“Come on. Outside,” I order, slapping her ass sharply when I walk past her.
Tess jolts forward and yelps, covering her backside with her hands and turning towards me with narrowed eyes.
“That stings.”
“Consider it a part of your self-defense training then.”
She groans, dropping her toast on her plate. “I’m eating breakfast.”
“And it’ll still be there when we’re done, right Diana?”
My housekeeper nods, a bemused look splashed across her face at our easy interaction. The household staff in general have all been giving me similar looks lately, almost like they don’t recognize me.
“Fine, but be careful what you teach me,” she warns, pointing at me as she follows me into our backyard. “I might turn around and use it against you.”
I chuckle, spreading my arms and walking backwards. “If you can defend yourself against me then I’ll consider myself an excellent teacher and my job will be done.”
“You say that now, but wait until I kick your ass.”
It’s been a week and a half since the attack at Tess’s office. She wouldn’t stand for it when I suggested that maybe she should wait a couple days before going back, reminding me that her job was hers and I wasn’t allowed to tell her what to do. She was right, so instead I’d ordered Arturo to accompany her as her bodyguard. There was no way I was letting her back in that building, or frankly anywhere else out of my sight, without an armed escort.
I don’t know which of the two had been more annoyed by the assignment, him or her, but when she realized I wasn’t going to change my mind, she acquiesced. They’d settled into a Cold War-like relationship that included a lot of bickering every night when they came back from her office. But she had the peace of mind she needed to focus on her work and she was being kept safe which is what I needed to let her leave my sight.
Still, the whole incident was hard for me to shake, especially with everything going on with the business. We’d had three shipments attacked in the last month, including one that took down an entire warehouse and cost millions of pounds. It isn’t unusual to have some shipments targeted, but the rate at which it’s happened since I first left for Spain has been alarming. As has the fact that the dates of those shipments were never publicly declared. There are a number of people in the cartel who were aware of them – lieutenants, crew, shippers, distributors, accountants – so any one of them could have sold us out, I just can’t see who or why.
With the cartel under attack, Tess’s safety is even more at the forefront of my concerns, which is why I’ve decided to teach her a few self-defense pointers in the unlikely but incredibly terrifying event that she finds herself without myself or Arturo to protect her.
Tess stands in the middle of the backyard, wearing leggings and a tight workout tee and holding a water bottle as she watches me prowl around her. My eyes drop to her ass. I have to rein my focus back from going somewhere X-rated.
“Alright. Obviously, you’re not going to turn into a martial artist overnight, so we’re just going to focus on teaching you the basics of self-defense.”
Arturo leans against the doorframe of the glass double doors leading out into the garden. Marco follows him out and drops down on the small steps that connect the two spaces, biting into an apple and grinning at the scene before him.
“Why do I need to learn self-defense when you’ve given me my very own shadow?” she says, waving at Arturo. “He has a gun. It doesn’t need to be ornamental, he should feel free to use it if the occasion arises.”
“If any of my men are with you, they’ll defend you with their lives. This is worst case scenario planning, in the event something happens that would see us separated.” She swallows, something approaching fear flashing in her eyes. “I wouldn’t let it happen easily, amor, I promise you that. But the chances aren’t zero so I can’t ignore it.”
The second I frame it in stats, her brow smooths.
“I understand,” she says, turning and setting her bottle on the grass behind her. “So where do we star–”
Her words cut off with a sharp cry when I sneak up behind her, lock my forearm around her throat and yank her backwards against my chest. My lips press against the shell of her ear. “The first lesson is to never turn your back on someone, whether you think you trust them or not,” I say, grazing her ear. “They’ll make you pay for that mistake. You have to always be at the ready. Oof.”
The wind expulses from my lungs when she elbows me swiftly in the stomach, surprising me. I make out Arturo chuckling in the background, but I don’t release her.
“Good!” I praise. “Good reflexes. Reacting quickly and precisely like that is perfect. You want to catch your attacker off guard.”
“Not very effective though,” she answers. Both her hands hold on to my forearm and try to pry it off. “I didn’t manage to get you to release me.”
“No, but you stunned me, which is the first step. The key to self-defense is using the hardest parts of your body as weapons. They’re going to inflict the most damage. Your elbows. Your knees. And in this case, your head.” My other hand comes around her front and lightly clasps the underside of her jaw, using it to move her head back and forth. “Once you’ve stunned me, you thrust your head backwards as hard as you can and you headbutt me. That’ll break my nose. It also works if you’re facing your attacker. Go ahead and try.”
“But I don’t want to hurt you.”
A pleased rumble rolls up my chest and against her back. “Don’t worry, preciosa. I’ll move. I want to see you do it.”
She takes a deep breath and then throws her head violently back.
“Well done,” I say, releasing her.
Instead of stepping away, she spins and crouches down to the ground in one agile move. Her hand shoots out and she jabs the back of my knee with the side of her hand. I’m completely unprepared for a counter attack; my leg buckles and I fall to the ground. She’s crawling over me in an instant, straddling my chest and smiling smugly down at me as my hands come up to grip her waist.
“And that,” she taunts, “is what I like to call the ‘Tristan Special’. He’s been pulling that move on me for over fifteen years and always at the worst times. Typical little brother stuff. I’m happy to have gotten some use out of it finally.” Leaning closer, she grins. “What happened to ‘always being ready’, Thiago?”
I laugh loudly, delighted by her fire. More of my crew spill into the garden, intrigued by the sight of my wife kicking my ass. She pumps her arms up and down in celebration as they cheer. Money exchanges hands between the cartel as they place bets on the outcome of our self-defense session.
This isn’t doing anything to maintain my hardened reputation, but I can’t bring myself to care. My hands move possessively down to her hips where they meet her thighs.
“Counter attacking is always an option, but I’d rather you defend yourself, then get out at the first opportunity. Don’t stay back and try to fight. Men will most likely overpower you with their size and strength.” She nods, a shadow passing through her gaze. I know she’s thinking about that one-handed fucker. I’ve dreamed of tracking him down and finishing him off every night. It’s only because she asked me not to that I haven’t gone through with it. “While you’re down here, next lesson. Like I said, the hardest parts of you are your weapons. Use them to hurt the softest parts of your assailant. That means the cojones — I’m not going to have you demonstrate that one,” The men laugh in the background, bantering loudly in Spanish. With a grin, I take her hands and bring them up to my face instead. “— and the eyes.”
“Fifteen hundred on her accidentally castrating the boss during this exercise,” Joaquín calls out.
“I’ll take that bet,” Luisa answers, slapping her hand in Joaquín’s to seal the bet.
“I’ll double it,” Marco adds.
Tess ignores them, looking at me instead.
“What do you mean, the eyes?”
“One of the most effective defenses, other than going after the family jewels, is gouging out the eyes. You take your hand and you press your fingers as hard as you can into your assailant’s eye sockets.” As I speak, I move her hands over my eyes, demonstrating as best I can. “The goal is to blind them, or at the very least disorient them. The eyes are soft tissue and have very little defenses, making them an easy area to target.”
Tess recoils. “I don’t think I could do that.”
Moving her hands back down to my chest and holding them tightly there, I open my eyes and look up at her.
“I need you to. If anything happens to you—” My breath catches imperceptibly between my lips. “If anything happens to you, I need you to try everything. To kick, bite, slap, claw, whatever you can think of, whatever it takes. To fight dirty. To fight like fucking hell. I need you to fight for your life and I need you to win so that whatever happens ends with you coming back to me. I didn’t chase you around Europe for months just to become a widower.”
She leans forward and pecks me chastely on the lips before patting my chest once, reassuringly. “This is purely theoretical. None of this is real.”
“It is until it isn’t.” My voice is roughened. Coarse. “And if my nightmare ever becomes a reality, I promise there’s nothing I won’t do. I’ll move Heaven, Earth, and the seven circles of Hell myself to find you and bring you back home. But I need to know that while I do that, you’ll be fighting every minute to survive and come back to me. Promise me you will.”
Tess takes a deep, shuddering breath in response and smiles softly down at me. “I promise.”
