and filled with the never ending what-ifs because he’d never had a connection like that before. He got the impression he might never again. It felt rare. Like something few got the chance to touch, but he’d left Katie sitting there because he’d realized the risk to her wasn’t worth it.