He Ruined Me—Now He Crawls Back Begging novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Wrong Sister

Santiago tells the Talbots he saw the driver, Bella faints on cue, and Wynn tells him what she wants; Gino blocks the door.

Bella's fork hit her plate.

Nobody else made a sound.

Santiago Arango stood in our dining room doorway and looked at her.

Behind him, in the front hall, two men in dark coats waited by the coat closet.

One of them had his hands folded in front of him.

The other one didn't bother to hide the gun under his arm.

My father got up first.

"Mr. Arango. There's been a misunderstanding. We dealt with this in February."

"You did," Santiago said. "With the wrong daughter."

He came into the room one step at a time, cane first, then the left foot, then the right.

The brace on his leg clicked at the knee.

He stopped at the end of the table, across from Bella.

"Lower Wacker," he said. "Saturday, February fifteenth. One forty in the morning. A white Range Rover came through the red light and put its grille into my door."

Bella shook her head. Her curls bounced.

"I was pinned for forty minutes," he said. "But for the first ten seconds, I could see the driver. My headlights were right on her."

He tipped his head toward Bella.

"Blonde. Crying. A pink phone with little stones on it, held up to her ear."

Every head at the table turned to the pink rhinestone phone beside Bella's wine glass.

She put her hand over it.

Then her eyes rolled back and she slid sideways out of her chair.

My mother screamed. Gino caught Bella by the shoulders before she hit the floor.

"Her heart," my mother cried. "Wynn, you're a nurse, do something!"

That was the first time in two years she'd called me a nurse without wrinkling her nose.

I limped around the table and knelt, slowly, on my good knee.

I put two fingers on Bella's neck and looked at my watch.

Then I remembered the guards took my watch, so I timed her pulse off the clock on the wall.

"Seventy-two," I said. "Strong and regular."

I lifted her eyelid with my thumb. Her pupil shrank right down, and her lashes fluttered against my skin.

"Her eyes are moving under the lids," I said. "People who've really fainted don't squeeze them shut when you touch them."

Bella's eyes stayed closed. Her cheeks went pink.

"She's fine," I said, and got up using the back of Gino's chair. "Give her a minute to decide."

At the end of the table, Santiago made a short sound in his throat that might have been a laugh.

My father was already pulling out his checkbook.

He wrote standing up, fast, and tore the check off and held it out across the lilies.

"Five million," he said. "For your leg, and your trouble, and your discretion. We'll double it if your family drops the matter."

Santiago didn't take it.

He didn't even look at it.

"Your family already paid me," he said. "You gave us your port contract and your daughter. I didn't want either."

"Then what do you want?" my father snapped.

Santiago turned his head and looked at me.

He'd looked at me once before, the night before, from the basement doorway with crutches under both arms.

He'd seen the scar, the leg, the bucket in the corner.

He'd said something in Spanish to the man behind him, very quietly, and the man had gone pale.

Now he looked at me the same way. Like I was the only one in the room he had to answer to.

"It was my house," he said. "My cousin's men. My basement. Two hundred and ten days." He paused. "So I'm asking you, not them. What do you want done with her?"

Bella's eyes snapped open on the floor.

"In my family," Santiago went on, "the driver comes to Medellín. I've already got a plane at Palwaukee."

My mother made a noise.

I looked down at Bella.

She was looking up at me now, huge-eyed, her hand clutching Gino's sleeve.

"Wynnie," she whispered. "Please. You know I can't survive that kind of place."

I knew exactly what kind of place it was.

I knew the drain in the floor.

I knew which stair creaked third from the top.

I knew how long the light stayed on when they forgot to switch it off.

For one second, I wanted her down there so badly my hands shook.

Then I thought about my father in the driveway, fixing my collar, handing me over.

"No," I said.

Santiago waited.

"Not her in your basement," I said. "Nobody in anybody's basement. Not ever again."

I looked at my parents. Then at Gino.

"I want her on the record. In Chicago. In front of people. I want her to stand up and say she was driving, and I want them to say what they did with me."

My father laughed, short and ugly. "Over my dead body."

"That's not on the table either," Santiago said mildly. "She just said so."

He turned the cane in his hand and nodded to me once.

"All right," he said. "Her way."

He held out his free hand.

"Come on. My car's outside. You don't have to sleep under this roof."

I took a step toward him.

My knee held.

I took another.

Gino stood up from the floor, letting Bella flop back against my mother.

He crossed the room in three long strides and put himself in the doorway between me and the hall, between me and Santiago's men.

He buttoned his coat.

His hand stayed inside it, on the left side, where he always carried.

"You're not leaving with him," Gino said.

← Chapter 1 · All chapters · Chapter 3 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend