Stolen Pregnant Bride (Olive Skin Devils Book 3) Read online

  I was trying to get my hands on one piece of land in particular. I thought it was a public plot of land, which was easy to change. I had a contact in the office that handled deeds, and they could help me snatch places like that up with a little document forgery. The only thing it cost me was what I had to pay my guy working in deeds. But the profit from that land was immense.

  Until one day, Mr. Garcia starts looking into his own properties and realizes one of them suddenly doesn’t belong to him anymore. He gets down to the bottom of it and takes me to court. Guys like me don’t stand a chance against guys like him in court. To make matters worse, a couple of days before the proceedings...my father passed away. My mother’s health was already fragile enough as it was, and we all figured the stress of him passing would be enough to take her out with him.

  The doctor said it was from a number of untreated issues, all of which spanned from exhaustion and pushing his body too far. It all compounded and went untreated and finally got the best of him. I thought about all those years my father worked for the Garcias and knew each one of them directly contributed to his early demise. Then there was all the stress and labor that spawned from their decision to raise our rent and fire him all at once. As far as I was concerned, The Garcias had my father’s blood on their hands. And I feared my mother’s blood would soon follow.

  I was thinking about all of that as I looked at them in the courtroom. They claimed I was a crook and a thief. That I had swindled their land from them right under their noses through faulty paperwork. They weren’t wrong. That’s exactly what I had done. But the way I saw it, they owed me that land and then some.

  “This man is nothing more than a thug in a nice suit,” Mr. Garcia stated plainly to his friend, the judge. “He is a thief, and maybe a smart one at that - but a thief nonetheless. I demand the deed be corrected to return my land to me and that this man be thrown in jail.” He added to it by cutting his eyes over to look me up and down in disgust. “I’m sure if you look into his other dealings, you will find a plethora of other crimes to throw him behind bars for. And we’d all be better off for it.”

  I snapped...right there in the courtroom. I figured I didn’t stand a fighting chance anyway, so I might as well tell him off while I had the chance. I ranted and raved about my father and mother and how all of our lives suffered because of their mistreatment of people. I argued that they had no proof that any documents had been altered and that maybe they were the ones trying to swindle people out of their lands.

  Most importantly, as I was being drugged off in handcuffs, I swore vengeance on them. And I continued vowing to get that revenge each and every single day I spent in jail after that. It felt as though people like my family were little ants, and men like Mr. Garcia spent their lives just trying to squash us. He wouldn’t stop until we were all gone. He tried to kill my parents slowly, and when that didn’t work - he tightened his grip to lessen their years. That still wasn’t enough. He had to see me locked away, too, while I was still freshly grieving my father’s death.

  I went back to business as usual after I got out of jail, but all the while, I was watching the Garcias closely - waiting for my chance to strike. I was determined to bring them pain and suffering and hopefully get some sort of retribution for the misery they had caused for my family. After all of that quiet stalking from the shadows, on that wonderful day, the opportunity suddenly dropped on my lap —the newspaper with the Garcias smiling out from the page.

  Their beloved son, Paul, was expected to be married to one Jada Chavez. The paper raved on about the good qualities and fortunes of both families and what glorious news it would be for them to be joined in holy matrimony! Every marriage for a filthy rich family was carefully selected, and it had two sole purposes - to secure their position of wealth and power in society, and to ensure they had the lineage to pass that power and wealth down to. They would soon be breeding the very people that would grow up to have men like me squashed. It was a never-ending cycle.

  Paul Garcia looked like a weak and feeble man. He was thin and barely looked old enough to be married. He looked soft and sheltered - the kind of guy who didn’t have a single hair on his chest. But his fiance-to-be! She was a woman of substance. She had curves and looked like she had a good spine to back them up. She was gorgeous and a bit mischievous looking.

  A man like Paul Garcia did not deserve a woman like that. I could tell from the picture alone. And yet, she would be married off to him by pressures of their families. I was suddenly filled with two desires. One, to finally make my move in my plot for vengeance against the Garcias. And two, to save this poor Jada Chavez from having to marry a spineless, spoiled brat like Paul Garcia.

  I dropped the paper to the table and slammed my empty coffee mug down over the picture, covering Paul’s face but leaving Jada’s smiling face untouched. Finally, all that rage boiling inside of me had something to be funneled into. An action I could take. I could already feel a sense of satisfaction and knew it would only grow by the time I finished.

  The Garcias would pay for everything they had done to my family and me. They would pay with their fears and worries, and then they would pay with their money. And if they didn’t meet my demands, I’d keep going until they felt every ounce of pain they had inflicted on me.

  Chapter 2

  Jada

  In the months following my breakdown over the initial news of my inevitable arrangement, I had come to know Paul Garcia quite well. You could say we were friends, which seemed like too casual of a term to describe a relationship between two people who were set to be married. But it was hard to establish much more than that with someone as proper and timid as Paul.

  He was barely five inches taller than me, but from a distance looked very tall and lanky. As thin as he was, he had an odd stoutness to him. He looked much younger than twenty-five, and the faint girth of his chest and stomach still looked like lingering baby weight. Maybe it was his smooth boyish face that gave it that feel. He had dark brown hair, which he kept slicked down and parted to the side, and kind, blue eyes which he inherited from his American mother. It was nice to be around someone who was so close in age and also mixed race between Caucasian and Hispanic, as I was.

  It was impossible to feel like he was anything more than a friend since we were rarely alone. Arrangements like ours were old and formal, and left little room, if any, for romance or affection. All of that was expected to magically spring into place after we said our vows. But it also seemed irrelevant to our parents. As long as we married and had children, the arrangement had served its purpose. How we felt about it or what our lives were like behind closed doors was of no concern to them.

  It started with a formal dinner with both of our families. That’s when Paul and I were introduced. And ever since it had been an assortment of courtship activities, like afternoon tea. I went to his home one afternoon for another one of those stuffy, dull tea parties. The house staff served us trays of steaming tea, sugar, cream, and cookies across a white lace-covered table in the parlor. Paul and I sipped and ate awkwardly, making small talk about the weather. I didn’t dare to bring up anything more exciting or scandalous with his mother sitting in a nearby corner, pretending to focus on her needlepoint.

  Every so often, Paul would direct a question to his mother - like did you hear what Jada just said about the fruit that’s in season? Or...Don’t you agree that it’s hotter than usual for this time of year? He was either trying to drag her into our conversation out of nervousness. Or maybe he was just testing her to see if she was actually paying attention. She would answer in one-word replies without looking up from her needle and thread.

  I longed to know what sorts of things Paul might say if we were alone, but I feared what he expressed during our little chaperoned dates was the extent of what went through his head. He was dreadfully simple and not in a dumb way. But in an uninteresting sort of way. Their stuffy Victorian-looking home made me uncomfortable, and it was always painfully silent aside f
rom Paul’s voice, the distant shuffle of maids, and ticking antique clocks.

  Paul smiled at me with his eyes as he sipped his tea, which was actually very endearing. And his mother asked how my mother was at one point. As dull as they were, they were charming. Somehow I had grown fond of them in our months of getting to know each other, even if the whole arrangement still felt disappointing.

  “These cookies are shipped in for Europe,” Paul explained, offering up the plate for me to try one. “We discovered them on a trip when I was a boy, and we’ve been having them sent over ever since.”

  I nodded and smiled politely, but found myself earnestly studying Paul’s face. I had accepted my fate and learned to stop fighting it. But it didn’t stop my urge to search him for any sign that there might be more to him that there appeared to be. I hoped to find some hint of a promise that our lives would not be just like this for eternity...Sitting in the stuffy parlor with tea and cookies with one of our elderly mothers listening from the corner.

  “Oh, I got you something,” he pretended to remember suddenly. I could imagine Paul rehearsing that kind of thing to himself ahead of time, trying to appear smooth and nonchalant. He reached into his back pocket and presented me with a rectangular velvet box that was the grossest shade of pastel pink.

  “Thank you,” I replied as I opened it. A gold locket rested inside, and I didn’t have to open it to know it held two very stiff looking photos of us - one of him, one of me, on opposite sides of it looking like an old ancient married couple.

  “It’s beautiful,” I lied. Paul nearly knocked his chair over as he jumped up to get behind my chair and help clasp it around my neck. I could feel Mrs. Garcia’s eyes burning into us, ensuring that nothing sensual came out of the contact.

  Paul didn’t sit back down after that, and I noticed his mother putting away her needlepoint. By some cue that I never caught, they always seemed to know when our visits were supposed to end. We never got so lost in conversation that I stayed until the sun went down or hours passed without us noticing. It felt as if we were just getting in small obligatory increments of time together - whatever unknown number it was required for a marriage to come to fruition.

  I didn’t miss my hint that it was time to go. I was used to their silent cues. I stood and curtsied slightly, thanking them for inviting me into their home. I had become very good at the sort of manners they expected, each having been wealthy from birth. Having grown up poor, I had to learn those sorts of things as I went. But Mama never let me forget how important it was to do all the right things so they would accept me and in turn my family...which was our ticket to the whole society accepting us.

  “I’ll walk you to the door,” Paul offered as if the door wasn’t just a few feet away in the foyer. Even with that, his mother lingered closely behind. Walking me home would have been far too scandalous, I guessed.

  I took in long, deep breaths of the fresh air as I walked home alone, taking the long way through all the adjoining flower fields. However nice Paul may have been, and no matter how comfortable I felt around the harmless guy, our meetings were always tense. My long walks back to our hacienda felt like cleansing myself from all the unpleasantness.

  Mama jumped at the sound of me coming in and rushed over to greet me at the door. “How was it?” she asked with wide, worried eyes. I suspected she was just waiting for me to say or do the wrong thing and mess the whole thing up.

  “It was fine,” I sighed as I removed my silk scarf and hung it up.

  An immediate wave of relief washed over her. “Oh buena!” she beamed. “We will have Paul over here for lunch one day next week.”

  She scurried off into the house, and I stood there, slumping my shoulders. “Of course we will,” I replied in a dull tone. “That will be very nice.”

  That was how it always went. An invitation to their home followed by one to ours and then back to his again. On and on and on until I imagined our home would be one in the same, and I would have no intermission to all the boredom.

  That lunch, several afternoon teas, and a dinner later, my sisters dropped in for a surprise visit one day. I could instantly tell they were up to something. I knew I was right when Paul showed up unannounced and invited all of us to a party. He and my sisters kept exchanging sly grins, making it all the more obvious that they were in cahoots. And whatever it was about, it would take place at this mysterious party.

  “What do you suppose that’s all about?” I asked Mama later that night once we were alone again.

  “I’m not sure. A party will be nice though,” she answered plainly.

  I cut my eyes over to her in surprise. “You’re going?”

  “Of course!”

  That’s when I became very suspicious. For all the high society gatherings we had forced ourselves to go to since we moved onto our new land, my mother had never once joined us. She was healthier than she had once been but still didn’t do well with excitement. Even the anticipation of it was sending her into one of her coughing fits. I walked over to hand her a tissue and studied her with concern.

  “Are you sure you’re up for a party?”

  “I’m going and that’s final,” she snipped. “I’ll be fine.”

  My mind drifted to the future and what would happen with Mama. Elaina and Lucia obviously didn’t have any plans to see to our mother’s care every day. Lucia and her Leo Valencia had built their own house, since his mother would never accept Lucia enough to welcome her into their home.

  “Mama, Paul and I are set to be married, right?”

  “Oh, Jada. Please don’t start fussing over that again,” she groaned impatiently.

  “No, I’m not. I just wondered...what will happen to you then? Will we hire a caregiver to stay here with you?” I asked as gently as possible, but the idea of not being solely responsible for her anymore day in and day out was a little exciting.

  “Nonsense,” she huffed. “Paul will live here with us, or if it is not up to his standards, we’ll expand the house. I’m not having some stranger look after me.”

  My hopes deflated, and with that, I excused myself to bed. I loved my mother, but now that it was just the two of us again, we had been getting on each other’s nerves. I envied my sisters and their short visits with her, being able to come and go as they pleased.

  As I laid in bed that night, I considered the high probability that Paul would be proposing to me at the party. I knew it was any day now before he popped the question, though the show of a proposal, especially at a big party, seemed rather ridiculous. What was the point? It’s not like I could say no. If I could, we wouldn’t have come this far. And everyone knew we were going to get married. A local paper had even printed up an article announcing our rumored marriage to come with our picture next to it and everything. To Mama, it was just another sign that we were finally being embraced by the community in a way we hadn’t been yet. To me, it was like a big printed announcement of my death sentence.

  But when the day of the party rolled around, I put on a smiling face anyway. If this had to happen with anyone, Paul was the best sort of fellow you could hope to be promised off to. I let my sisters fuss around me, making sure my hair and dress were perfect. All the while, I pretended not to know what was obviously about to happen.

  All of us, Mama included, rode over to the Garcia estate late in the afternoon and basked in the delights of the charming little garden party. The smell of delicious food wafted through the air while men and women with trays served us drinks and horderves. Strings musicians hovered around, playing soft music without overpowering the social chatter of the crowd. I noticed the way all the guests paid me more attention than they normally did at things like this - just another sign that this party was about me...and the inevitable question Paul would be asking me.

  All afternoon, I could feel everyone staring at me, especially Paul. Each time my eyes glinted in his direction, he was staring back unapologetically. A wide, warm smile would ease across his lips. The poor guy
didn’t know how dreadful or boring any of this was...how he was. It was all he had ever known. I wasn’t even quite sure how I knew it for myself. It’s not like my life had any real excitement beyond worrying for my sisters after they ran away to the auction. Everything else was an imagined danger or excitement that I felt through them and their stories. Nothing had ever really happened to me, and at this rate, it seemed nothing ever would.

  But I smiled back at Paul, my sisters, and everyone. I gritted my teeth and accepted what was to come. Paul would get down on one knee, ask me to marry him, and I would say yes. This time next year we’d gather for another party just like this one to celebrate the upcoming birth of our first child. It’d be more pregnancies and birthday parties after that. My whole life laid out before me in afternoon teas and garden parties. I thought about Mama’s knitting and Mrs. Garcia’s needlepoint and realized, suddenly, that I should probably find something like that of my own to take up. Anything to keep my brain and my hands busy...and my heart numb.

  Chapter 3

  Nicholas

  Having made my own fortune, I was no stranger to the smells of nice foods mixed in with traces of expensive colognes and perfumes. It was the smell of money, and I knew it well enough. Maybe not with the kind of certainty and security the Garcias had. After all, at any time, I could be thrown into jail for the tiniest misstep, and then all of my money would become government property.

  That's why I made sure I didn't make mistakes. I didn't get distracted. I didn't slip up...ever. Doing that meant the other side would win, and I couldn't bring that kind of dishonor on my dearly departed mother and father.