Finding Forgiveness

“He’ll hunt me down and kill me for telling you.”

“And I will kill you right here and now if you don’t,” I hissed. “And do you want to know why I need this information? Not because I want to challenge him or kill him but because Andrea Martinez has my Luna and is threatening to murder and do terrible things to her. His biggest rival, Gustavo Escobar, is my best shot of getting her back alive and I will not let anything stand in my way.”

Still gasping for air he finally agreed,? “I’ll show you.”

I released him and wiped the sweat off my brow.

“Now would be great,” I said as he rearranged his clothing and stopped to catch his breath.

He nodded frantically and picked up a different set of keys from his drawer and headed to the door that Luca was still guarding.

“Follow me,” he said approaching Luca who reluctantly moved aside and let him out in response to a reassuring nod from me.

“Make sure no one follows us,” I whispered in his ear as we passed and he nodded.

Blair and I followed Mr Perez down to a basement as Luca stayed back at the top of the stairs, once again guarding the entrance. After he unlocked a few doors, we were soon in a tiny filing room with many boxes.

“The box at the top on the left,” he said pointing to the highest shelf which only I stood a chance of reaching.Upstodatee from Novel(D)ra/m/a.O(r)g

The light was dim and I could only just make out that it was labelled with the name Gustavo Escobar.

“You don’t happen to have anything on Martinez whilst we’re here? We’ve tried before but never got this far,” Blair said.

“No one has information on Martinez,” Mr Perez said gravely.

This time he wasn’t lying.

“But you are right in thinking Escobar is your best shot in getting some,” he added as I looked inside the box to find envelopes of photos, sheets of coordinates, legal papers and a whole host of other files on him.

“The most recent location we were able to track him to was a house in Peru,” Mr Perez said pointing to one of the coordinates. “That was last week.”

“Gracias,” I said taking out a pen and circling it. “And sorry for… nearly strangling you.”

“Werewolves care about their mates. I get it,” he replied. “Now go. Find her.”

“Adios,” I said and Blair nodded before we marched out of the police station with the box, picking up Luca along the way.

A day later, Andrea’s leg was healing fast. He was still limping but when I redressed the wound in the early afternoon, it had reduced in size, new skin had grown and he was in far less pain than the day before.

It had been a relatively untorturous twenty-four hours for me too. After saving his life, Andrea had the decency to leave me alone for the evening and I sat out on the balcony watching over Bogota for hours as the pink chalk sunset was replaced by the bright lights of the city.

I’d always wanted to come to South America. This wasn’t exactly how I envisioned it happening but just for a short moment, as I took a deep breath of the fume polluted air and watched people on the street having fun, everything was sort of okay.

Apart from using me as a nurse to his wound, it wasn’t until the following evening that he bothered me for anything else.

“I’m attending a party in the city tonight and you’re coming,” he said to me as he sat beside me out on the balcony.

I nodded, “Is it going to be like the last party?”

“No one is gonna die,” he replied.

“You’ve said that before,” I muttered.

“I don’t keep my promises,” he said with a grin. “You may have realised that by now. But if someone ends up with a bullet in their head tonight, I can assure you I didn’t plan it. We’re meeting my respectable business friends.”

By ‘respectable friends’ he actually means ‘dirty murdering fellow drug lords’.

“Go shower and, there’s a dress laid out on the bed,” he said.

I nodded, already looking forward to a cold shower to rid myself of the mugginess of Bogota.

As expected, the dress would never be “Leo approved” but it at least had a certain level of class to it.

I dried my hair and slipped into it before looking at my reflection in the mirror of the bedroom.

My bruises were gone and after sleeping properly for the first time in a while the night before, I was looking considerably less like a corpse.

Already dressed in a shirt and black trousers, Andrea drew up behind me.

“You look stunning,” he said as he looked over my shoulder into the mirror.

He ran his hands down the dark red velvet of the dress and then traced the deep V-neck with the tips of his fingers.

“But there is something missing,” he said after a pause.

He then opened a drawer and lifted out a necklace. It was made of diamonds for sure and when he put it around my neck, I felt its weight on my chest.

“It’s pretty,” I said touching it with my fingertips.

“I’m going to propose to you tonight at the party,” he said after kissing my cheek. “And you’re going to say yes.”

I looked up to his eyes in the mirror and blinked whilst trying to make sense of what he had just said so casually.

“What?” I asked turning to face him.

“You are going to become my wife,” he stated looking down at me.

“What?” I repeated.

“What is so hard to fucking understand? You are going to marry me,” he said slowly.

“No,” I said.

He cocked his head to the side, “Funny… I don’t remember giving you the choice.”

“But-”

“Uh, uh, uh, uh, ” he tutted. “Don’t argue with me. I’m not your Alpha.”

I closed my mouth and turned back to the mirror.

“What happens if I say no?” I asked.

“I will ensure that you pay for it. Do I make my self clear?”

As his temper rises, his accent thickens and he gets harder to hear what he is saying but I did entirely understand what he meant. I’d learnt many times now.

“I said, do I make myself clear?” he repeated deeply after I hadn’t replied for a few moments.