Chapter 18 Tamayo
TAMAYO
Iknew the moment Zarina entered my office.
My phone buzzed with a notification: Movement detected in Office. I watched as she yanked ledgers off the wall—weapons, cocaine, Den of Inequity, district three, gambling—and discarded them. I watched as she unfurled scroll after scroll. I watched as she studied the map until her knees buckled.
That’s when I had to stop watching.
I couldn’t forego today’s agenda. Not with the delivery to Capone. I tucked my phone away and stared absently as my people loaded up the truck. I shook the don’s hand and laughed at his bad jokes. I felt the weight of my secret grow and grow until it threatened to flatten me.
She’ll find out, you know. They always do.
When I pull into the garage, I sit in my car for too long. The moment I step inside the house, there’s only one path forward—up the stairs, down the hall, to the office. Zarina’s still there, unmoved since the morning. It’s late afternoon now, and I can’t put this off any longer.
I open the car door. I step out and close it behind me. I button my jacket, stuff my hands in my trouser pockets, force one foot in front of the other.
She’ll find out eventually.
I was hoping eventually would mean after our deal, when Zarina was no longer in my house, in my bed. We had a predetermined end, our fling never meant to last. But it’s twenty-something days before our three months is up, and she’s found out.
I stand outside the office door. Zarina has my key inside, and Darius has the spare. He’s the last person I want to see right now. Zarina a close second. And yet my fist rises to rap against heavy wood. Fucking masochist.
An hour or seconds or minutes pass before the door swings open.
And Zarina’s there. Hair tied back in a low bun, frame swallowed by one of my too-large hoodies, legs wrapped in leggings, and face blank.
Her eyes travel from my hands in my pockets to my shoulders to my face, her own remaining void of any hint of knowing.
“Cameras?” she asks.
I nod.
She presses her tongue into her cheek for a long moment. And then she turns toward the conference table. I whip my hand up to stop the door from smacking me in the face and follow her. The lock turns automatically behind me.
“What’s your middle name?” Zarina leans against the table, not looking at the map spread out on it.
I stand beside the conference table, three chairs between us, and wonder what my middle name has to do with the map before her. “Why?”
“Just wondering.” She won’t look at me.
I don’t allow myself to close the distance between us. “Maria.”
“So your initials are A-M-T.”
I remain quiet. Inside my pockets, my palms are dewy with sweat, my fists clenched.
The map shines gold with late afternoon light, as if reflecting the hope inside me that I can play this off.
It’s just a plan, not yet enacted, I could say.
A betrayal, but only in theory. A relic leftover from before our deal, before her.
“Owner of Andys Holdings Corp.” Zarina shreds through my hopeful thoughts with those five uttered words. “The shell company that owns AGH Corp, Taylor Capital, and Pollard Properties.”
Sweat pebbles over my spine. I don’t know how she dug so deep, how she cut through the Russian doll of shell companies until she got to mine, but it hardly matters. It’s out, hanging between us heavy and sharp. And I can’t deny it.
So I don’t. “Yes.”
Her shoulders tighten so slightly, I almost miss it. A brace against the truth. She doesn’t lift her gaze from the spot on the floor, her voice so dead I could mistake it for a stranger’s if I didn’t see her lips moving, her throat bobbing. “Show me.”
I blanch, my knees threatening to liquify beneath me. Show her. There’s no way to do that without revealing everything. My chest tightens, and I plead, “Princess—”
Her whole body flinches, and I immediately regret the use of her nickname in this moment. Maybe for every moment hereafter. It’s rote memory, any other name for her rotten on my tongue. But I swallow it down.
“Zarina,” I amend, “I can’t show you that.”
“Can’t.” She chews on the word, a challenge.
“Won’t,” I correct.
“I’ve seen the summary.” She flicks her hand at the map, still not looking at me. “What does it matter if I see the details?”
I flatten a hand against the tabletop, sweat slick between the wood and my skin. The urge to reach for her, to comfort her, is so strong, I lean forward with the force of it, barely holding myself back. “You know why.”
She pushes off the table, striding to the shelves before her. The binders she searched earlier still lie haphazardly on the counter. She slides them off to topple to the floor, pages bending and creasing where they land, and then grabs another.
“Where could they be?” Her face is as blank as her voice.
She yanks binder after binder off the shelves, barely glancing at a page or two before tossing them over her shoulder.
I stand completely still as she sacks my office in front of me without another word.
The only sounds are the scrape, flutter, and then flop of each ledger as Zarina pulls it, searches it, and discards it.
Again, all I can do is watch. Except this time, it’s not through the phone.
This time, I feel the disturbed air, the crushing weight of each binder heavy on my shoulders, the string between Zarina and I pulled so taut it threatens to snap with the smallest twitch.
I can feel it fraying, too fragile and new to withstand the pressure.
“Zarina.” My voice is so soft, like I’m doing my best not to startle an injured wildcat.
She finishes ransacking one bookcase and moves onto the next. Scrolls bend and fold as she tosses them down to the floor.
“Zarina.” I try again, louder.
“Andys Holdings was established ten years ago.” Her voice stays dead.
I remember last night when she laughed, full-throated and open-mouthed, at dinner.
When she whispered husky temptations in my ear as I drove us across Bend River.
When she moaned long and loud as she came on my tongue.
The lack of life in her voice now is more sinister than the blank mask I’ve watched her don time and time again.
I wish I could rewind, change something, anything, to not end up here in this moment, but I don’t know how far back to go.
To weeks ago when I knew our connection was becoming deeper, less casual, but I didn’t want to admit it?
To the night she knelt before me and offered this deal?
Or further back, to the pivotal moment that led me to the Gallo Family as a street urchin, kicked out by my own family and alone in the world?
In the here and now, Zarina yanks open a lower cabinet door and finds a safe. One of two in this room.
She straightens, staring down at the heavy metal box. “It’s common for dons to have a few dozen shell companies.” She speaks as if from a textbook, almost droning. “But it’s not too hard to follow the money. When you know how, where to look.”
“Darius seriously underestimated you,” I mutter.
Her head snaps up, and for the first time since I opened the door, she looks at me. The gold flecks in her eyes are dark as antique bronze, her gaze damning. “He’s not the only one.”
“So, what’s the theory?” I ask the question like she’s crazy, like she’s not standing next to all the evidence she needs to condemn me.
She tilts her head, that damning gaze trailing from my head to my toes and back up again, finding me lacking. “Why did you leave the Gallo Family?”
“I couldn’t walk for the better part of a year.” My knee pulses with the racing beat of my heart, my hand on the table sweating so much I know it will leave condensation behind on the porous wood.
“No.” Zarina kneels down in front of the safe. It’s old-fashioned, the dial needing three correct numbers to unlock the door. “That’s why you took a break. You didn’t leave this life behind after you healed.”
I don’t reply. There’s no need to confirm the obvious. And I think if I open my mouth again, I’ll do something worse than gaslighting, worse than evasion. I might beg her to let it go, might fall to my knees and plead.
“Why leave the Gallo Family to start your own?” Zarina spins the dial.
My body trembles. I watch her try to open the safe, and a heavy trickle of dread drips down the back of my throat. There’s no way she’ll crack it. No way.
“Why buy up Gallo properties?” She tries to open the door, but it doesn’t budge. I want her to get annoyed, to give up, but she just spins the dial to reset it and tries again. “Why agree to my deal, which endangered your family and risked your business?”
“Zarina.” The pleading tone is there in my voice, even if it’s a quiver under the warning steel. I don’t know if she can hear it.
She spins the dial back for the second number. “For the favor? For the ten percent of Gallo territory? For the chance to watch the Gallos, my family, burn?” Finally, emotion thickens her voice, and it rips up my spine to cleave through my chest, my heart. “To watch me burn?”
“No,” I implore, “not you, never you—”
“That, Andrea Maria Tamayo,” she cuts me off, as if she cannot hear those words from me, whether honest or not, “is the theory.”
And then she pulls the handle, and the safe clicks open.
I gape and take a half-step forward as she pulls out a heavy accordion folder. My heartbeat is so loud in my ears, it threatens to burst the drum. “How the fuck—”
“The date the Gallos shattered your knee.” She sits on the ground, my oversize hoodie swallowing her until she appears small and fragile in its folds. Chaos surrounds her as she pulls out a stack of deeds.
There’s nothing for me to do, no way to stop her without hurting her. I watch as she lays out the evidence of my scheming, every step I’ve taken to bring the Gallo Family—her family—to its knees in ruination held in her hands. “How’d you know?”
“I didn’t. Until now.” She skims over each deed held together by binder clips.