Here’s a sneak peek at VIVA ACAPULCO: Detective Emilia Cruz Book 9.
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Emilia tugged Kurt to a stop in the cavernous foyer, letting Silvio, Mercedes, and the young realtor move ahead. She waited for them to disappear into the ground-floor apartment before letting off
steam. “How are you not seeing this?” she snapped.
“Em, stop it,” Kurt said. “You’re ruining this for Mercedes.”
“She’s acting like an idiot.” Emilia threw up her hands
in exasperation. “Like she’s going to live here.”
“Of course she’s going to live here,” Kurt replied. “Why else did you think Silvio was buying the place?”
“As an
investment.” Emilia lowered her voice. “To hide the money. Everybody knows that real estate is the best way to launder money.”
Kurt rolled his eyes. “Please. He’s buying it for Mercedes.”
“Why would he buy her an apartment building? What’s Mercedes going to do with a disaster like this? She has enough on her hands maintaining the dance studio.”
Kurt's face settled into the serene expression he wore when teaching slow-witted hotel employees how to greet the super-rich. “He’s buying this
place so they can live together in one apartment and rent out the other three. They both get out of bad neighborhoods, plus they have a good investment. Win-win.”
“They? Stop saying they.”
“They are together, Em. They’re going to live together, just like us.”
“No,” Emilia heard herself protest. She sounded like a petulant child.
Silvio’s relationship with her best friend was barely tolerable when he lived in El Roble and Mercedes had her own place. On more than one occasion, Mercedes had been Emilia’s port in the storm, offering a shoulder to cry on and a cup of tea from the safety of the old sofa in her dance studio. Silvio was often the reason Emilia needed that shoulder.
Bull-headed, crude and menacing, before becoming her partner the former heavyweight boxer had been her worst enemy within the police department. Promoted to lieutenant, Silvio was now her boss.
They changed everything.
“This isn’t about you,” Kurt said.
“You’re the one making it about me,” Emilia retorted, hating that he knew her so well.
“I don’t need to make this about you,” Kurt said mildly, still wearing that irritating here-let-me-show-you expression. “You’re doing fine all by yourself.”
Before she could reply, a high-pitched scream of terror scythed through the air, robbing
Emilia of speech and shooting a spike of adrenaline through her veins.
Catch
up with the Detective Emilia Cruz series!
