Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
Flora
We’ve been here two weeks.
Pablo and I are getting a bit stir crazy, but we aren’t bickering or anything.
We sense when the other needs some space, so we find things to do on our own.
I enjoy curling up on the sofa and reading.
Apparently, his mom and I have similar tastes in books: psychological thrillers.
His new tía is an amazing author, so I’ve devoured all her books.
Turns out Margherita’s been reading them for years. Long before Enrique met her.
While I read, if he isn’t pouring over some scientific journal on his phone, he gets a deck of cards to play solitaire and a couple other solo card games.
They’re all patience and logic games. I noticed he often sets a timer or stopwatch.
I sense these were games his father or tíos taught him to train him to think fast and make decisive choices.
He’s admitted he’s highly competitive but mostly with himself.
With so many other guys around his age in his family, there was always a potential rival.
But they worked as a team more often than they competed against each other.
Apparently, they saved rivalries for the other syndicate families.
They played peewee through high school sports with and against the other major syndicate kids.
Sometimes they were teammates, and sometimes they were opponents.
Fucked-up world he grew up in where you can be friends with someone until you’re twelve and get your first weapon—a pocketknife.
Then you become enemies who try to kill each other.
I’ve been catching up on some shows I love that are a couple seasons behind in Colombia.
He’ll go to the expansive full gym in the other half of the basement.
It’s nearly as large as the pool area. It has everything from free weights to machines along with cardio equipment.
He works out at least once a day, if not twice.
The pool is wide enough for both of us to swim, so we head down there every day at least once.
He’s magnificent.
All rippling muscles.
There isn’t a stroke he hasn’t mastered.
Apparently, he was an open-water lifeguard on the Jersey Shore when he was a teenager and during his college summers.
I bet plenty of people on those beaches who saw him had the same dirty thoughts I have.
I’m a strong swimmer too, and he calls mi reina sirena. My mermaid queen.
We enjoy our workout and then frolic in the water.
Not a bad way to start our morning before we even have breakfast. He’ll head out to the pool on the patio.
We haven’t turned on the heat yet, so he takes an ice plunge while I have my first cup of coffee.
I watch him but run away when he’s headed back inside.
He caught me unprepared the first time. He slid my robe off and hugged me.
It was like having an iceberg pressed against me. No, thank you!
We plan to heat the water for tonight because there’s a new moon, so the stars should be extra bright.
“The switch is to the right of the barbecue.”
Pablo’s drying off as I look around the covered grill. I spot it and flip it on. It’s not long before I see steam rising, but it’ll probably take a few hours for the water to be completely warm. We head inside, but his phone rings before we can start breakfast.
He glances at it before looking at me and showing me the screen.
Tío E
That doesn’t make me nervous or anything. Fucking hell.
“Hola, tío.”
“Hola, sobrino.”
“Flora está conmigo. ?Debería ir a la oficina?” Flora is with me. Should I go in the office?
“No, ella también debería escuchar esto.” No, she should hear this too.
I make out what Enrique says since I’m standing so close to Pablo. That makes my heart rate spike. I figure it shouldn’t since Enrique wouldn’t allow me to hear anything that’s too bad, right? If it were Cartel business, he’d tell Pablo to take the call alone.
Pablo puts the call on speaker.
“Hola, jefe.”
Pablo takes my hand and leads me into the living room as the conversation continues in Spanish.
“Enrique, please.”
“All right. Thank you.” What else do I say?
Pablo senses my nervousness, so he tugs my hand as he sits. He pulls me onto his lap, and I curl up. He hands me the phone as his left arm wraps around my back, and his right hand slips under my robe to stroke my ass. I rest my head on his shoulder and put the phone on my thigh as I brace myself.
“Tío, have you heard from Papá or Alejandro?”
“Yes. They both checked in tonight.”
We’re six hours ahead of New York, so it’s two in the morning. Did Enrique wait until it was a reasonable time to call us, or is he a night owl?
“What did they have to say?”
“Alejandro discovered who helped Humberto. It was Néstor Guzman.”
“The Minister of Finance and Public Credit? He’s—he’s—Does my mother know?”
I pull away from Pablo. I’m furious. I ball my hands into fists and clench my jaw.
Maldito pedazo de mierda. Motherfucking piece of shit.
“Chiquita?”
Pablo whispers the word, but my gaze jumps to the phone. I don’t want Enrique to hear him call me that. Pablo pats my ass as he mouths his words this time.
“He knows.”
I don’t want to know how. I can’t think about that right now.
“He’s my mother’s boyfriend. They’ve been together for years. She has a habit of picking men who won’t marry her. He says he can’t have any public ties to a cartel family.”
Technically, neither side of my family is officially in a cartel.
They definitely aren’t in the Cartel since Enrique wouldn’t have them after the disaster between my father, and Luciana and Esteban.
But my father’s family’s rivalry with los Diaz and my abuelo’s ongoing business with them as Enrique’s underling keeps them connected.
It’s Enrique who speaks up. “She found out, but I’m confident she didn’t know beforehand.”
“How can you be certain?”
“Because Néstor had four knife wounds when Alejandro found him. They were deep but not anywhere fatal. It was punishment. He admitted he was at your mother’s house when I called him. I wanted to hear his excuses before I sent Alejandro to visit him.”
To visit.
That’s diplomatic.
“She overheard the conversation. Apparently, she waited until after I hung up to strike. She kicked him out of the house. As he staggered onto the street, she got in her car. She nearly ran him over, but he got outside the gate and stayed on the sidewalk where she couldn’t hit him.
His driver took him home. Alejandro paid a house call. ”
“Tío, why did he help Humberto?”
“Humberto swore he had far more money than he did. He claimed he had enough to buy legislative members and influence taxation laws to levy higher ones on industries we don’t dominate. He told Néstor he could bankroll his bid for president.”
Pablo scoffs. He rolls his eyes and shakes his head.
I guess Humberto really was as delusional as Pablo claimed the other day.
Apparently, Néstor was in the same boat.
He was always an ambitious guy who loved having my beautiful mother on his arm for events but wouldn’t commit in case someone better came along.
Someone who wasn’t a single mother with a former lover who was a failed, murdered narco-trafficker.
Someone younger. Someone with more money.
Someone who could give him perfect children for posters and junkets.
I definitely wasn’t the right person to go on those publicly funded political tours.
“What happened to Néstor?”
There’s dead air on both ends of the call. Enrique says nothing, and Pablo just looks at me.
“Okay. So, he’s dead. Good.”
“Good?” Pablo didn’t expect my response.
“I never liked the creepy cabrón around my mother. He made my skin crawl whenever he cornered me.”
“Cornered you?”
If I didn’t know Pablo wasn’t directing his silent rage at me, it would scare the shit out of me.
It’s like watching a wall drop in his eyes.
His gaze doesn’t appear distant, but it’s like he’s void of all emotion.
I only sense his anger because of that change.
I’m looking at the man ready to kill for me.
The man who has killed for me. I’m looking at the man who did unspeakable things in that basement.
The one who has done it before and will do it countless times again.
Is this who I want to have children with? The person I want to make a life with?
As I stare at him, those questions roll around in my mind. The longer I assess him, the more remote his gaze becomes. He must know what I’m considering. It’s like he’s challenging me. He’s daring me to walk away.
I don’t like this coldness. It hurts. It’s pushing me away.
It’s also giving me a choice. Pablo wants me to know what I’m getting myself into.
He can’t admit these things aloud, so he’s letting me see it.
I don’t believe this is who I’ll come home to.
I don’t believe this is how he’ll be with me.
I think he’d rather keep me far from this.
But I need to know. Make an informed decision.
I nod once before I rest against him again. I wrap my arm around his waist, and he relaxes. He’d tensed as he waited for my decision.
I remember he expected an answer to whether Néstor cornered me.
“Yeah.”
“Tío?”
“I’m sorry, but Alejandro already spoke to him.”
Enrique’s apologizing because Pablo doesn’t get to kill him on my behalf. Doesn’t get to defend his woman. That’s archaic, but fuck if I don’t find the idea of being Pablo’s woman arousing as fuck.
“What about Papá?”
“Luis’s visit was successful too. He learned what he needed from the Nuevos Reyes.”
The New Kings—one of the deadliest street gangs in all of Colombia. Their capitán is serving like ten life sentences with no possibility of parole. He planned and led a raid on a house owned by el capitán de Toros Callejeros—the Street Bulls’ leader. They massacred them. Like slaughtered them.
If Luis visits that man in prison and directly holds influence over him, then I wonder who the true mastermind was. Hell, if he can get visitation with anyone at la alcantarilla—the sewer, the nickname for the worst of the worst prisons—then he really has divine powers. El Espíritu Santo at work.
“What did Papá hear?”
“He knows who posted the bounty on the dark web on Humberto’s behalf. Alejandro chatted with him this morning.”
Another dead man.
“Does the hit still stand, Tío?”
“Your papá took care of that after meeting with Alejandro.”
“Enrique, how much did that cost your family? How much was my life worth?”
“Florencia, your life is priceless. Money is no object when it comes to family.”
I sit up and look at Pablo before leaning to whisper in his ear.
“Did he just give us his blessing?”
I sit up again, and he nods. He brushes hair back from my ear and brings his lips to it.
“I’m glad he gave it, but we don’t need it.”
“Enrique, that’s kind of you to say. But I want to know what it took to cancel a quarter-million-dollar bounty.”
There’s a pause before Enrique answers. “Two and a half.”
Holy fucking shit!
Two point five million to keep me alive!
“Florencia, your abuelo’s looking for you. Ernesto found out about the order. He wants you to go to him.”
“No.”
The answer flies out of my mouth before I realize I’m going to speak.
Pablo squeezes my ass gently. “Flora, we can protect you when you and I go back to Bogotá.”
“I don’t want to see him. Not now and not for a long time.
Maybe never. I wouldn’t have had mercenaries from who knows what corner of the world after me if it weren’t for him.
Does he really want to be sure I’m safe?
Or does he want me away from your family?
Does he want to make sure I can’t tell anyone what happened? ”
I’m watching Pablo and waiting for Enrique to answer. When neither of them responds, I wonder if those are questions they won’t answer or if they expect the other to speak. Pablo’s hand was resting on my ass, but he strokes it again.
“Probably yes to all of those, chiquita.”
So much for that being private between us.
“It’s safe for you both to leave the cabin. I’d like you to come home.”
Cabin?
If this is a cabin to Enrique Diaz, what the ever-loving hell is a house? The palace in Colombia?
Home?
Does that mean Bogotá? I just said I don’t want to go there.
“Flora, we can go to your apartment and get whatever you want before heading to New York until we can finish this.”
My brow furrows. That’s a lot to take in from one sentence.
Home is New York? The way Enrique said it, it sounded like that’s not just where Pablo lives but me too.
“Finish? Humberto’s dead. Néstor’s dead. The hit’s been called off. Do you think someone will still try to carry out the hit? Who for?”
I had a moment’s reprieve from my fear, but Enrique’s response isn’t what I want to hear.
“Florencia, the hit is definitely done. You don’t have to worry about that.
But someone put Humberto up to this. Someone filled his head with the idea he’d have the money to buy Néstor.
He probably thought the money from your formula would do it, but when that went away, he believed he had the money from somewhere else to pay for the hit and to pay Néstor.
Someone promised him funds to replace that missed opportunity.
Someone wanted Humberto to give them an in with the government. They wanted to buy the next president.”
“None of that involves me. Why do I need to go to the States?”
“Florencia, I guarantee Humberto told someone you were his newest pozolero. He will have bragged to someone. Most likely, it’s whoever promised him the money.
They figured they’d get more out of him than they’d have to invest. Until we know who that is, you’re not safe in Colombia.
Someone’s probably looking for you, but they’ll want you alive. ”
Wonder-fucking-ful.
Enrique’s explanation does nothing to reassure me. Pablo’s arms tighten around me. I close my eyes and exhale.
“And what about my abuelo? You said he’s looking for me. Did he play a bigger role in all of this than forcing me to work for Humberto?”
“I’m sorry, Florencia.”
“That’s a yes that you don’t want to say out loud, Enrique.”