Free Untamed Hearts 1: The Viper by Kele Moon Page A

and he wasn’t real sure. He was tempted to Google it on his phone. A part of him was hoping for a different answer than the one he suspected was correct. “What does it equal? Tell me.”
    “A n-negative,” she whispered miserably. “A negative and positive equal a negative.”
    He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. He took out the last of his cash and tossed it on the table. “I have to go now.”
    “It’s just a stupid math analogy,” Katie said, her voice shaking as her eyes welled up like they had the night of the accident. “I hate math. I don’t even know why we’re using it. Let’s use history instead and—”
    He stood up and gave her a long look. “I drove fourteen hours to tell you that you’re beautiful, chica. That’s it.”
    She surged forward, grabbing his hand before he could walk off. “I don’t want you to go. I still have your jacket and—”
    “Keep the jacket.” He let her hold on, because a part of him wanted her to win. “You know all those things going around in your mind. The stuff you know gangs do, but you’re telling yourself I’m different. That I never did those things. You’re wrong. I’ve done them.”
    Katie shook her head in disbelief. “I don’t care if you’ve stolen a few cars.”
    “We’re not talking about cars.”
    “Drugs?”
    “No,” he said and then shrugged. “Well, yeah, but no. Ask me what you really want to know.”
    She swallowed hard, as if considering, and then looked him in the eye and actually did it. She asked, “What happened to the men who killed your mother?”
    “They’re dead now.” He couldn’t even taper the pride he felt when he said it. “And I don’t feel bad about it. Not even a little.”
    Katie released him, her hand dropping back to her side.
    She let him go.
    “I’m sorry you lost your mother,” she whispered and then looked away rather than meet his eyes. “And your cousin.”
    “I’m sorry too.” He sighed, meaning it, because that horrible night had stolen something else from him. Something he wouldn’t have been able to fathom back then— wanting a pretty gringa from Garnet County to look at him as a positive instead of negative. “You have no idea how much.”
    He turned to leave before she had to say anything else.

Chapter Seven
    Katie ended up in the bath, as she had originally planned. Glass of wine in hand, she was reading, but it wasn’t a romance novel. She lay there with her phone, using the information she had to form a clear picture of the life Marcos had described.
    One that didn’t match her vision of the man from the accident at all.
    He thought she was sheltered and naive.
    As she read, she realized he was probably right.
    It wasn’t that hard to find the information. By typing in the description of the tattoo, Miami, and, on a whim, the fact that they were Puerto Rican, the name Los Corredores popped up almost instantly. They even had their own Wikipedia page, filled with all sorts of nasty facts like:
    A particularly territorial and dangerous Miami gang. They are one of the largest and deadliest gangs in south Dade County. Known members of Los Corredores have been arrested for a wide range of criminal activities, including narcotics trafficking, shootings, homicides, assaults, and auto theft.
    There was even a picture of a tattoo like the one on Marcos’s arm.
    And Chuito’s.
    How stupid was she to think that it was some sort of cousin-bonding thing. She had imagined that they had gotten them together.
    Perhaps they had.
    This picture on the Internet had only two ink drops filled in red on the back of the snake’s back, which she realized now weren’t supposed to be ink drops. They are blood . The Internet was filled with grim facts that made Los Corredores look like a very scary gang indeed.
    She had a hard time equating the information with the Marcos she knew, with those beautiful, soulful light eyes that had set her on fire as he looked at her across that