Devil's Daughter Read online

But when the man's head exploded in an eruption of blood and brains, I furrowed my eyebrows. That was unexpected.

  The other men on board started yelling at each other in Spanish, but I kept my seat. I wasn't about to run for the door of a cargo bay, not when the last guy hanging his head out there had just lost it.

  I didn't have to wait long for the mystery to be solved.

  Schiavone’s daughter hauled her way up through the open cargo bay door.

  That was also unexpected.

  She opened fire in the cargo hold, and I simply held out my hands in an ‘I surrender’ type of way. Her gun drifted over me, then past as she started lighting up the other guys around me. Everyone who pulled a gun on her died. And that was everyone, except me.

  Well, she was interesting. I'd heard she had quite a personality on her, but the woman was good with a gun, I'd give her that. She made her way angrily to the cockpit and kicked in the door.

  I heard her start yelling and screaming in Spanish, and I rose from my chair and followed, interested in where my day was taking me.

  “Land it!” she screamed in English. The pilot looked terrified, and he looked toward me as if he wanted me to do something. I shrugged and leaned against the door.

  “Land it!” she yelled again, pushing the barrel of the gun into the guy’s temple. “Land it! Now!”

  When the pilot realized there was no backup, and I was useless in this fight, he banked the plane and headed back toward the landing strip.

  “Zola?”

  Her eyes drifted toward me, but she never removed the gun from the pilot’s temple.

  “What of it?”

  I nodded, and simply took in the situation. She was hot... as hell. And I found my eyes drifting up and down her body as she kept the gun trained on the guy’s head. I knew she would shoot me if I made it obvious I was checking her out, so I did it quickly.

  The pilot did what he was told, which, given his state, I was surprised he could do at all.

  “So, what's your plan?” Her eyes drifted toward me and with a general ‘fuck you’ look to them. And not in the good way.

  “Who are you again?”

  “Santo. Santo Farina.”

  “Okay, Santo. I want you to fuck off.”

  The pilot gripped the yoke with shaking hands, and I thought he might rattle right out of the cockpit. This woman, as slight and short as she was, certainly had a handle on the situation. Given that she'd climbed a cargo net well after the jet took off, that told me the type of woman I was dealing with.

  I wisely stayed silent.

  The wheels touched down, and the pilot looked like he was going to shit himself. My respect for Zola rose when she didn't blow the pilot's head off. In fact, as soon as we coasted to a stop, she removed her gun, put it in a holster on her lower back, and hopped out of the cargo plane.

  Intrigued, I followed her. A couple of errant shots rang out, and my head snapped toward a few trucks riddled with bullet holes.

  “Wrap it up,” she yelled. A few of the goons with guns looked at her and waved. Their wide eyes were clearly impressed by her recent cargo plane hijack, and they muttered to each other in Spanish.

  “The money is in the cargo hold, get it and let's get the fuck out of here.”

  I looked at the carnage, at what her men had done. DEA agents littered the airstrip and the forest beyond, and as shots rang from the forest, I knew her men were mopping up the scene.

  It was a bad day for law enforcement, but a good day for Zola’s empire.

  I surveyed the scene, just as a white man in a stupid hat by the trucks shifted and raised his gun slowly.

  It shook in the air and was aimed directly at Zola.

  Without speaking, I dove forward, grabbed her around the waist and tackled her to the ground.

  Just as a shot rang out.

  Chapter Four

  It hit me like a truck, folding me over from the side, pitching me into the dirt. The shock diffused any anger I felt, and I was left breathing hard underneath the 230-pound man.

  I heard the shot, but I thought it had come from a distance. That was, until I heard a couple of my enforcers yell, just as an eruption of semi-automatic gunfire came from behind me.

  Santo, or whatever the fuck his name was, pulled himself off me. I refused his hand, refused the help entirely, instead electing to drag myself to my feet. I brushed the dirt off my pants and retrieved my aviators. They were, thankfully, still intact.

  It was hard to get a good pair of sunglasses down here. As soon as I secured them to my face, I rounded on the guy from Chicago.

  “What the fuck was that?”

  Santo shrugged and gestured over toward one of the trucks.

  I looked over to see Stan, the original DEA agent, with multiple bullet holes. In front of him, by his outstretched hand, was a gun. And it was pointed right at us.

  “Sorry,” Santo said with a shrug. “I thought he was going to tag you.”

  I knew I should thank him. I knew I should rush toward him, and express my gratitude. But there was no way I was going to do that, not in front of my enforcers. As he stood in the middle of the airstrip, looking as natural as a llama at the Empire State Building, I couldn't help but check him out.

  Just for a second.

  Santo was big, and he definitely filled out his black T-shirt nicely. He had rippling muscles, dark hair and dark eyes, a quintessential Italian supermodel, except with forty pounds of muscle added on. It definitely wasn't a bad view, and as I looked at him, I couldn't help but want him.

  I shook it off. That would be a sure-fire way to lose all the respect I’d gained in Panama.

  I couldn't fuck my underlings or my enforcers. That just wouldn't work. Being underestimated was one thing, but I couldn’t be seen as a slut. I would never be taken seriously again.

  I could see Santo undressing me with his eyes, as much as I was returning the favor. There was definitely attraction here, I couldn’t deny it.

  And that pissed me off even more.

  “What are you doing here?” I demanded, wanting to take my mind off this instant pull.

  “Your dad sent me.”

  Well, that did it. Any and all attraction was gone.

  I shook my head, dismissing him, and strode toward the Jeep. I hoped the bullet holes had not damaged it too much. My Jeep had been in more than one shootout, but she had always been good to me. I hopped in the driver’s seat and turned the key. She rattled a bit, then came alive beneath me, and I slapped the steering wheel triumphantly.

  “I can't go back without you.”

  He was standing right beside my window, and I almost turned and punched him in the face.

  “Well, then, I guess you’ll have to take in the sights of Panama.”

  “That's not how this is going to work.”

  I raised my eyebrows at him, at his gall.

  “Down here, you don't tell me how things work. I tell you how things work. One signal from me, one, and you'd be lit up with a thousand bullets from those guys over there.”

  “Okay, okay. Can we start over?” He looked at me like a kicked puppy, and as annoyed as I was, I couldn’t deny him another shot.

  I looked on the rearview mirror and saw that they were only halfway done unloading the cargo plane.

  “You have until that's done, then I drive away.”

  “There's a war brewing,” he said cryptically. “Between the families,” he clarified, trying to appeal to my human decency.

  “What makes you think I care? I'm down here because my dad sent me away, because he didn't like any of my ideas. Okay, so he got himself into a war. Are we surprised about that?”

  He shuffled from foot to foot, and I knew he wasn't telling me something. This guy wasn't as smart as he thought he was. He might be chill in a gunfight, but it's not like he was winning a spelling bee anytime soon.

  “What do you want me to do about it?”

  “Your dad sent me to come and get you. He wants you hom
e, he misses you. There's a war, and it's going to be a bad one. Your father could use your help.”

  “I'm sure he could,” I snapped. The last of the money was being loaded into Pedro's truck. At least he left us that. The idiot may be lying dead in front of it, but he hadn't taken the keys with him.

  “Look,” I said, looking Santo up and down. “I like you, really, I do. But I have a good thing going down here. I'm not going back to Chicago. Not now, not ever. I don't care who's asking me.”

  I looked at him, and I knew a blood debt when I saw one. I couldn't leave him in the Panama jungle to die because the idiot would probably get bitten by a snake before he got three feet off the airstrip.

  “Hop in,” I sighed, gesturing to the back of the Jeep. “I’ll at least give you a place to stay until you can arrange for a solo flight to Chicago.”

  He wasn't pleased with the offer, but he didn't argue with me. As soon as he hopped in, I let out a whistle. Three of my enforcers ran up and two sat on either side of Santo, who looked noticeably uncomfortable.

  “Make sure the other ones don't fuck with my money,” I added to the third guy, who stood at my window waiting for orders. “We're going. If even a dollar is gone, I'm going to know about it.”

  He nodded curtly and ran off to oversee the rest of my money.

  And with that, I drove away from the airstrip.

  Making sure I didn't check the guy out in my rearview mirror, because that's all I wanted to do, and that pissed me off even more.

  Chapter Five

  She drove us into a gated house in the middle of the mountains, though it wasn't actually a house—more like a manor.

  I looked around, trying not to show how slack-jawed I was. I realized it wasn't even a manor, but a fortress. Armed guards stood in watchtowers conveniently placed in the tall trees of the jungle surrounds, giving them a perfect shot, and any attackers no shot at all.

  Smart.

  I wasn’t surprised. Zola was smart. And gorgeous, and—

  I stopped myself from going down that road. She was a mark, a don’s daughter, a cartel boss. I wasn’t stupid enough to try and get in with a powerhouse like that.

  She drove into her compound and pulled over by the front door.

  The men on both sides of me jumped out, and I was able to finally exhale for the first time in twenty minutes. I didn't like feeling closed in; my wide shoulders made it uncomfortable for me to sit beside anybody else.

  At least I hadn't fallen asleep. I'd wanted to, at one point, but the jungle was more than interesting enough to keep me awake.

  It was the exact opposite of Chicago, and I found myself annoyed at sweating so bad. The humidity, the heat, all of it was almost insufferable.

  However, the woman driving the Jeep was something else entirely. She was quite the specimen, and I wanted to get to know her. Intimately.

  I knew that would never happen. As she walked into her mountain fortress, and somebody opened the door for her, also armed with a gun, I knew there was no way I would be able to just kidnap her and drag her out of here. That, and the fact that I'd have to smuggle her back into the States, most likely kicking and screaming, made forcing her out of her fortress damn near impossible.

  Which really left me with one option. If she couldn’t be convinced to go back to Chicago of her own free will, then I had to turn her men against her.

  I hated to do it; it seemed pretty shady, even for me. But I had a reputation to uphold. And my don, well, he had given me a job. So, I would do it. Because that's what I did.

  I followed her at a safe distance, knowing that with one wrong look, one pissed-off daughter would have me dead. She wouldn’t even need to waste a bullet. All she had to do was drop me off in the middle of nowhere and drive away. I was ignorant enough of this environment to step on a snake or something and get killed.

  And that wasn't the way to go.

  At least, that's what those nature documentaries said. A snake bite seemed like the worst way to die; I would take a bullet in the head any day.

  I kept my jaw square as I looked at the wealth around me. The fact that she’d been able to build this, in the middle of nowhere, really spoke of her wealth and power. It would be a task in itself to have a manor this big in Chicago. It was a different one entirely to have one this big and in the middle of nowhere in the mountains of Panama.

  Someone had to haul in the marble. Masons had to work with the rock from the mountain and transport it. The art, the soft cushions, the French-inspired furniture, all of it had to be hauled in. Probably one piece at a time, judging by the roads leading into this place.

  I listened to a couple of the men talking, and I knew I should have learned more Spanish instead of sleeping on the plane.

  “La Gringa Diablo…”

  It was the only thing I picked up, and I didn't need a Spanish-English dictionary to translate. The Devil White Girl. Well, maybe turning her men against her would be easier than I envisioned.

  I meandered my way into the main foyer, simply letting my feet guide me. I wasn’t sure where to go, or where she wanted me, so I simply enjoyed being here. Just lived in the moment, letting my options twist and turn in my head. Trying to come up with a plan by not looking at the problem directly.

  A mystery door called to me, and I opened it softly to reveal a large and luxurious bathroom.

  It shone in a way that nothing in this country seemed to shine, and the need to piss built up in me almost instantaneously. It had been a long time.

  I took the opportunity to relieve myself. I knew my job, and I knew that shit would most likely hit the fan at any time.

  I'd seen Pulp Fiction. I wasn't about to pull a John Travolta and get my head blown off sitting on the shitter.

  So I pissed quickly, and I left the bathroom (head intact) to see a man in a suit walking through the foyer below.

  He piqued my interest. The man looked too suave, too put together for the middle of the jungle. His suit was European and expensive, so he must have been a cartel boss. I knew it in my bones, just like I knew the sky was blue and the grass was green.

  A couple of his own enforcers stood on either side of the door, each of them armed to the teeth as well. It was a tense standoff between the two crews; the laughter and jovial atmosphere had vanished at the simple appearance of this put-together man.

  I continued to walk, trusting Zola to her business. She had run it successfully for a while, and with a name like The White Devil Girl, she knew what she was doing. More so than I did, especially in this cartel landscape.

  I walked down some more stairs and continued to look at the art. Zola had a keen eye for color, and I couldn't help but admire some of the statues she had placed all over her house.

  “Fuck you!”

  I heard it from behind the door, and it was Zola. She didn't sound scared, but she didn't sound happy either. Making a quick decision, I decided to enter the room. My job was to make sure nothing bad happened to her.

  And I always did my job.

  Chapter Six

  This was all trouble I didn’t need at the moment. I didn’t know exactly who Santo thought he was, but he was a distraction.

  A distraction from all the business at hand... And if there was one thing I had learned in all the time I’d spent in this profession, it was that distractions led to downfalls.

  It would be better not to have them at all.

  These were the thoughts running through my head when I heard a hard knock at the front door.

  My ears perked up at the sound and the hairs on my neck stood on end. An unexpected visitor. That was something else you didn’t want in this business.

  Wary, I walked down the stairs to answer. My security detail was out patrolling the grounds, as per their usual routine. No one could just walk up here…

  …Unless it someone they already knew.

  That’s why I wasn’t surprised when I opened the door to find Ricardo standing there, a smug grin on his face, his whit
e linen suit immaculate and almost glowing in the sunlight.

  Ricardo del Rio was one of the most powerful cartel men in Panama. I had been dealing with him practically since I came down here at my father’s urging, or some might say, insistence. He had a reputation for ruthlessness that was well-earned, as well as one for being merciless when it came to enemies.

  I had heard one story, supposedly from the early days when Ricardo was coming up and he and his best friend were vying for the same type of position in the cartel.

  They were given an assignment to take out a rival, secure his territory and distribution network, and add it to their own, thereby acquiring it for the cartel. The idea was that whoever acquired the larger slice of the pie would be the one going up the ranks. The proof required was to bring the rival’s head to the cartel.

  Ricardo and his friend grew up together, had known each other practically since birth, or so the story went. But when it came down to it, Ricardo wanted it more than his childhood friend.

  So, when Ricardo walked in to present his case to the cartel, the head he tossed onto the floor… was his friend’s.

  That pretty much told you everything about the man you needed to know. He got what he wanted. No matter the cost.

  “Zola!” he said with a dramatic wave of his hands.

  “Ricardo,” I greeted flatly. “To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?”

  He leaned against my door frame. I suspected he thought it made him look ‘roguish’.

  “You’re going to wrinkle that suit,” I remarked dryly.

  He shrugged with a grin. “Do you know how many of these I own?”

  “While that little tidbit is vital to you, I don’t really have the space in my brain to squirrel away that particular information.”

  He laughed then, but it was an ugly sound. This was a man who probably thought drowning puppies was a fun pastime.

  “You’re a charmer, Zola. There’s no question about that.”

  “Why, thank you, Ricardo.”

  “Ricky! You can call me Ricky!”

  “I prefer Ricardo. At least it sounds like an adult.”