Chapter 27 Wesley
Wesley
Is it weird that I’m kind of… proud?
I feel like I’ve been tossed into a frozen pond and the ice has sealed back over my head. What the fuck is Felix doing here?
This is bad. I guess I was wrong to assume Felix didn’t know what I looked like.
Madison tries to push away my arm, to get out from behind me, but I refuse to move.
I don’t care how familiarly he said her name—he’s a threat.
He has a gun, and I don’t. And I don’t care that I’m blocking its path; it’s pointed a little too directly at someone it shouldn’t be, and bodies don’t always stop bullets.
“Want to point that somewhere else, mate?” I suggest coldly, jerking my chin at his weapon.
“I will if you move away from her, mate,” he replies, mocking me with the last word.
We eye each other up. We’re evenly matched, height-wise. He might have a bit more muscle on me, but I’m fast, and Dimitri’s taught me how to fight as dirty as I need to.
“Dios, will you two chill?” Madison cuts in, exasperated as she tries—and fails—to get around me again. “The tension in here is making me jealous. Like, just kiss already. Put the gun down, Tío.”
Felix snorts, but doesn’t move. We glare at each other for the span of a few breaths.
Madison makes another irritated noise, elbowing me lightly in the side. “Wesley, let me go.”
Bristling, I tighten my hold on her arm. “Not happening until he lowers that gun.”
Felix laughs. “Tu novio es el que está celoso, enana. Llama a tu perro.”
She rolls her eyes. “Lo estoy intentando, pero no me ayudas. Y él no es mi novio, Tío.”
I’m somewhat mollified by the fact that she calls him uncle—it’s familiar without being intimate—but I can’t control the growl that escapes my chest when his eyes settle on her, dark and glittering.
And I hate that she said I wasn’t her boyfriend, even though I’m not. I despise that term; I’m much more.
“Estoy lo suficientemente cerca. Ahora, apunta con tu arma hacia otro lado, lejos de ella,” I grit out.
Both of them turn to me. “Wait, you speak Spanish?” Madison asks, eyes wide. Then, a line appears between her brows. “Wait, close enough? What does that mean?”
Felix doesn’t let me explain. “I know you like to piss off your abuela, but sleeping with a murderer is taking it too far, enana.” He smirks at her, and my hand fists into a ball, ready to punch it off his face.
She turns her ire on him. “Mexican grandmas and their fucking double standards, I swear. Like that’s so much worse than regularly destroying evidence for them, or being a murderer,” she hisses.
So she knows exactly the kind of man he is—the full extent of what he really does for a living. Interesting. It explains why her first instinct was to diffuse the situation and not question why her uncle was pointing a gun at me.
I suppose she did tell me that she does jobs for him—that stealing data from SmarTech was his idea. And now that we know about the connection to the General, there’s no way it was a coincidence that he sent her there. He must have figured it out.
That pisses me off. I’ve spent years trying to find any sort of lead, and Felix finds one in a matter of months?
“His boss—El General—wants me dead. His boss wants you dead too, Mads. That’s what I was saying in my message.”
“I already know that,” she replies easily.
Felix makes a noise of disbelief. “Did he tell you he took the job?”
How the fuck does he know that? No one should know that. The channel between the General and the hitmen he contacts is closed. I’d know.
“It was the only way to ensure no one else did,” she says.
I never told her that part explicitly, but of course she figured it out. Clever girl. I’ve never been more pleased to have been honest with someone—because Felix looks quite put out that he doesn’t get to be the one to break that news to her and use it to drive a wedge between us.
“He’s not going to kill me. He saved my life, Tío,” she says, taking a step to the side and lowering her voice. “And since you’re the one that got me into this mess, I suggest you put that fucking gun away so we can all talk like fucking adults.”
Felix tries to stare her down, but I’ve never seen her look this fierce—not even when she was on top of me, pointing a gun at me. Felix only lasts two seconds before he makes a noise by sucking on his teeth and lowers his arm.
That’s right, you smug fuck.
“Doesn’t mean you should trust him,” Felix jerks his chin at me. He glances up out of the window behind me, stretching his neck to see down the street. “That your bike?”
“Yeah.”
“You came alone?” he asks, lifting a brow. “No scary Russian in the van or sniper with a rifle on a nearby rooftop?”
Fuck. My stomach roils as I try to think of something to say that wouldn’t make it seem like I walked into the proverbial lion’s den without backup. But Madison speaks for us. “We’re alone. Now will you please chill the hell out?”
In an instant, Felix is smiling. It’s not pleasant—more the knowing smirk of a man who thinks he’s reclaimed the upper hand—but he tucks away his gun and takes a seat at one of the bright tables. Madison joins him and, loath to be outside of touching distance, I follow.
It feels quite wrong to be sitting across from him like this. This temporary truce is a tenuous kind of peace, held together by a thread that might snap at any second.
“Okay. Good. So, other than his boss wanting you dead, how do you know each other? Because that wasn’t just you tried to kill me energy,” Madison points out, gesturing between us. “There’s clearly a history here.”
We eye each other appraisingly. I lift my brows and motion for him to explain. I can’t wait to hear his version of this.
He leans back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest and biceps bulging against his jacket. “We have a few… mutual acquaintances. We run in some of the same circles.”
“You’re not normally so circuitous, Tío,” she drawls. “Quit filling the air and get to the point.”
God, I love this woman.
“We may have gotten entangled in a job a few months back,” Felix says, shrugging.
I snort. “That’s one way to put it. I’d call it accessory to kidnapping.”
“Simple miscommunication,” Felix protests, eyes flicking to her and going soft, like he’s trying to convince her.
I frown at him and lay a hand on her thigh protectively under the table, gratified when she reaches down and threads her fingers through mine.
“What did you do?” she accuses him, delighting me further.
I don’t even bother to hide the self-satisfied grin.
She has a close relationship with Felix that I know nothing about, but she takes my side so easily.
And perhaps it proves that she knows him well enough to assume his implicit guilt, but it also means she trusts me enough to believe me about it without question.
He has the good grace to look sheepish, reaching up and scrubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. Madison looks between the two of us with undisguised suspicion, sensing how much is going unsaid.
“He helped a man kidnap my friend last autumn. She’s not part of this world; she’s a nurse—never did anything to hurt anyone.”
Madison gasps and glares at him. Without warning, she grabs the closest thing—a paper-napkin-wrapped silverware set—and chucks it at his head, hurling all kinds of insults about his manhood in Spanish while she’s at it.
Felix ducks, and the silverware sails over his shoulder and clatters on the ground behind him.
Hands raised protectively, he tries to defend himself in Spanish with all the same shitty excuses he told Mac—that he didn’t do it, didn’t mean to, didn’t know—but she continues shouting about how he promised he’d never hurt innocents until he stops fighting back.
Looking cowed but pissed, Felix turns his head and takes the abuse with a sour face.
“He’s not really my uncle,” she tells me, switching back to English and grimacing. “We’re not related. He’s more like a friend of the family we can’t get rid of.”
That explains why he didn’t show up on her background check.
Felix adjusts his position. “He’s just deflecting,” he says, gesturing at me. “It’s not even relevant here. Doesn’t have anything to do with the General.”
“It’s pretty fucking relevant to us,” I shoot back. “Because we’re after the General too, and we might’ve been able to combine efforts, but some wounds run too deep.”
“You’re after him, too?” he repeats, the look on his face shifting.
“Yeah, well, I’m not going to work for the bloke after he puts a hit out on the woman I—” I swallow the rest of the sentence.
Fuck. I’m not saying it for the first time to prove a point to someone else.
That’s privileged information, for her ears only.
“—plan to protect. As far as I’m concerned, my contract with him is over. ”
“Interesting. And knowing how tight the tres amigos are, I’m assuming this means you’re all out.” He strokes his chin.
“We’re aligned,” I confirm.
“Hmm… You know that means we have a common enemy now,” he points out. The tilt of his head is appraising, but not hopeful—we both know a temporary alignment is not the same as a truce.
I just shake my head. “How did you know the General sent me her name? How did you know we took the job?” I ask. What I really want to know is how he even knows about me, but that’s less important. Right now, Madison’s safety is the priority, and he might be able to give me some insight.
He cocks his head and studies me with a faint smile. “You mad I know something the spider guy doesn’t?”
“It’s SpyderMan,” Madison corrects primly.
A pit forms in my stomach. She didn’t tell him about me back when we were just mermaidav and SpyderMan, did she?
“It’s the same way you knew about Alfano and those other jobs you intercepted, isn’t it?” I say. It’s an assumption I’m testing. We don’t know for sure it was him…