Mob Knight (The O’Rourke Brotherhood #6)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Joey

“Just let me know if you need anything, Mrs. Ramirez. You know I’m here to support you and Armando. All you have to do is call me.”

“Thank you, Ms. Bracero.”

“You’ve done so much for your grandson, but I know there’s more you want to do. If he needs another trip to the doctor, let me know, and I will come with you.”

I look at the older woman as we converse in Spanish, and my heart breaks for her as I think about her six-year-old grandson. He’s the most adorable kid in the world. As a social worker, I see the best and worst. Armando’s one of the lucky ones.

I spin around at a pop-pop-pop noise.

I know what it is. I’m halfway down the steps leading to the Ramirezes’ apartment building. The little boy’s still tucked away in bed in his grandmother’s apartment. Mrs. Ramirez calls out to me as my gaze sweeps the surrounding area. I immediately spot the men standing outside the bodega across the street. I look to my right and spot a man with a shock of strawberry blond hair and freckles standing just beside the entrance to the pawn shop next door. I get what’s happening in an instant, and I know the men across the street won’t stop until they’ve hit their target.

“Go inside, Mrs. Ramirez. Now !”

I bolt down the last couple of steps and move to my right, shoving the man as hard as I can. He staggers backwards, even though he must be nearly twice my size. His hand shoots out to grab my shirt as he looks toward me. Shock registers on his face as he realizes I’m not attacking him. He tries to regain his balance as his arm windmills, but it’s holding his gun. I watch in slow motion as he points toward the sky to keep it away from me.

Then we’re falling.

He’s doing his best to shield me as we tumble down the stairs toward a basement apartment. But we go head over toes, rolling side to side. His arm is around me, and he’s gripping me, still trying to curve his body around mine to take most of the impact. When we reach the bottom of the stairs, I already hurt everywhere. Now that we’ve come to a stop, my shoulder screams at me since that’s what I landed most of my weight on when I hit the first step.

“Are you okay?” There’s no sympathy in his voice with that demand.

He looks me over, and I can practically read his thoughts. He wants to make sure I’m fine, so he can get up, walk away, and go back to the shootout that’s about to take place if he shows his face again.

“I am, but you won’t be. Stay down. Don’t move.” I scramble to get back onto my feet, but he grabs hold of my shirt, this time from the back, and yanks me toward him.

“What the devil do you think you’re doing?”

“I’m going to make sure you don’t get shot. You or anybody else on this street.”

“You are not getting in the middle of this. You are going to stay right where you are.”

“I don’t know who you are, but I know who those men are, and I know what they’re capable of.”

There’s an aura of menace that surrounds him, and I should be terrified, but he doesn’t seem to direct that toward me. Irritation perhaps, but I’m not scared of him. However, I am scared of the men across the street. The glower he shoots me as he speaks tells he doesn’t believe I can do anything for him.

“I don’t care if you don’t know who I am. I know who those men are too, and there’s no way in hell I’m letting you stick your head out where it can become their next target.”

“The difference between you and me, though, is that I’m not the one they obviously wish to kill.”

“But you are the one who’ll get killed if you keep arguing with me and go up there. The moment they see movement they’ll shoot. They won’t wait to see who it is.”

I point to his red hair, then mine. “There’s no way they can confuse the two of us.”

“It doesn’t matter about confusing my red hair for your brown hair. It’s about a single bit of movement. They won’t wait. I’ve said that twice. Don’t make me say it a third time.”

I don’t bother waiting as he suggests—commands—me to stop. Instead, I push against his chest and scramble again for the stairs.

“Ronaldo, Jesus, stop. It’s me, Jocelyn.”

I call out to the men across the street. I know I have a voice that projects. There’s no way they don’t hear me. I raise my hands slowly and put them above my head where I know they can see them without seeing the rest of me.

“I’m coming up the steps alone. Don’t shoot.”

“ Se?orita , you helped him. Why should we leave you alone?”

Those are not the words the redheaded man wants to hear as he reaches for me a third time. I skirt away from him.

“I’m the voice of reason here, just like I have been since you were in grade school, Ronaldo. There are too many people here on the street. I don’t care who knows who you are and what you are. You’re going to kill somebody other than this man you’re aiming for. Do you want that on your conscience? Do you want people to know you shot a little kid because you couldn’t shoot straight? You had your chance. He’s a big guy with bright hair, and you couldn’t hit him. I’m not giving you a chance to miss again and take out somebody we care about.”

“ Se?orita Jocelyn, you always need to be in the middle of everything. Haven’t you heard curiosity killed the cat?”

“Well, this cat’s got claws, Ronaldo, and you know that. I’ll sink them in deep. Put the gun away, and you three deal with whatever business you have going on, but you do it somewhere else. You don’t do it on the street. You know the rules just as well as I do, and you know how I feel about having the kids see this around them.”

“Fine, tell the hijo de la chingada he can come out, and I won’t shoot him.” Motherfucker.

“Language, Ronaldo. Do you want me to tell your abuelita how you speak?”

There’s a pause, and I know that single threat is more intimidating than anything else. I’ve met the woman several times, and she scares the ever-loving shit out of me. She wields a chancla like she’s some samurai warrior. Her flip flop with a wood sole is nothing to underestimate.

I know she paddled Ronaldo’s ass more than once when he was a child. She probably should have done it a few more times, considering how he turned out. I’m not a proponent of corporal punishment, but…Lord. I can only imagine how he would’ve been if she hadn’t been such a strict disciplinarian.

“My abuelita’s visiting my dad upstate.”

“I have her number in my phone. I could call her right now. She can have a message waiting for when she leaves. Or maybe I’ll catch her before she even sees your papí . She can tell him all about what you’re getting up to these days. I’m sure it’s exactly what he wished for when he went away.”

There’s enough snarkiness to fill a cup when I call his father Daddy. I was walking up the steps as I spoke, and now I’m on the sidewalk once again. My tone tells him his grandmother visiting her son in prison won’t deter me from telling her. I lower my hands, but I keep them out to my sides.

“You’re just as guilty as Ronaldo, Jesus. Just because you haven’t said anything doesn’t mean I forgot you’re there. Really, you’re going to do this right outside your mother’s window?”

I twist and look up. I see a woman half hanging out of her window, and I can see the fear on her face. I look back across the street and point up.

“You really want to have your mom watch what happens? Do you really think you’re going to win? From the way this man’s snarling at me down here, I’m pretty sure he’s the one who will put up a bigger fight. Whatever this is, take it inside. I don’t care what you do to each other as long as you don’t do it where any of the kids can see.”

“This is all about you protecting the kids, se?orita Jocelyn? What? Now that I’m nineteen, you don’t care about me anymore?”

I snort as I listen to Jesus. “If I didn’t care about you, do you think I’d even be having this conversation? But you wanted to be treated like an adult. You wanted to tell me how much of a man you were when you turned eighteen last year. Well, now you can show you’re man enough to know when you’re wrong and to know this isn’t just about you and whatever this guy did to piss you off.”

I hear a huff coming from down the steps, but I don’t dare shift my attention away from the men who still have guns drawn. They may not be pointing them across the street anymore—they’re pointing them at the sidewalk—but I wouldn’t put it past them to lose their shit and turn their guns on me. One wrong word is all it’ll take if I test their machismo too much. There’s a fine line between reminding them of promises they made to me and shaming and humiliating them. I don’t need them thinking they have to prove their huevos have dropped.

“ Se?orita , go inside and leave this alone. We’ll take it back into the bodega. He can come inside, and we won’t do anything to him until he’s through the door.”

“Yeah, and how many people are still in that bodega? Hmm? I doubt it’s empty. I’m guessing that’s why he isn’t in there with you. He isn’t the one pointing a gun where it could fire and hit somebody.”

“No, he’s hiding behind you like a little bitch.”

“You really think a man his size is hiding? No, he won’t show himself in front of you because he doesn’t trust you not to shoot me. Is he wrong?”

I can’t hear the swearing because they’re not yelling them across the street, but I can read their lips well enough to know there’s a whole slew of Spanish and English curse words dropping out of their mouths.

They don’t like me putting them on the spot like that. Asking them the one question they absolutely don’t want to answer. They don’t want to admit any fear of shooting me, but they also don’t want to admit they would shoot a woman.

Their boss wouldn’t agree to that, but they’re still young enough to not understand the consequences of what they’re risking right now. I’ve known these two guys since they were in eighth grade, and I started working in this neighborhood. I know the things they’ve done because I was their social worker while they were in high school. They’re not horrible kids, but they make shit decisions. People they work for take advantage of that. They didn’t come recruiting these two. These shitheads went knocking on doors, thinking they could be more man than boy.

They’ve done odd jobs. Knocked off some shops, stolen some cars, but they haven’t killed anybody. Yet. I know nobody’s shot either of them. I’d like to keep it that way. But the man who’s still standing just a couple steps below me doesn’t give me the impression this is the first time he’s been in a situation like this.

It wouldn’t surprise me if the man would shoot to kill and wouldn’t miss. I’m pretty positive the only reason he’s still standing is because Ronaldo and Jesus aren’t half the marksmen he probably is. I don’t care to test my theory that he’s a better shot than I expected or that Jesus and Ronaldo are even worse and will hit somebody else.

The street’s pretty cleared out around us, but there are still folks farther down the block in each direction who don’t know what’s going on and are approaching.

“Leave before somebody calls the police. Do you really want to be here when they arrive? Do you want to explain what’s going on?”

Those questions are as much for Ronaldo and Jesus as they are for the redheaded stranger. I can feel his eyes boring into me, and I’m certain he’s going to be pissed when he finally gets to move. But I don’t want any dead bodies on my hands. I’ve seen a few, and that’s been more than enough for me.

“ Se?orita , you don’t get to decide this one. We have business to finish, and that gringo has some explaining to do.”

I glance over at the man just as he rolls his eyes. I look back at the two teenagers and barely stifle my laugh.

“Ronaldo, you talk shit, my friend. I don’t think you can get him to do anything he doesn’t want to do.”

“But you can.” Ronaldo darts his gaze to my left as though he can see the guy through the sidewalk. “You’re the one who should go inside instead of letting him hide behind you like a little bitch.”

“He’s listening to you, and he hasn’t come out. You really think this is about him fearing you? He knows you’re too damn trigger-happy and that if he moves your aim’s going to be crap, and you’re more likely to hit me than him.”

“No, he’s a much bigger target than you. And with that red hair, it’ll be easy to hit.”

I hear the guy next to me mutter in disgust. “If that were the case, one of those three shots would have hit me.”

I keep my voice down, so it’s barely more than a whisper. “Do you really think you should test that?”

I think I get more of a grunt than an answer, but I’ll take it.

“Ronaldo, Jesus, this is your last opportunity before I reach in my purse and pull out my phone. Do you want me to make that call? Or would you rather explain this on your own later, when you’re not likely to die before you get to?”

He definitely doesn’t want me to call Enrique Diaz, the Colombian Cartel jefe and el padrino —Godfather—in this neighborhood.

I watch Jesus holster his gun first. He grabs Ronaldo’s left forearm and yanks. He tilts his head back toward the bodega.

“I’m going to follow you inside, so I’m sure you don’t come back out the moment you think you can hit him. You don’t solve whatever problems you have on the streets. You know the rules.”

“He started it!” Jesus calls out, and he sounds like the middle schooler I once knew.

“Yeah well, I’m ending it.”

“Why do you have to sound like a mom?”

“If you stopped acting like you needed one, then I’d stop sounding like one. I’m crossing the street.”

“Oh, no you’re not.”

Those are the first intelligible words the stranger’s said since I walked up the steps. I ignore him and step away from the railing and move around to cross the street. I sense him walking up behind me. The moment Jesus and Ronaldo disappear through the door, he wraps his arm back around my waist like he did earlier and hauls me down the steps.

I have my back to his chest, and it’s a solid wall of muscle. I could fight, but I’m more likely to wind up with us both falling down the stairs again. As much as my shoulder hurt when I landed, now it’s my elbow. It’s burning and throbbing at the same time. I’m happy to have my hands back down at my sides. It was near agony holding them out so the guys could see me.

They know I’m fully able to defend myself in a neighborhood like this. I didn’t want them thinking I was taking anything out of my purse other than maybe my phone.

“What the hell did you think you were doing? You make it sound like you know what those guys are capable of. So, if you know, and you know they’re shite shots, then why would you put yourself in danger like that?

“Because whether you get shot isn’t my problem. My problem is if somebody in this neighborhood does. You saw the kids on the street playing. I’m certain of it. I’m certain you know every single person who was around. You could tell me a detailed description of each of them. You’re more situationally aware than either of those idiotas are. I’m not interested in having to explain to parents or grandparents or aunts and uncles why their kid isn’t coming home simply because he was playing outside in his neighborhood. I’m not letting you or them put me in that position. I’m not in the mood, and I don’t have time. I’m already running late for my next appointment.”

“Who are you?”

The question isn’t a surprise to me, but I’m still unsure how I want to answer it. Should I stick out my hand to shake it? It’s my right elbow that hurts like a motherfucker, so it wouldn’t be that hand. How ridiculous would that be?

Hola, se?or hottie. Nice to meet you.

I look him up and down, and I can admit what I thought in the seconds before we were tumbling down the stairs. He is the hottest man I have ever seen in my entire life, whether it’s a living man or somebody in a picture or in a movie or on TV. He’s breathtaking and huge. I’m surprised he didn’t squash me like a bug by the time we made it to the bottom of the steps.

“I’m Jocelyn.”

He waits to see if I give a last name. He cocks an eyebrow, but I say nothing else. He shakes his head and just grins.

“You know I can find out, so why not just tell me?”

“I’m Jocelyn Bracero.”

“You made it sound like you’re a social worker or something when you said he knows how you feel about situations like this and that you’d call his grandmother.”

“I am. I’ve been assigned to this neighborhood for the past five years. I told you my name. Now you tell me yours.”

“I’m Cormac O’Rourke. It’s nice to meet you.”