Page 42 of Violent Attraction

I was able to hold myself off for a few weeks. I was able to go back to Austin and spend time with Isabella. I was able to go on runs and make deals with street level drug dealers in the city. I was able to function, but the second Isabella started her new job, all that went to shit.

Not having twenty-four-hour access to Isabella, made me go slightly insane.

At first it was just one more look at the camera footage.

One more look turned into countless hours, and the hours quickly morphed into sleepless nights.

Every single night after Isabella fell asleep in my arms, I would leave the bed that we shared, and I searched for at least a speck of an answer.

I searched and searched until I found the speck.

It was small, so small that it took me weeks to see it, but I found it.

A hand hanging out of the window of the dark grey SUV. Nothing else about the individual was visible, just the one stupid ass hand.

Nothing should be special about a hand, except that this one had black lines running all along it.

A tattoo.

I studied it. I looked at every fucking line and shape and now four years later, I would know if I saw it in person, I would be able to pick it out from far away.

Four fucking years and all I have been able to go on is a fucking tattoo.

That’s how far I’ve gotten to finding my father's killer.

Finding more became an obsession, one that Leo had to step in to stop.

I was turning into someone completely different, and it was affecting me in my work with the cartel and my secret relationship with Isabella.

I don’t know what it was, but one day I finally realized that there was more to life than getting revenge, so I stopped looking.

Not everything has been peachy, as Camila would say, but things are good.

In the time since my father’s death, I’ve climbed up in rank within the Muertos. I’m no longer a soldier that does drug run after drug run. I call shots, I make deals and Leo and I are making the Muertos more money than no one else has been able to before.

Not even Ronaldo himself.

I have the nice suits, the nice townhome, the sports cars, the money to take care of my mother for the rest of her life, and of course I have the beautiful girl at my side.

The only downside of having said beautiful girl, is that I can’t claim her as mine outside the four walls of my place.

That’s right, four years later and we still haven’t come clean to Ronaldo about our relationship.

You may be thinking, Santos, four years is a long time.

No, shit.

I’ve been ready to tell Ronaldo and the whole damn world that Isabella Morales is mine, but every single time I bring it up, she tells me ‘Not yet’.

Not yet.

Four long ass years and I still get a ‘not yet’.

If I didn’t love this woman so much, I would find her infuriating.

This whole thing is becoming harder and harder to keep behind closed doors. We each have our own place here in Austin, we aren’t able to go out to dinner in public and Leo is starting to look at me funny.

It’s like he knows I’m fucking his sister every night and he is planning on how to cut off my dick at his earliest convenience.