Chapter 13
CHAPTER 13
MALO
“ S o, you take her back to the real place she’s been staying at, and make it look as though she’s been camping out there, waiting for her next orders,” Sin tells me, leaning up against the door as I grab my helmet.
“Got it,” I reply. We’re in the process of working out the next steps to take with Maria, and right now, we figure the most important thing is keeping up the front that nothing has changed—that she’s still loyal to them. I don’t know if anyone’s going to buy that, given that she’s been living here for the last few days, but hopefully, Las Rosas will have had enough to deal with outside of her. If she can slip back in under the radar, then it will be just like nothing at all has changed.
It will be the first time I’ve spent any real time with her since I brought her to the compound, and to be honest, I’m feeling some kind of way about it. It’s a headfuck, going from hooking up with this woman to having her be the center of our plan to take down the cartel. I don’t know where that leaves the two of us, or how she’s going to handle me, given that I had her at gunpoint just a matter of days ago.
I push that all aside. I have to keep my focus here. Any slip-up, and we could give away to Las Rosas just what we’re up to, and she’ll be the one to pay for it, I’m sure, not to mention her father. As much as I want to move this mission along fast, and bring an end to the trafficking they’ve been doing across the border, a level head is the name of the game here.
I am about to head out the door, when Sin catches my arm.
“Hey,” he mutters, and I stop dead in my tracks. I know that tone from him. It’s something serious. I bristle slightly, already on the defensive.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Something’s been up with you lately,” he remarks. “You doing all right?”
The way he’s looking at me, I know it’s not so much a question, as it is a chance for me to come clean. Maybe I haven’t been as incognito as I thought.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I reply quickly. Last thing I need is to get exposed for all of this, right when I’m on the brink of making a real difference. This is my first and last warning, I’m sure of it. If I fuck up again, get caught using when I’m supposed to have my head in the game, I’m going to be off this mission before it even gets started.
“Good,” he replies. “Don’t get sloppy, you hear me?”
“I get it. Entendo,” I promise him, and I head to meet Maria outside. I don’t want to let my issues with drugs get in the way of bringing down the cartel, and I need to use that as my motivation to stay clean. A clear head is harder to live with sometimes, but it’s going to serve me better in the long run.
I meet Maria outside, where she’s waiting in the same outfit I saw her at that house in the suburbs. She doesn’t look comfortable, shifting from foot to foot as though the clothes are itching, but she must know as well as I do that if she turns up in something they’ve never seen before, it’s going to blow up our plan.
“You ready?” I ask her.
She gave us the address of the real place she had been staying. She’s still got the keys, thankfully, and the phone that Rayo, her captor, gave to her and he’s coming by later today. Much as I wish I could just take the guy out the moment I lay eyes on him, I know I have to keep my head, at least for now.
“I’m ready.” She sighs, and I climb on the bike and gesture for her to get on behind me. She grabs hold of me, her fingers digging into my sides, as though she doesn’t want to let go.
We speed through the city, and eventually, I pull to a halt not far from the Deadman’s Hand. She’s staying nearby, they had her camped out close to the bar so she could easily access us whenever they needed some fresh information. I’m still pissed that I fell for it so easily, but at least it’s turned out that she’s on our side with all of this, so I don’t have to pay the price for my fuck-up.
“This way,” she tells me, pointing toward a decaying apartment block at the far end of the street. I glance up and down the sidewalk, making sure we’ve not been seen together, but the place is nearly empty. In this part of town, the daytime is usually dead—it’s at night when all the junkies and drinkers get out and fill up the streets.
She leads me to the apartment block, and I notice her hands are shaking as she unlocks the door. I put a hand on her arm, and she jumps slightly.
“You going to be able to handle this?” I ask her.
She nods, pressing her lips together. “I’ll be fine,” she shoots back, almost defensive, as though she’s trying to convince herself as much as me. She pushes the door open, and we step inside and I feel a flare of anger when I see the place they’ve been making her stay in all this time.
It’s a shithole. A complete and utter shithole. The mattress is full of holes, the window is grimy, the sink caked with dirt. It’s hardly better than the crackhouse we broke into looking for Las Rosas. Have they even been bringing food here for her? I notice a few wrappers on the floor, chips and candy, and I figure that’s all they’ve been giving her to subsist on this entire time.
“You should hide out,” she tells me, pointing to a closet next to the bed. The door is barely hanging on to the hinges. “Rayo’s going to be here any minute.”
“Sure,” I reply. “Anything happens, though, you give me a signal, okay? I can come out, take care of him?—”
“I know,” she replies, and she manages a small smile. It’s the first time I’ve seen her smile since I met her this morning, and I feel some relief. She can handle this. I’m sure she can.
I slip into the closet and pull the door into place behind me, making sure nobody can see me through the slats. I doubt Rayo is going to be looking for someone else in here, but I’m not going to risk it. A few moments later, there’s a knock on the door, and I watch through the gaps in the wood as she smooths down her hair, heads over to it, and then pulls it open.
“Oh, so you decided to show your fucking face around here again?” Rayo spits at her the moment he lays eyes on her. I clench my fists at my sides, fighting the urge to throw open the door and take a swing at him for talking to her like that, but I manage to hold back.
“What are you talking about?” she asks, defensive.
“Where have you been the last few days?” he demands, striding into the room. “I sent one of my men by and you weren’t here.”
“I had to deal with that Malo guy,” she replies.
Panic shoots up the back of my neck. We had hoped they wouldn’t notice she was gone but it was always a possibility they wouldn’t buy it.
“What are you talking about?”
“The guy you sent me to the house to meet,” she reminds him. “Turns out he’s not exactly… into hooking up in private places like that. He drove me out to this spot he likes to fuck at, and then dumped me there.”
Rayo lets out a chuckle. I’m impressed at how quickly Maria seems able to lie so seamlessly. It makes me wonder for just a second if she is playing us too, but I saw real panic in her eyes for her father. I don’t think she could fake that.
“I had to make my own way back here after my phone died, so sorry if I wasn’t around when you needed me to be,” she adds. “But I got some information.”
“See, was that really so hard?” Rayo mocks her. “You just need to use your pussy like we told you, and you can get anything you want.”
She lets out a long breath. I can tell, even from here, how much that pisses her off, but she does a good job holding herself together, even though that guy deserves a slap for speaking to her that way.
“What did you get, puta?” he spits at her. “Come on, I don’t have all day.”
“He told me that he’s working with the Cafarellis,” she explains carefully. This is the information Beast told her to feed to them—fake, of course, but it’ll give the cartel something to hang on to, some level of control to believe they have over the situation. It may not be much, but it’s something, and they will take anything they can get to come out on top right now.
“To do what?” Rayo presses her.
“Something about… bringing down a mutual enemy?” she replies, as though she is just bringing this to mind for the first time since the conversation happened. She’s a damn good liar, I have to give it to her, and I wonder how many times she rehearsed this inside her head before she felt confident enough to say it all out loud to Rayo.
Rayo growls. “Those bastards,” he mutters. “Working with the Italians to take us down. They know they wouldn’t stand a chance doing it alone, so they’re willing to join forces to do it. Cowards know they wouldn’t have anything if they tried to take us on alone.”
He pauses for a moment, and then returns his attention to her. I move forward, so I can see the look on his face. Does he believe her?
“Good to know you’re not completely useless,” he sneers at her. It’s clear he gets off on speaking to her this way, and it shouldn’t surprise me. I know how the cartel sees women, like pieces of meat they can hand around to use as they want, but it still sends a flood of fury coursing through me.
“Can I speak to my father now?” she asks softly.
Not part of the plan, but I guess it shouldn’t surprise me that she wants to hear from him. But, instead of replying, Rayo raises his hand and lands a sharp slap across the side of her face.
“Cállate,” he snaps at her. “You think you can make demands like that? Your father is busy with his work. He doesn’t have time to talk with whores like you.”
She looks down to the ground, and I can see a red mark on her cheek burning where he just struck her. I want to throw open the door and lunge for him, make sure he knows that he can’t treat her like that, but Sin’s words echo through my mind once more. I can’t get sloppy. I can’t let my emotions get in the way of doing what’s right, no matter how tempting it is to jump out and wipe the smile off that hijo de puta’s face.
He’ll get what’s coming to him. They all will, when the time is right. I have to believe that, I have to keep that in mind, above all else, no matter how much my blood boils seeing him treat her like that.
“I’ll be back,” Rayo warns her. “And you better be here this time, bitch.”
And, with that, he turns and walks out of the room, leaving Maria standing there alone—and me, counting down the seconds before it’s safe to open that door and check on her.