And no one had held me like that for as long as I could remember.

And I couldn’t bear it anymore.

I shoved my face in his ultra-elegant shirt and clenched his uber-stylish suit jacket in my good hand and I cried.

I didn’t care who saw me. Not even Hector.

Fuck it. I could take no more.

It was not wracking, sobbing, loud crying. It was silent, body-jerking, soul-wrenching crying.

Through it all, and it seemed to last a long time, Ralphie held on.

“Get it out, sweet ‘ums, give it to Ralphie,” he muttered finally.

“I have to go home,” I said into his shirt.

“You can’t go home,” Ralphie replied.

“I have to go home. I have to get out of here,” I said back but I didn’t take my face from Ralphie’s shirt.

“You’ll go home,” Buddy said from close to our side and I felt another hand slide around my waist as Buddy got closer and affected a group hug.

“Thank you,” I whispered, not looking up, not looking at Ralphie or Buddy and definitely not Hector or Daisy.

“You’ll go home, Sadie,” Buddy said. “You’ll go home with us.”

Chapter Three

I Waited

Hector

Hector sat, leaned forward, elbows on his knees, his left hand dangling, his right hand holding a Jack and Coke.

Actually, he’d started out the night adding Coke but he hadn’t bothered with it for the last two drinks.

“Hermano, you gotta talk,” Eddie said to him.

Hector looked at his older brother. Eddie was sitting across from him in Hector’s living room.

The living room was a pit, he’d been working steadily on the house now for months but there was a lot of work to do, he’d barely scratched the surface. The living room was a jumble of unpacked boxes and furniture most if it covered in heavy, plastic sheets. Hector was refinishing the floors in the study and dining room. He should have started with the living room.

Hector looked back to the floor and said, “I f**ked up, I know it and I’ll fix it.”

Then at the thought of “fixing” Sadie, unwanted and disconnected memories flashed through his brain.

Her standing at the sink in the bathroom at the hospital.

Her crying silently into her friend’s chest.

Her saying she wanted to take a walk instead of admitting she had to use the bathroom.

Her bloody face, bloody legs and the limp body he held as she told him there was no one to care if she woke up.

He lifted his glass to his mouth, threw back the Jack, draining it dry. He leaned forward and tagged the mostly empty bottle which was on the floor by his boot. He poured another heavy measure and then set the bourbon back down.

He was drunk, he knew he was drunk and he didn’t give a f**k.

“Tell me how you f**ked up,” Eddie prompted.

Without hesitation, Hector replied, “I waited.”

That was it. He’d waited. He’d waited for Sadie to come to him.

After that night in her father’s office, he should have taken what he knew was his.

And he shouldn’t have f**king waited.

* * * * *

At first, when Hector Chavez started to get close to Seth Townsend, he thought Townsend’s daughter was a useless rich bitch, a beautiful one but still useless.

Then, because it was his job, he watched her and her father. And he saw that Townsend didn’t hide anything from Sadie. He wasn’t concealing how he was able to give her a very good life. She knew all about it. She seemed to have no problems with that which made Hector wonder if she was somehow involved in the operation.

Hector looked into it and found she wasn’t involved.

She was clean. Squeaky clean.

In Hector’s experience, no one was squeaky clean. This made Hector suspicious. So he watched her closer.

And watching her and her father (but mostly her) made him uneasy.

Being from a big, loud, loving and in-your-business Mexican-American family, he’d never seen anything like it.

There was no affection, no teasing, no loving displays.

There was also no visible abuse.

There was nothing.

Mostly that nothing came from Sadie. She was like a robot. Not just around her father but all the time.

She did everything right, everything exact, everything perfect. The way she dressed, ran her father’s home, organized his parties, everything.

She seemed to be able to do it with minimal effort. She never got stressed, frustrated, on edge. She was never anything but completely together and in control.

Further, she didn’t invite closeness or affection not only from her father but from anyone. She didn’t laugh or joke or lose her temper or display the barest hint of a personality.

She just did her job. All the time. Twenty-four, seven.

All that nothing made Hector want to make her feel something but she didn’t invite that either. She was ice cold.

This had the perverse effect of really making Hector want to make her feel something.

Then she started helping him, feeding him information.

He couldn’t f**king believe it. Not just because she was doing it but because she was really not good at it.

He’d even walked up to her father’s office door and seen her place a file in the drawer where she put information for him. The house had been empty before he entered it, he knew and undoubtedly she knew that Seth was away but it was still risky as hell especially leaving the f**king door open.

He’d stepped to the side so she couldn’t see him, guarded the door in case someone showed and disappeared when he heard her preparing to leave the room.

Anyone could have walked up and seen her do that. If anyone else but him had seen it, she’d have been dead.

Like her mother.

In the end he had to spend his time trailing her in order to protect her so she wouldn’t do something immensely stupid and get caught helping him and thus blowing his cover and getting him and more than likely herself killed.

And she was taking the risk for nothing. Most of it wasn’t even good information. Drug lords didn’t tend to keep sensitive shit in the safe in their home. However he couldn’t tell her that.

She never let on to anyone, not even a hint, that she knew who he was or that she was trying to help destroy her father.

She was always the Dutiful Stepford Daughter.

When she’d walked in that night, smiling a sweet but highly inebriated smile and telling him to kiss her, he didn’t hesitate. He had already made up his mind that when it was over, when he’d brought Townsend down, Sadie would be his. He couldn’t move in on her early, it could have f**ked up the case and he’d been working it for over a year.