Chapter 5 Victoria Blanca
VICTORIA BLANCA
“Everybody keeps looking at me like I’m supposed to break,” I said, letting my eyes move around the table slowly. “I can feel it every time one of you look at me too long.”
Nobody answered me after that. They just sat there in silence with liquor glasses in their hands and their cigars burning while hanging in their mouths, wearing their dark pressed suits, and expensive watches that shined bright under the lights.
There were men from Colombia, some from Miami as well and other places.
Most faces I recognized and some I didn’t.
These were all men who had been loyal to my uncle longer than I had been alive.
Some of them looked offended that I said it out loud and some of them looked embarrassed because I was right. The estate had been full since sunrise.
The expensive cars were lined up in the front of the property, security stood near every entrance, as women moved through the house carrying trays of food and drinks nobody was really touching, and flowers were everywhere as well.
They were white flowers, red flowers, and flowers leftover from the Funeral.
My uncle’s portrait sat on an easel near the fireplace in the main room, blown up so large it almost looked like he was standing there with us.
He looked exactly the way he always did wearing an expensive suit with his gold rings.
He had that hard expression that made people uncomfortable even when he wasn’t speaking.
I had buried him and the house still didn’t feel real without him in it and actually nothing felt real.
Not the people suddenly calling me La Reina, not the men standing every time I walked into a room, not the chair I was sitting in now at the head of the table where my uncle used to sit either.
That was probably the strangest part of all of it, the chair.
The same chair he’d sat in since I was a little girl.
I hated it and loved it at the same time because the second I sat in it, I could feel everybody in the room looking at me differently.
They weren’t looking at me like Victoria anymore, nor as the niece and surely not like the woman they used to smile at and flirt with when my uncle wasn’t looking.
Now they were looking at me like they were waiting to see what kind of ruler I would be.
I sat back in the chair slowly and crossed one leg over the other, allowing the slit in my black dress fall open over my thigh.
The dress was fitted and simple and my hair was pulled back sleek and tight.
The diamonds sat in my ears and around my neck, but not too much because I didn’t want to be too flashy.
I looked down at my uncle’s ring on my finger and rolled it one time with him on my mind before I began to speak again.
“You all think I’m too emotional for this,” I said.
One of the older men near the end of the table finally shook his head. “No one said that La Reina.”
“You didn’t have to. I see it all over your faces ”
He looked down into his glass and I liked that. Good! I thought to myself, because that meant he knew I saw through him.
Another man leaned forward with his elbows on the table. “People are going to test you.”
I folded my arms across my chest glaring into his eyes. “I know they are.”
“They’re already testing you.”
“I know that too.” I reminded him.
He slowly nodded. “Then what happens next?”
That was what everybody wanted to know. What happens next.
Did I want revenge? Did I want war? Did I want bodies?
They all expected me to because that’s what men like them understood, nothing besides blood, retaliation, and violence no matter how many people they lost in the process.
They thought grief had to be loud and because I wasn’t doing that everyone was watching me with three eyes.
I placed my chin in my hand for a second and looked around the room again.
“The problem with men like you,” I spoke in a calm tone, “is that you mistake grief for weakness.”
Nobody moved when I said that and nobody even picked up their glass.
“You think because I’m not screaming or crying or throwing things, I’m not angry enough.
You think because I’m sitting here speaking calmly that I don’t understand what this means.
” I leaned back in the chair and continued.
“My uncle is dead,” I said quietly. “I buried him and I listened to people tell me how sorry they were. I smiled when I wanted to tell everybody to get out of my face. Don’t mistake my control for softness. ”
That made everything in the room be silent for a minute and I could feel it.
It almost felt like respect but not fully.
It wasn’t really there yet but it was enough.
One of the older women who had worked for my uncle since I was a little girl stepped forward after that carrying a black velvet box in her hands.
She stopped beside me and opened it slowly.
Inside was my uncle’s chain which was a heavy gold, custom piece.
It was the one he wore almost every day.
For a second I couldn’t breathe and I stared at it long…
too long for a woman who had just told a room full of men not to mistake grief for weakness.
The woman looked down at me softly. “This belonged to him,” she said. “Now it belongs to you.”
I slowly reached into the box and wrapped my fingers around the chain.
It felt heavier than I expected. It didn’t even feel right because it felt like it still belonged to him and my body knew it.
The room remained quiet while I stood up.
One of the men stepped forward and held the chair out slightly so I could step around it easier, and I hated that because I hated people trying to treat me fragile all of a sudden.
I moved in front of the table and slid the chain around my neck myself, but nobody clapped or said anything, they just watched.
For the first time since my uncle’s death, I truly understood what everyone had been hinting at all along.
There was no returning to who I was before.
I was no longer just the niece, no longer able to stand on the sidelines or pretend I wasn’t involved.
Now, it all belonged to me, the house, the business, the men, the enemies, the fear, and the respect.
I looked around the room one more time and lifted my chin up.
“If somebody moves against us, we respond,” I said.
“If somebody tests us, we remind them who they’re testing but I’m not interested in bloodshed just because people expect me to prove something.
That’s not how this will work under my reign.
My uncle started a lot of meaningless wars, and he wrote me off when he did so, even using me as a pawn though I know he loved me. I will run my throne in my own way.”
One of the men frowned slightly. “People may see that as weakness.”
I looked right at him. “Then let them,” I said above a whisper. “People are always most comfortable right before they realize they made a mistake.”
That shut him up and that was good because I was tired of the looks and the whispers.
I was tired of pretending I wasn’t carrying grief with me just because I didn’t move how they wanted me to.
The meeting dragged on for another hour after that as the men talked numbers, routes, and security.
The spoke of things and names that I barely cared about.
Everybody wanted to tell me something. Everybody wanted to prove they belonged in the room.
I listened where I needed to and spoke when I had to and then Ignored what didn’t matter.
By the time it was over, my head was pounding.
I stepped out onto the back balcony alone with a glass of wine in my hand and finally let myself breathe.
The estate overlooked acres of land and trees.
It was quiet out there except for the sound of the wind breezing through the leaves and the faint music still playing somewhere inside the house.
The sun had started setting and everything looked gold and beautiful, yet I still felt alone.
I leaned against the railing and closed my eyes for a second.
Then I heard the television from the inside right behind me.
Somebody had turned the news on but at first I ignored it.
Then I heard Dom’s name, the Miami King is what they called him as they spoke in Spanish.
My eyes opened immediately and I turned toward the open balcony doors and looked through the sitting room where the television was mounted on the wall and there he was, standing outside a hospital in all black with that same look on his face he always had that people couldn’t read and next to him was Carmen.
The headline running across the bottom of the screen said something about the courthouse shooting and about the pregnant attorney of the Cartel King’s wife.
About the Miami King protecting his wife after a public assassination attempt.
I stared at the screen with a blank expression.
Carmen looked tired, but I was glad she was alive.
Dom had his hand against on the wheelchair pushing her out her back while he moved her toward one of the black trucks and even through the television I could tell exactly what kind of mood he was in because I knew that look from being around him for the time that I was.
It was the kind of dangerous he only got when somebody messed with his family or his life.
The reporter kept talking, saying the shooting may have been tied to Carmen’s client.
Saying there were rumors of retaliation and gang ties I just kept staring because even after everything between us or no matter how I felt, deep down inside I was glad they were okay I guess.