Born Sinner by Cora Kenborn
Epilogue
Lola
Seven Months Later
“Hey, Daniela! Wait up!”
Adjusting the heavy backpack slipping down my arm, I smile at the bubbly blonde waving at me from across the quad. Vanessa, I think is her name. She’s a nice girl, a little too talkative at times, but harmless.
I should know. My father and brother personally vetted every student on Northgate’s campus. This place is nothing like Rutgers. With only two thousand students, it’s almost impossible to blend in, so my family keeps their finger on its pulse, allowing no margin for error.
No dark corners for Santiago masks to hide.
Or so they think.
“Everything okay?” I ask, forcing as much of my native accent from the words as possible. No need to raise suspicion and make pretty blonde girls dead.
I laugh to myself. Who knew that phrase could be used twice in one lifetime?
She nods, her pale cheeks stained red from the biting wind. “A few of us are going out tonight. You should come. We can celebrate your birthday.”
“I’m not allowed to go to bars.”
“This is college, not high school!” She laughs. “You’re free to have fun, Daniela. Our parents have no control over us here.”
Maybe for her. Her white-picket-fenced suburban life doesn’t know a damn thing about control. About the dangers of bearing a name the world condemns as evil.
I grit my teeth as a looming shadow darts behind a lecture hall building.
Free is a four-letter word where I come from, nothing more. Especially now that I have twice the security. Luckily, RJ is family, otherwise Santi would’ve wasted no time in slitting his throat for failing to protect me from what he perceived as Dante Santiago’s wrath.
Now Miguel the Destroyer has become my three-hundred-pound shadow, stepping where I step, breathing where I breathe. At any given time, he and at least three other men hover about, boxing me inside an invisible shield. One wrong move or misguided touch and the snow blanketing this campus will run red.
I shrug. “Maybe some other time.”
There won’t be a next time, and she knows it. Thankfully, she doesn’t voice the questions pooling in her bright green eyes. “You’re a mysterious girl, Daniela Torres,” she mutters, walking away.
Daniela Torres.
It’s the name my father assigned me before allowing me to return to the States with my entourage in tow. It took twenty-four long weeks of solitude and repentance to earn my way back into his favor. Mercifully, after six months of atoning for my sins in Mexico, mamá became my champion—the calm voice of reason in a chaotic war.
“Give her a second chance,” she crooned into papá’s ear. “She’s a free spirit, Val. A hummingbird thrives on perpetual motion. Clip its wings, and it dies.”
Mamáalways had a way of bending papá’s iron-will.
Begrudgingly, he conceded, enrolling Daniela Torres at a Newport, Rhode Island school where the biggest danger came from crossing the street.
I allow a secret smile to tug at my lips. I care nothing about this school. However, its location calls to my soul.
Because it’s ours.
Making my way back to my heavily guarded apartment, I slip my key in the door as four shadows close in behind me. “Buenas noches,” I say in a sing-songy voice, bidding Miguel and his men goodnight with a private smirk.
Once I close the door, the air inside the darkened room changes. Turning the lock, I let my backpack slide off my arm while slowly drowning in the charged electricity of his presence.
“Did you miss me?” I whisper.
My answer is a firm grip around the back of my neck as I’m slammed against the wall, my pulse thumping a furious beat under his rough fingers. Sam doesn’t greet me with a kiss or a soft caress. His greedy hands tear at my leggings until they’re nothing but ribbons of confetti littering the floor.
“Catch me, and I’m yours forever,”he growls, reciting the words from my note through clenched teeth. “Well, I’ve caught you, dulzura. There’s no escape from me now.”
The heat of his warning skates down my neck.
“What if I run?” I ask, biting my lip.
“I’ll catch you again.”
“What if I scream?”
His hand slides up my throat, gripping my chin and twisting it until it brushes his unshaven cheek. “I’ll steal it from your lips.”
“And if I fight?”
“I’ll come twice as hard.”
He seals his promise with a graze of his teeth against my jaw while thrusting a finger deep inside me. I moan at his rough possession. This is the game we play. Intruder and victim. The same act that started our torrid affair now feeds our addiction.
The dark can’t mask what has only grown stronger with time. I feel him everywhere: in the air, on my skin, in my soul…
I spin around, and like two magnets, our mouths crash together, drinking the life from each other to soothe the thirst our separation caused. His bare chest rubs against my breasts, the scarred L carved into his flesh fanning the flames of my desire.
L for Lola.
L for lust.
L for love.
“Happy birthday, Lola.” He hums out a dark, satisfied groan as his tongue laps my arousal off his fingers. He lowers his hand, and I shake in anticipation at the sound of his jeans unzipping. “What’s your wish?”
“Freedom,” I whisper, gasping as he pins my back against the wall. “Blood and salvation.”
As I voice my demands, Sam grabs the back of my thighs and lifts me off the ground. Instinctively, I wrap my legs around his waist, crying out as he thrusts inside me, the searing pain easing the ache in my heart.
“Blood I can give you, dulzura. You have to earn the rest for yourself.”
He’s right. It’s a battle fought with patience, not force. I’ll embrace my role as a pawn in this cartel chess game. I’ll move strategically across the board, hiding in plain sight from both deadly kings.
For now, we’re forced to play by their rules.
But one day, I’ll graduate. One day, I’ll return to him, and we’ll break these chains binding him to Colombia and me to Mexico. One day, we’ll cross this thorn-riddled line drawn between our two families.
“For now…” I groan, his possessive thrusts driving me toward the edge of ecstasy.
For now, we’ll meet in darkness.
Fuck in secret.
Love in silence.
Sam pauses, our bodies joined and aching for release. “And then what?”
I smile, soaking in the strained moments of peace before he shatters me once again.
“Checkmate.”
The End…
For Now
Thank you for reading Born Sinner.
Keep reading for a sneak peek into Santi Carrera and Thalia Santiago’s story in Bad Blood, Corrupt Gods Duet Book 1.