Chapter 29
twenty-nine
Natalia
“Thanks for helping me with this, Dom. I appreciate it. Really.” The young police officer gives me an easy smile, boyish and handsome as the last time I saw him.
“I’m always down for a little field trip. You know, a couple of the guys that work here were in the police academy with me. They weren’t SWAT material, and I love to rub their face in it.” I snort and turn to face him, the giant concrete federal penitentiary looming behind us.
“You have a problem.”
“Not as much as you.” He shoots back, looking over his shoulder. “Asking me not to talk to Agent Bryce about this little trip? I could get in big trouble for that.”
I bite my lip. It’s not like I want Dom to get in trouble. But I’ll be damned if any of this gets back to Agent Bryce. If anything I do here today is used against Matias…
“I’m just fucking with you.” He says after a beat, hiking his thumb towards the correctional facility. “I kinda hate Bryce. He always looks at people like he’s better than them. I don’t like it.”
I know I signed up to help Agent Bryce. But after last night, I just don’t care.
Matias left at some point in the early morning, whispering something about Toledo with bleary eyes and a soft kiss on my temple.
I know he’s a grown man—a villain that makes grown men piss themselves.
But still, I feel the need to protect him.
Even if being here makes me want to throw up what little I had for breakfast.
Dom starts walking towards the correctional facility gates, the sun beating at his back. The crisp LAPD uniform clings to his body like a beacon in the early afternoon light. This is why I asked him to come with me. Because dealing with law enforcement is easier with someone like Dom at my side.
And still, I can’t will my feet to move.
The young SWAT agent pauses. “You okay?”
“Just nervous.” I swallow a breath and take a jerky step towards him.
“Well, yeah. It’s not every day you see your dad.” The words make my heart skip a beat, freezing dread pooling in my belly. He’s right. It’s not every day I see Papa.
In fact, I haven’t seen him since the raid that put him behind bars. The same raid where I was shot in the crossfire. I was a different person then, and I’m amazed when the guards at the gate take a look at my ID and let us in without a fuss. I definitely don’t feel like the girl in the picture.
The industrial fencing gleams under the hot California sun, and I’m almost scared to look up at the correctional officers posted at the watch towers around the property.
My legs feel like rubber as I follow Dom blindly, until we’re in a room that looks like a bunker.
A buzzer blares in the distance, but my guide doesn’t seem to be worried.
No, he chats with a guard posted at the indoor gate, making small talk like he comes here on a daily basis.
I cling to his shadow, trying to ignore the blinding fluorescent lights.
“We’re here for Hernandez.”
The correctional officer behind the bulletproof booth pauses. “He hasn’t had any visitors.”
I’m not sure if he’s judging me for being a bad daughter or making a simple observation, but I ignore the officer anyway. I’m thankful when Dom speaks up on my behalf, jerking his chin at me until I’m standing beside him.
“This is his daughter. I have some questions about the case, you know, just some paperwork stuff the chief wants wrapped up for state records. She’s here to smooth things along.”
The correctional officer looks between us, momentarily distracted when a pack of officers move through the buzzing gates. “Right. Okay.” He’s not convinced, but Dom does a great job of selling it.
“You know how Chief Bond is. Lazy bastard. Did you hear he wants to cut overtime?” The words work. The correctional officer shakes his head, chirping something unflattering about the slandered Chief and waving us through the gates.
“Hernandez for consultation. Room six.”
Before another officer comes to lead the way, Dom waves them off with a boyish grin.
“Thanks, fellas! Next round of beer at Turntable’s on me, huh?
” I give the officers a shaky wave and scamper behind Dom, biting back bile in my throat.
We cross a half-dozen sets of reinforced steel doors and checkpoints, each one scarier than the last.
But Dom breezes right past them with an easy wave and smile, and I float on right behind him.
Until we’re in a quiet cinderblock hallway, four metal doors spaced out evenly on each side of the corridor. Nowhere to go except the way we came in.
I shift my weight from one foot to the other, quickly spotting consultation room six.
“He’s through there.” Dom says, pointing to a door on the right.
“Okay.” I breathe. Try to move.
Fail.
“It’s okay.” Dom says gently, patting my shoulder. “He’s your dad, Natalia.”
I gulp and nod, cold sweat breaking on my forehead. He’s Papa. I know him very well. The only parent I have left. He was at his realest after Mami died. When he was as broken as Sylvia and I. And that vulnerability made me love him.
But now…years after living under his roof, years of making my own life without him…I never realized how suffocating he was until now. How much of a life I was deprived of until this moment.
My legs shake as I force myself to take another step, to walk closer to that damn consultation room.
Dom falls behind, taking post by the exit, and I swallow one last breath, shoring up the courage to walk inside and face Papa.
If it wasn’t for Matias, I wouldn’t even be here.
I would never speak to Papa again. But I need to know which of his men I could actually trust. Because I know Matias.
And he’s going to go through with that damn sale.
If someone is plotting to hurt him, I will find them.
I hold on to that thought and step into the consultation room.
Papa looks bored at the table, and when our eyes meet, he snaps like he’s getting struck by lightning.
My heart jumps into my throat as I step into the room and close the door behind us, and although it makes me feel like the worst daughter in the world, I’m glad to see he’s shackled to the metal table between us.
I’m half expecting him to try to jump across it and hit me.
But he doesn’t. Papa blinks a few times, cocking his head, his lips moving around my name in a wordless exclamation.
“Na…Natalia?”
“Hola, Papa.” My voice is shaky, but I force a smile and sit my butt down on the metal chair cross from him, the piece of furniture screaming painfully against the concrete floor.
“You cut your hair.” Is the first thing he says. I give him a fleeting glance and smooth a hand down my bob, suddenly realizing he’s never seen me with my hair like this. I always wore my hair long before.
Like Mama.
“It looks…” He points up at me and trails off…and I know he hates it. And where I would have regretted my hair before, now I take an odd sort of glee as he straightens his mouth into a thin line.
“Thanks.” I say firmly.
“Todo bien?” He asks. My first instinct is to lie, but Papa’s no dummy. He knows I wouldn’t come unless I needed something.
I settle for shrugging.
“You know…” He sighs. “There’s been a lot of talk about you.”
I freeze. “…Me?”
“All that complaining you did about me…and you chose to come back to the life you wanted to leave so bad.” He smirks. “Ironic, don’t you think?”
I stare at the metal table. “It’s not…it’s not the same.”
Papa snorts. “Just because you’re on that boys arm doesn’t make it any different.”
I don’t know why the words bother me as much as they do. But between Papa and Sylvia reducing me to nothing more than a lovestruck girl, something inside me snaps.
“It is different, Papa. Because he doesn’t beat me into submission.” I give him a pointed look. Papa falters, something flickering in his gaze as he leans back in his chair and clasps his hands together.
“It wasn’t one of my proudest moments.” He admits. “And I’d be lying if I said I don’t regret it. I know it must seem like I’m a heartless bastard to you and Sylvia, but I love you girls. I do.” Papa clears his throat, and suddenly I have a knot in my throat.
“I was just trying my best to raise you two on my own. But I could see you waking up, Natalia. Looking around, forming all these questions and ideas, and it unsettled me. It reminded me so much of Maritza, I panicked.”
Mami’s name, spoken out loud, slams into me like a brick. It’s odd, how little I try to think of her name even though her memories always linger in the back of my mind. It’s painful, even now, and I hate that I’m still getting compared to her.
“Will you stop bringing her up? She’s got nothing to do with this.”
“There’s a lot about her you don’t know.” Papa says simply, eyes dim. “A lot you were too young to remember.” He glances at his hands. “A lot I couldn’t bring myself to tell you.”
I frown. “Like what? She liked to do drugs?”
My tone is totally flippant, so I’m surprised when Papa leans forward, and says: “No. She liked to sell drugs.”
“You’re lying.” I say immediately, incensed when Papa shakes his head.
“Things were never the same after she died. And I mean that in the business sense.” He points at me.
“You can sit there and shake your head as much as you want, but Maritza had a head for dealing that would put the fear of God in grown men. She was smart, quiet. Observant.” He says, raising his brows at me.
“I could leave this place and ask—I could hunt Paco down right now and ask!”
“Paco came later, from Ernesto’s side. He never met her.
I never told you girls, because why bother?
I didn’t want to ruin what little memories you had of her.
” Papa shrugs. “And then you got older, and you started looking at people the same way. I saw it on your face. And then you started asking for all of these things. Started demanding and manipulating your way into things.”
I scoff at that. “I just wanted an education, Papa.”
“Yeah, that’s where it started. Look at you now, huh?” He laughs humorlessly. “I’m not sure if your mom would be proud of you, or sad for you right now.”
“Don’t.” I warn him, giving him a look that makes him pause.
“Stop talking about her. You’re just ruining her name, probably in some underhanded scheme to try and send me running.
Mami was a good woman. A good mom. She was kind, and she was always smiling, she never once raised her voice out of anger.
” My eyes water. “She wasn’t…she wasn’t some criminal mastermind. ”
“They are not mutually exclusive things, Natalia.” Papa says quietly, looking at me with something that resembles pity.
“Let me give you some advice, hm?” He reaches between us, clasping one of my hands in both of his.
“People rarely exist in extremes. They are not all bad, or all good. The sooner you give yourself permission to exist in shades of grey, things will be…easier.”
“Easier.” I repeat hollowly, trying to figure out exactly what that’s supposed to mean.
“You can become a formidable opponent, if you allow yourself to be. I tried to keep you clear of this life, but you keep coming back, Natalia. It’s in your blood.”
“I’m not…” I open my mouth, searching for the words, belatedly realizing all of the duplicitous deals that have gotten me to this point.
“I’m not formidable.” I say weakly, wondering why I don’t hate the sound of that word. Wondering why I almost like being seen as more than just the quiet youngest daughter of Antonio Hernandez. Papa gives me a dry look, climbing to his feet and rapping on the door to leave.
“Sylvia used to steal my product when she got mad at me. When you got mad at me, you put me in prison.” His orange jumpsuit jumps out at me in the white, sterile room.
“Which of the two would you call formidable?”