“Violetta,” Javier said calmly. He rattled off a question to her in Spanish with that smooth voice of his. Her gun never wavered, if anything her eyes narrowed even more. Finally she looked over his shoulder and spotted me and Camden. She frowned, lowered the gun and then jerked her head to follow her into the apartment.
Camden and I eyed each other nervously. I don’t know what I was expecting but I certainly wasn’t expecting this, particularly from someone that had to be in their late teens, early twenties. Then again, I guess I was handling guns at a young age too.
We walked into her apartment and Camden slowly closed the door behind us. It was quite large considering how much space seemed to be an issue in this city, with a terracotta-tiled floor, blue and white porcelain accents in the kitchen and large windows that looked out onto the sea of roofs. There was a room off to the side and I caught the sight of a rumpled bed and a large balcony beyond that. There were hair appliances and makeup and clothes strewn all over the place, cementing the fact that Violetta may have had a gun in her hands, but she was still a young girl.
She spun around in the middle of the room and suddenly slapped Javier clear across his face. I couldn’t help but suck in my breath, afraid of what Javier might do. But he merely took it as she started to rant at him in rapid-fire Spanish, throwing up her hands and launching what must have been a million obscenities.
Violetta really was a very beautiful woman, slim-limbed and around my height, 5′6″, with thick and long golden highlighted hair, dark olive skin and full lips, slightly slanted yellow-green eyes. She was wearing a summery dress that was cut short and had applied her makeup with a heavy hand.
When she was finally done, Javier retorted with a sentence or two, still succinct in his own language, and it wasn’t until I picked up on the words Eden White, that Violetta looked toward me.
She frowned and pointed my way, looking askance at Javier. “Eden?”
“Ellie,” he corrected her with a grim smile. “Her real name is Ellie. And she doesn’t speak Spanish, not that much, anyway.”
She stepped slowly toward me, her flip flops smacking against the tiles, and though I was very conscious of the gun in her hands, I stood my ground and looked her in the eye.
She smiled, playful and deceptive all at once. “So you are the famous Eden. You’re the one who broke my brother’s heart all those years ago.”
It took everything I had to keep from rolling my eyes. Of course I had been painted the villain. Of course Javier never bothered to fill his sister in on the fact that he was cheating on me with a woman he’d later end up beheading.
“I guess it depends on what side you hear,” I answered.
She smirked and took another step forward. I caught a whiff of her perfume, freesia and linen. Fresh. Out of place in this smog-filled super city.
“You know, for the longest time I swore I’d kill you if I ever saw you,” she said slowly, her accent barely audible. “I wanted to make you suffer for the pain you caused my brother. But, now I’m older. And I see how Javi is. The only thing I want to do is shake your hand.”
She put hers out for me to shake and I did so, surprised at the strength of her grip. She smiled and jerked it up and down. “I’m Violetta Bernal.”
“Ellie Watt,” I said, returning her smile. I nodded over my shoulder at Camden who was still by the door. “That’s Camden McQueen.”
Violetta looked at him, her eyes widening appreciatively. “Hello, Camden McQueen.” Then they went over to his shoulder. “What happened to your arm?”
“Got shot by the policia,” he said with a grin and I felt a weird prickle surge through me. He sounded almost as if he was flirting with her. I couldn’t help but look over at Javier to see what he felt about all of this. He was watching the three of us carefully; his brow was furrowed and he was slowly running the back of his hand underneath the scruff of his jaw, calculating something.
“Let me get you something,” she said brightly and took off to her room. Through the doorway I could see a flurry of clothes being tossed across the room and within seconds she’d come back out with a large plain black tee-shirt. She placed it in his hands.
“Here,” she said. “Some guy left it here. I won’t be calling him again anyway, so it’s yours.”
“Thank you,” he said genuinely, flashing her his drop-dead gorgeous dimples. Damn, and I thought those were reserved especially for me. “Do you have a washroom I can change in? Banos?”
She smiled and pointed down the hall to a door. Once he disappeared, she put her gun down on mantle and placed her hands on her hips. “Is he your boyfriend? Or are you still with this guy?” She jerked her head at Javier.