Dipping her chin, Jade gave me a knowing look. “Don’t pretend you didn’t hear me, Miss Colombia,” she fired back, flicking her fiery red hair over her shoulder. “I said, do you love him?”
Love…
The single word resounded through my racing thoughts as I tried to think of a way to respond. There was no question that I both liked James and was drawn to him in a way I couldn’t explain.
But love?
It was much too soon for something so strong and binding. “I don’t…” Nibbling my lower lip, I searched for the right thing to say. “It’s too soon for such a thing.”
My brain forced me to speak the words even as my heart shouted that they were a lie.
Our minds may not have known each other well, but our scarred souls had recognized one another immediately. The life-altering connection we shared was inexplicable but also undeniable.
“Hmm,” Jade hummed, head tilting to the right. “Do you like him, at least?”
“Si.” There was no hesitation on my part. “I like him.”
A lot, I mentally added.
“And he’s different?” Gaze flashing with pain, she looked back toward the open door. “He’s not like—”
“No,” I interrupted, twining a strand of her thick hair around my index finger. “He’s not like El Diablo, Ellington, or Jacobs.”
She flinched at the last name I spoke in a move that wasn’t surprising. Clyde Jacobs was a monster, worse than Dominic even, and I prayed with everything I had that he’d burn in hell for everything he’d done to her.
And I hoped that day would come soon.
“James has a terrible past, and he’s made some grande mistakes, a whole mess of them in fact, but he’s working to atone for each one and become a better man.”
“Atone? What’s that mean?”
“To make amends.”
“Oh.” Her mouth formed an O shape. “So he’s good now? Like, he’s not bad anymore?”
“He is.” I nodded. If there was one thing in this world that I was sure of, it was that. “And no, he’s not.”
Trepidation rolled off her in waves. “You sure?”
“Si, bebé, I am.”
Inquisitive and full of distrust, I expected Jade to fire off another question. Maybe even two. But she didn’t. Instead, she looked down at the dress I still held in my hands. “Are you planning on trying the dress on now? Or do you want to keep yapping? Because if I get a vote, I choose the former.”
Nodding, I reached for the hem of the faded blue dress that hung from my once curvy but now too-skinny frame. It was one Dominic had gifted me a couple of years before.
I hated the estúpido thing.
“Carmen.” My hands froze short of pulling it over my head when Jade said my name, her voice smaller than before. “Can I ask you something?”
Her sass and excitement had disappeared. Vanishing completely. My alarm bells started ringing once more. “Talk to me,” I demanded, approaching the panic stage. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
Focusing on the far wall, she fiddled with her hands. “If you fall in love with James, are you going to run away and leave us here?”
Like a freight train, horror careened into me, nearing stealing every molecule of oxygen I held in my lungs. “Because if you do, I won’t survive. Ashley will because El Diablo loves her, but I won’t.”
She was wrong.
Dominic didn’t love Ashley.
The sick bastardo was infatuated.
There was a difference.
“But nobody loves me.” Snapping her head up, Jade once again found my eyes. “And if you leave then—”
I’d heard enough.
Dropping the dress to the floor without a second thought, I twined my arms around her back, hugging her close. “Don’t you ever,” I snapped, my lips hovering next to her ear, “say that again.”
Brimming with frustration and hurt, I wanted to shake her. Not because I was angry, but because I didn’t understand. Did she not know how much I, along with Chiquita and Faye, loved her?
“But nobody—”
“Don’t you dare,” I interrupted, unwilling to hear her speak such an untruth. “My heart may be fractured, Jade Allen, but I still love you with every broken piece of it.” She cried, wetting my chest with her hot tears, but I didn’t stop speaking. She needed to know, needed to understand. “And I will never leave you.”
Hell would freeze over first.
“Wherever I go, you and Chiquita go.”
“But what if he doesn’t want us?” More tears. “What if he wants you to leave us behind?”
“That isn’t James,” I whispered, resting my head atop hers just like I’d done Ashley’s two nights before. “And if he was ever stupid enough to suggest such a thing, I’d tell the pendejo to fuck right off.”
“You would?”
“I would.”
She calmed the slightest bit. “Promise?”
“I swear it.” Taking a step back, I unwound my arms from her back and took her hands in mine. “Want to know something, Little One?” When she nodded, I continued. “I never got the chance to be a madre, though I’ve wanted kids ever since I was a young girl.”
It was just another thing Carlos, the monster that he was, had stolen from me. With a handful of orders given to his puppets, he’d erased the family I’d been born into, and taken away my ability to build another with a man of my choosing by forcing me into a life of sexual servitude and never-ending abuse.
Yet, against all odds, I’d created my own.
And no one would take it from me.
Not ever.
“But it doesn’t matter that I’ve never carried a child in my belly,” I whispered, heart squeezing in white-hot agony. “Because when El Diablo brought you and Chiquita here, I became a madre anyway.”
Body stilling, Jade froze. “Carmen—”
“I may not have given you life, Jade, but I consider you my daughter all the same.” Stupid tears. I swear they never stopped. “And I love you with everything I have, even though I sometimes have a hard time showing it.”
With bated breath, I waited for her to respond.
I didn’t have to wait long.
Squealing at the top of her lungs, she ripped her hands from mine and slung her arms around me, squeezing me tight just as I’d done to her minutes before. “Oh my God, I love you too!”
At only sixteen, Jade was still very
