Chapter 16 Tamayo
TAMAYO
Darius leans against the conference table in my office, hands in his pockets and the furrow between his brows deepening with each report from Angie and Wyrm. Or lack of a report, really.
“That’s it?” Cold sunlight shines through the windows behind me, brushing Angie and Wyrm with stark highlights and deep shadows. “That’s all you have?”
Angie has one knee thrown over the chair’s armrest, the other folded under it in typical bisexual fashion. “Yep.”
“No activity since the week of Thanksgiving.” Wyrm, the capo for the district surrounding the Den of Inequity, sits more properly, their back straight and both feet planted on the floor. They keep flipping their neon-green hair off their forehead, a sign of nerves. “That Wednesday, to be exact.”
“Why the fuck would the Accardis pull back?” I murmur.
“That’s above my pay grade.” Angie stretches her hands over her head. “I’m just glad things are back to normal.”
“Normal.” I turn the word over in my mouth.
Is it the mediations? Did Jimmy or David talk to them?
Even if they had, would the Accardis actually cease and desist all fuckery?
I look out the window onto our inner grounds, the combined backyards of our residential block turned fortress estate.
The trees are almost bare, crows taking their place, like black blots of murder.
I watch one swoop down to the back deck and cock its head, as if it’s looking back up at me.
“What’s the total damage?” Wyrm asks.
“Vandalism, robberies, decreased revenue”—Angie ticks each one off on her fingers, her dark painted lips slashing across her face—“and not to mention lost trust, which is invaluable.” She closes her hand into a fist. “It all adds up to more than we can afford.”
“Financially, we’ll be okay.” Darius stares at a wall of bookshelves on the left side of the room, the furrow still between his brows. “We can afford the repairs and recompense.”
“Barely,” Angie mutters. I want to throw her a baleful look, but I refrain because she’s not wrong. And these are the people who need to know.
“We’ll need to hit our debtors. Hard,” Darius says.
“And move that load of guns,” Wyrm says.
“We’ve got a buyer already.” I swivel my chair away from the gloomy day and that watchful crow to face the room again.
David Capone has yet to return the signed agreement, but he seemed more than eager to get his hands on my weapons.
I assume because of the threat of an Accardi-Gallo merger despite the lack of a marriage between the two.
Which brings me back around to the question at-hand: Why did the Accardis suspend their assault?
“So, we’re good?” Angie drops her feet to the floor. “I can go?”
“Got a dick appointment?” Wyrm teases.
Angie slugs them in the arm with a roll of her eyes. “If by dick you mean inventory, then yeah.”
“What happened to what’s-his-face?” They rub their arm.
She cracks her neck. “He got attached.”
“Poor simp.”
“Poor simp? Poor me.” She lays a hand over her heart, lip curling in annoyance. Or disgust. Or both. “Can anyone get laid without catching feelings in this town?”
Darius snorts, and I shoot him a glare, knowing exactly why he finds this amusing. I rap my knuckles on the desk. “You’re free to go. Stay smart.”
“Keep safe,” they finish the farewell as they both rise from their chairs.
Darius pushes off the table to shake their hands before they leave, asking that they keep him in the loop.
Most often, he’s the one bringing me these reports as my second-in-command, but with all the bullshit surrounding the Den, its district, and this engagement with Zarina, I wanted a direct report. For all the good it did me.
The door shuts behind Wyrm, and the lock clicks into place automatically. I push out of my chair and stride over to the conference table for larger meetings. A map of the city is sprawled out over it, each piece of property color coded to the family it belongs to.
“What the fuck are they doing?” I stare at the Accardi’s territory, sapphire blue sprawling over the Western districts.
“They probably want to garner favor with the Council, a show of good faith.”
“They already have that without pulling back. Our mediation meetings are a fucking joke, both of us putting in the least amount of effort. They don’t care about the outcome.” I trace the edges of Gallo territory with my finger. “Why?”
Darius mulls it over, both of us studying the map and willing it to spell out the answers for us.
He shoves his hands into the pockets of his slacks, jacket already thrown over a chair and shirt sleeves pushed up his forearms to reveal smooth, Black skin.
And a battered watch, its fake gold plating rubbed off in places. He really does need a better one.
He ventures a guess. “Because they’re gonna get what they want anyways.”
An interesting theory. “How?”
“Another forced marriage?”
Between Marcus and Zarina. The thought stirs up the memory of our engagement party, of Marcus’s hands around Zarina’s throat, the bruises they left behind, and the helplessness that froze me to the spot as I was forced to stand down in that hallway.
I will do all I can to stop that from happening again.
I blow a breath to clear my head and refocus on here and now. On logic and politics. I fold my arms over my chest. “Would the Council recognize such a marriage after the first attempt, after the mediations?”
“I don’t know,” he says.
There’s no way for either of us to know.
We’re not privy to the Council’s politics, don’t understand all their motivations well enough to predict their reactions.
I want to believe they’d refuse to legitimize a Gallo-Accardi merger even if Zarina was willing.
It threatens to make the Accardis too powerful, to upset the precarious balance the Cardinal Families have achieved after the Russo’s fall.
And yet I’ve seen little maneuvering to stifle the threat or offer credibility to my and Zarina’s match.
I gather up the map, rolling it into a scroll. “Might be time to chat with Jimmy.”
“I’ll set it up.” Darius pulls down his sleeves and buttons the cuffs.
I replace the map in its slot on the bookcase taking up the right wall. “This week, if possible.”
“Heard.”
“And next week, let’s do a round in Wyrm’s district.”
He slips on his jacket, adjusting his collar. “Already planned it.”
“Thanks.” I grab my own jacket off the hook on the end of one of the bookcases.
“Have you heard from Capone yet?” he asks.
“I expect the countersign today.”
“Let me know, and I’ll schedule delivery.”
I hum in reply, tugging my cuffs free of my jacket sleeves. “Anything new on our guests?”
“Guests,” Darius quotes with a laugh. “Is that what we’re calling them now?”
I shoot him an unamused look. “I didn’t ask for color commentary.”
He shakes his head, not at all cowed by me. “Not much to report. She finished Sense 8 and is now on Heartstoppers.”
I frown at the door leading to the hall like I can see down it and into Zarina’s room. “How is that possible?”
He checks his phone, maybe double checking the encrypted message from IT. “They say other than the shows, she online shops and calls her designer friend often.”
My frown deepens. In all our time together, Zarina’s never mentioned watching a new show or a conversation with Sally Vator, her designer friend.
But then, we don’t talk about stuff like that often, if much at all.
Still, it doesn’t make sense. “She didn’t trade ten percent of her territory and an open-ended favor to sit around and binge gay television. ”
“Or fuck you.” Darius grins at me, and I roll my eyes. Though I want to smack him in the family jewels. He must read it on my face, because his grin only widens to show his canines. Wisely, he doesn’t push it. “Either way, that’s all Tech’s got.”
“She’s circumventing the spyware somehow.”
“She’s a mafia princess, not a hacker.” He stuffs his phone back in his pocket.
I tilt my head at him, a bit surprised. “Two months living with her and you still think that?” This is the woman who held a knife to my throat and demanded I take her to Casa Nostra.
The woman who thwarted an attempted kidnapping without firing a shot.
I might call her princess, but I understood long ago that she’s much more.
Darius is a proud fool if he can’t see that.
I shake my head in disappointment. “We need her computer.”
“What does it matter if she’s doing something else?” The question is full of disdain. “She’s got nowhere else to go.”
I stare at Darius. “Are you being purposefully dense?”
The easy humor left behind after his razzing falls from his face. “I don’t understand why it matters. Either she stays here and out of Accardi hands or she, what? Runs until Marcus hunts her down and either drags her back here or kills her?”
“That’s only true if she doesn’t find a way out of the merger that doesn’t involve marrying Marcus Accardi.”
“So she goes back home, so what?” he challenges.
There’s a reason I’m the boss and not Darius.
Multiple reasons. And they’re not simple ones, like Darius didn’t want to lead.
They’re deep-seated scars that run the length of my life, pushing me forward with relentless drive and a sometimes terrifying understanding of those around me.
Darius can crack open a person’s skull with his bare fists—has done so—and manage our capos with a deftness I sometimes lack.
But I carry the weight of our success and failure, the safety of our entire family, and the deep-rooted empathy required to understand our friends and our enemies. I make moves that lead us toward a distant future and cut down anyone in our way with vicious precision.
And that includes my own family.
“Be very fucking careful how you proceed,” I growl.
Darius pulls up to his full height, squaring his shoulders and grounding his weight down through his toes. He doesn’t balk. Because as many reasons as there are that I’m the boss, there are just as many reasons why he’s my underboss. Chief among them being that he doesn’t balk, even when I bite.
“You want to stop her finding out.” His voice is even, unruffled by the violence stirring inside me. “But there’s no way for you to finish what you started without her and her whole family finding out.” He studies my face, the barely contained rage. “And isn’t that the whole point?”
“Of course it is,” I spit.
Darius levels a look at me.
The need to claw and tear buzzes in my muscles, rings in my ears. But I know it’s not for Darius or the truth he lays at my feet. It’s for myself, for the men in that alley so many years ago, for the family that forgot about me and left me for dead.
I force myself to inhale a long, cleansing breath, and release the tension on the exhale. My voice is still clipped as I tell Darius, “Just grab her computer the next time she leaves it in her room.”
“You got it, boss.” The last word is dripping with taunt, and I make myself ignore it. Maybe I can make a personal visit to our top debtors and unleash this sawing need to ravage skin and bone.
Darius unlocks and opens the office door, stopping short in the doorway. “Eavesdropping?” he asks with roiling disdain.
“You know full well this room is soundproofed.” Zarina’s answering tone matches his own.
I rub my temples, internally begging the universe for patience.
“Then why linger outside it?” he asks.
“I think you know that answer, too,” she answers, sickly sweet.
“Tamayo,” Darius calls over his shoulder. “Your fiancée is waiting for you.”.
I jab him in his kidney to make him move out of the way. “Hi, princess.”
Her hair is slicked back into a high, smooth pony. I want to pull it until her back arches with it. Instead, I land a peck on her cheek as I slip the office key into the front pocket of my trousers.
“Hi.” Pink flushes her cheeks, a pretty contrast to the cropped cream sweater and wide-leg pants.
“How was your day?” I ask as I lead her down the hall, away from Darius and the office and all the bullshit that happened within it. “Do anything fun?”
“I smoked and watched Heartstoppers—that show heals my black, gay soul.”
I almost forget to cover my surprise and confusion. It’s like she overheard us, but I know that’s impossible; the office is soundproofed, like she said. I sidestep the landmine. “I didn’t know you smoked.”
“Only Mary J.” She winks.
“Interesting.”
We descend the stairs to see Angie standing in the foyer with Pat, fighting an amused expression as the latter describes something with wide, sweeping gestures.
I almost miss a step. Two surprises in as many minutes.
Darius shakes his head as he passes us, and I swear I hear some version of lust-struck fools leave his lips before he disappears down the hall, making me turn to consider Angie and Pat with new eyes.
Zarina slides her hands around my elbow. “Wanna go out for dinner?”
I divert our path to avoid Pat and Angie, pulling us toward the garage. “I know just the place.”