2. Tamayo
TAMAYO
A rancid substance clings to the toe of my boot. I try to knock it off against one of the brick walls lining this decrepit alley, but it holds on like a blood-sucking leech. I glare down at the offensive glob and curse the Falcones. I wore my most expensive suit and my hand-stitched, supple, black Italian leather boots in an attempt to feel as powerful as I was hoping this deal would make me.
And then we found the address.
Some back alley stuffed between a Chinese restaurant and a dive bar. The smells of the two kitchens compete with the foul odor of their garbage piled in the dumpsters and the acrid stench of piss. For a second, I thought maybe there was a basement entrance to a club, a restaurant, anywhere that might show the respect due. But then Darius came back with a curt shake of his head. Nothing but garbage and feral cats.
“We should go.” Darius stands a striking six-foot-three, his body built like a linebacker’s—he might’ve been one, if he played football. The green and gold neon sign of the dive bar shines across his face, his Black skin lit like this is a photoshoot and not some back-alley mobster meetup. “We’re too exposed out here.”
I don’t move. Antoni, our contact with the Falcones, offered to set up this meeting with his underboss. We spent weeks stroking the man’s ego, wining and dining him, letting him win poker with shitty hands, to get to this point. My chest burns as I survey the alley again, my boot with the unknown substance stuck to its leather toe, all of it a clear signal of how much value Antoni and the Falcones place on the Tamayo Family.
The burn spreads through my body as anger, betrayal, and acidic guilt swirl together to become something just as rancid and insidious as the gloop on my boot.
“Chinese restaurant or American dive?” I stub my toe against the sidewalk, voice steady, hands loose.
Darius stares at me, dark-brown eyes calculating. I crane my neck and stare right back. My head comes up to his shoulder, my lean frame proportionately about one-third of his. Most often, people who don’t know what’s what look to him before me. I make sure they never make that mistake again.
Darius sticks his tongue between his teeth and considers the alley, the restaurants, the block. Antoni gave us this address for a reason, and we both understand what that is now. I want to stick around and meet the inevitable. Darius wants to leave before he’s required to unbutton his suit jacket.
He sighs, shoulders slumping. “Chinese,” he grumbles.
I grin, full-toothed and sly. “I love it when I win.”
“Is it winning if there’s no fight?” He holds open the door to the restaurant, eyes roaming over the tables, all empty, and then down the sidewalk, also empty.
I nod to the host when he greets us and hold up two fingers. “If I get my way, yes.”
“I could forcibly carry you back to the car.” Darius follows a step behind me .
“You could,” I concede. Because, duh, of course he can. “But you won’t.”
“I won’t.” He shakes his head like I’m an annoying little sister he grew up putting into headlocks and giving nuggies to rather than his boss. Unfortunately for me, both are true. Except the sister part.
The host leads us past empty table after empty table draped in red cloth with fancily folded gold napkins. I snatch one as we pass, pausing to kneel and wipe my boot clean. Darius stops behind me without comment, while the host strides away as if he’s being chased.
I don’t rush, cleaning my thousand-dollar boots the best I can without the proper tools. Residue clings to the leather, but at least the goo is off. I rise to my feet and drop the napkin on a table at the same time four men round the corner.
“Why is it always the Chinese restaurant?” Darius grumbles. He unbuttons his jacket and shrugs out of it, hanging it off the back of the nearest chair with ginger hands. Two guns and a combat knife hang secure in his chest holster, but he doesn’t reach for them, instead crossing his wrists behind his back and waiting.
I flip my black bangs out of my eyes, smoothing my hands down my jacket and stuffing them in my pockets. Antoni stands at the front of the pack with a slick grin and shiny skin, proud of himself for setting up this little meeting.
Or ambush, rather.
“Antoni.” I keep my shoulders loose, my voice light, my face relaxed, hiding the heated anger building into a raging fire in my chest. “I’m surprised to find you here. I thought we agreed to meet at twelve-eleven Washington Street. Isn’t this twelve-fifteen?”
“I could say the same thing, Tamayo.” He stands with a hand on his hip and a condescending scowl on his face, as if we inconvenienced him . “I waited for you. ”
The flames inside lick up my throat, into my arms. “I’m sure you did.”
“Imagine my confusion when my friend told me you were here.”
“Ah, well,” I say with a shrug, “we were hungry, and I had a craving.”
“Craving for home?” he jabs, overly smug.
His soldiers chuckle, throwing each other sly eyes. They all look the exact same, with white skin and brown eyes and brown hair faded into styled coifs. Typical mobster fuckboys with typical white male superiority complexes.
I feign confusion. “Home?”
“Chinese food,” he says like the connection is obvious.
“I don’t quite follow,” I lie. It’d be hard not to follow his meaning when it’s the same bullshit I’ve heard my entire life. My mono-lidded eyes, my tan skin, my wide nose—all inherited from my Filipino father—are often generalized as Asian. And Asian in white America translates to Chinese, because people are too stupid to differentiate ethnicities from the most populated continent in the world.
I cock my head and frown at Antoni, a picture of bewilderment. “We’re more known for tacos than noodles in Buckman Heights.” Where I grew up in a third-floor walkup above a corner mart that always smelled like Swisher Sweets.
“No, because you’re—you look like—you’re Asian.” Antoni’s face visibly reddens as he’s forced to explain his racist joke.
Darius snorts.
“You must not have grown up around here.” I say the words flippantly, as if I’m not deeply insulting him. The Falcones don’t accept foreigners as made men. None of the Families do. Another thing that sets me and mine apart from all of theirs. I wave my hand. “That’s neither here nor there, though. Shall we?”
He doesn’t answer—not with words, anyway .
Without a signal, Antoni snarls and charges forward. A small man with a smaller ego. The sudden move catches his men off guard, but then they’re on their feet, three seconds behind their capo. It’s enough.
Darius draws both guns in one swift motion as I duck and rush at Antoni. He tries to wrap his arms around me. Rookie fucking move. I sidestep out of reach and kick out at his knee, whirling around to slam my elbow into his back.
Two shots ring through the tight space. Two thunks follow.
I don’t even consider that the third man will reach me, that he’ll have time to fumble for his gun and aim it straight at me. I narrow my glare on Antoni and strike his Adam’s apple full force. At the same moment, Darius steps over him and diverts the last soldier’s hand to the ceiling before he fires. He wrenches his wrist backward until the gun drops and then slips his arm the size of my thigh around the man’s neck, squeezing until he passes out.
Antoni writhes on the ground, clutching his throat. I kneel beside him and forcibly turn him on his back, digging into his pockets, waistband, and socks—disarming him. Three guns, a knife, and brass knuckles, all of which Darius takes for himself.
“Toni—may I call you Toni?” I smack his cheek as he tries to speak past the laryngeal fracture caused by my boot to his throat. He settles on glaring at me. “I’ve decided to give you one last chance, because I’m a reasonable person.”
Darius disarms the dead and unconscious soldiers surrounding us. The front door of the restaurant chimes the arrival of someone, but he doesn’t mind it, and nor do I. Tamayo soldiers—my soldiers—slip through the tables. One pair heads into the kitchen to take care of any security footage and record names and addresses of any straggling witnesses, while the other two unfold plastic tarps beside the dead.
I ignore it all, my eyes never straying from Antoni’s livid face. “But my terms have changed, now. I don’t take kindly to your betrayal of a friend. I honored the traditions, and you spat on me in return.” I hold out my hand, and Darius drops the napkin with the glob of alley muck into it. I open it carefully in my palms, the goo and dirt clinging to the fabric, the rancid stench invading my nose. “That’s not how we conduct business, Toni.”
I take the napkin and wipe it from his forehead, over his eye, down his cheek to his chin. He tries to push me off, but Darius kneels on his chest and yanks his wrists to his sides. I make sure to rub the muck over his mouth before I finally pull away.
Antoni spits and sputters, one eye scrunched against the brown slime dripping over his lid and brow.
“Tell Jimmy Falcone the terms are no longer favorable and he has you to thank for that.” I pat his cheek again—the clean one—smiling as if we’re having a nice chat over dinner and drinks. The way this should have gone. I rise, my right knee twinging and shooting pain up my thigh after squatting for so long. I crack my neck, adjust the sleeves of my undershirt, and brush my jacket smooth, not showing a hint of pain. Darius stays on Antoni’s chest as I prop his chin with my boot.
The fire burning inside me is barely banked. I wanted more of a fight. I wanted to feel the snap of his bones, to see bruises welt his skin, to leave my mark on him so he’d remember for the rest of his life how weak and stupid he was to betray me.
But the Council has very strict traditions and consequences to avoid sinking our city into war.
I stomp on his face. The impact echoes up my leg and sharpens the pain in my knee, but the satisfyingly wet crunch of his nose breaking is worth it. Blood flows from his nostrils, mixing with the muck on his lips and chin.
I breathe in deep and force the inferno inside me to retreat from my feet, from my hands, out of my limbs and into my chest. Without a look back at Antoni, I stride for the door and stop, hand on the handle, to call back, “I look forward to hearing from Jimmy within the week, Toni. Don’t let me down!”
Darius shakes his head with that same fond annoyance, and I shoot him a wicked grin, tongue tracing the edges of my teeth. He grabs the door before it can fall shut and follows me onto the sidewalk. As soon as we’re out of sight of the restaurant, he offers me his elbow. I take it, using it to deftly hide the shift of my weight off my right leg.
“Should I carry you?” he teases.
“Just get in the fucking car,” I grumble.