“Ariana has asked for a car—a Mercedes. A friend of hers from school recently got one as a present from her father.”
“And Luna?” Juan asked, eyeing his wife. “What has she asked for?”
Carmen’s expression changed as she waved a hand in the air, as though the answer was immaterial. There was not a part of him that thought his wife didn’t love their children, both of their children, but she favored Ariana, if only because she took after her mother in most things.
Especially her greed.
Luna, on the other hand, had the temperament of her father, willing and able to adapt to whatever was thrown at her. Sometimes, Juan felt like they didn’t deserve her.
But Juan also didn’t enjoy arguing with his wife, knowing that it would only end one way when she had a drink in hand. “I’ll get her the car.”
He acquiesced, as he always did, and as he always would.
He had never been good at denying her what she wanted—even at the detriment to himself.
Juan didn’t know how they would be able to afford it, or how he would be able to even get his hands on one, but after he made the promise, he knew he couldn’t take it back.
A car wasn’t the first request, or the last, and before he knew it, Juan was nearly crippled beneath the weight of promises he was finding he couldn’t keep. And the more time that passed as he didn’t deliver, the more desperate he became.
It was no longer about him being a good father, but about being a good provider.
And he was failing, at every turn.
It was in his desperation that Carmen came to him with a proposition, one that he couldn’t refuse.
“Just a meeting,” she said with a cheery smile, as though she hadn’t been spitting curses at him for the better part of several weeks. “You will like this man,” she promised.
At this point, he would have gladly walked into the lion’s den if that meant she was no longer angry with him.
He was weak. Of that, he had no doubt.
It was for her that he sat in his living room, watching as his wife talking business with a man that was hardly older than his daughter with a silent disposition and a shark-like smile.
It was in his living room that a deal was struck.
But it wasn’t for a car, or jewels, or things that Carmen asked to receive, but something that sounded impossible.
“I want power,” she said on a purring whisper, attempting to be-spell the man as she had to him.
Had that been it?
Had it always been a game?
“I can give you your heart’s desire,” the man said with an almost elegant shrug of his shoulder, “but there is a price.”
Her body, Juan had thought.
He would demand she sleep with him.
That was what men like him did, but even as his heart seized at the possibility—and the sudden realization that he was sure his wife would accept such an offer—a part of him was glad.
Maybe now that she had what she wanted, she would stop her complaining.
But it wasn’t her that the man, this Kingmaker, wanted.
“Those in power don’t always get there because of family lines and privately funded campaigns, sometimes it is enough by just having the public on your side.”
“But how will this help me?” she asked, eager to listen. “Why would they care about me?”
Not them.
Not their family.
Her.
That was what she cared most about.
If he were a stronger man, Juan might have intervened then.
“Precisely. What would make a community come together and rally behind a woman whose virtually unknown to them?”
Carmen shook her head, waiting for his answer.
The Kingmaker smiled. “The loss of a child.”
“The price you paid was the life of your child?” Kit asked, interrupting the man’s story, too infuriated to hear any more. Already, the metal of the gun at his waist seemed to heat with such ferocity that he was sure it was a mirror for his anger.
He had always wondered the connection between them. It was clear that Luna didn’t know—he had always been rather good at reading her lies—but Uilleam had learned from the best on how to hide his hand.
He was a master at it.
Juan flicked the butt of his cigarette out the window, already reaching for another as grave eyes swept over the skyline outside. “A small price to pay, he said, for what we would gain in return.”
“Despicable.”
“I would have given him Ariana,” Juan said, as though that justified his actions. “But he didn’t want her—not that Carmen would have been willing to part with her—he asked for my precious, Luna.”
“Who meant so very little to you that you tossed her away,” Kit returned.
It must have been Kit’s tone change that made the other man finally blink and really look at him, his gaze narrowed and wary. “I didn’t have a choice.”
“We all have choices.”
“Then you and I are not the same. Who are you, anyway? Why does any of this matter?”
“Who I am is immaterial. Finish your story.”