Chapter 17 Emma
Emma
Ihad always thought of myself as a good person, but listening to these men casually discuss how to best smuggle drugs from one country to another, I was beginning to question myself. Could I be a good person if this was my life now? Drug smuggling, murder…where was the line?
As they were discussing how Angel planned to push the organization into European markets, the door of the club opened, and a young man —a boy, really —limped in.
I felt Angel stiffen beside me, and then he casually tapped my arm.
I stood. “I apologize,” I said when their eyes flicked to me.
“I have something that I need to take care of.”
As calmly as I could, I walked across the club to where the boy nearly collapsed against the wall. He was young, not more than sixteen, and there was blood dripping down his arm. “I need Angel,” he said; his voice was laced with pain.
“Come with me,” I said. “I’ll get you fixed up.”
When he stood, though, he wobbled and fell to his knees. “I’m lightheaded,” he slurred.
I slipped my arm around him as gently as I could, but even being so young, he was taller than me, and I couldn’t get him up on my own. I looked back over my shoulder and made eye contact with Angel, who tilted his head to Omar.
My brother-in-law took only moments to come to my side. “Manny,” he tsked. “What have you gotten yourself into?” He picked the boy up as if he weighed nothing. Omar gestured to me with his elbow to follow. “We’ll take him to the office.”
I walked with them down the hallway that was behind the bar to the manager’s office.
It wasn’t a large space, but there was a couch that Omar was able to put Manny down on.
“He’s a cousin of yours, right?” I asked.
I hadn’t met every one of Angel’s cousins, but I had seen this boy around the compound once or twice.
He didn’t live there as far as I knew, but he came to swim in the pool.
Lara snuck him sweets when she thought no one was looking.
“Our youngest,” Omar said with a nod.
“Fourteen isn’t that young,” Manny panted, putting up a tough front. “Tío Gustavo said I could start doing errands soon.”
“Angel would never allow it,” Omar said; he sounded fond. “Not until you graduate.”
Manny glared at him. “I could help,” he said. The edge of a whine sharpened his tone.
“Three years isn’t that long,” I said. “Your cousins know what they’re doing. Trust them.”
The boy stared at me. “You’re Angel’s wife,” he rasped.
I smiled. “Emma,” I said. “It’s nice to meet you.” I glanced at his bleeding arm. “Though, it would have been nicer if you’d just come for lunch at the compound.”
“I heard you make good food,” he said. “My papa was bragging.”
Although he was trying to hide it, Manny’s face was going gray. “I need to look at his arm,” I told Omar. “He may need to go to the hospital for stitches.”
Both Manny and Omar shook their heads at the same time. “No hospitals,” Omar said. “They’ll call the police.”
I grit my teeth against the words that rose in my throat. None of them were helpful; all of them would get me in trouble. “Go get me a first aid kit,” I said. “If we’ve got some liquid stitches, I should be able to fix him up.”
Omar nodded, and far too quietly for a man his size, he left the office. I started to roll up the sleeve on Manny’s shirt. He hissed and tried to jerk away from my grip. “That fucking hurts!” he yelped.
I flicked him on the nose. “Language.”
He scoffed, and that tough exterior was back. “Who are you? My mother?”
I flicked him again, and he yelped when he startled. “I’m Angel’s wife,” I said, throwing his words back at him. “So, you have to listen to me, right?”
Manny scowled. “Not ‘til Tío Gustavo dies, and Angel takes over.”
Before we could continue to argue, Omar came back through the door with a first aid kit. “Manuel,” he barked. “?Un poco de respeto!”
Manny’s shoulders slumped. “Sorry,” he muttered.
I finished rolling up his sleeve. “It’s fine,” I said. “Just sit still, okay?” I looked at his arm and winced. It was a graze, thankfully, but the flesh was torn. My hands trembled, and nausea gripped my stomach. I took a breath and then held out my hand for the kit.
“I need to get back,” Omar said. “Will you be alright?”
Eyes still on Manny’s wound, I told him, “We’re fine.”
I heard him leave as I opened the kit. It was similar to the one that I used when Angel was punished by his father; it took no time at all to dig out the liquid stitches and sterile gauze pads. “Is this going to hurt?” Manny asked. For all of his bluster, he sounded so young.
“Not as badly as getting shot,” I said.
“That’s…not as comforting as you might think,” he said.
I patted his hand. “I know.” With one hand, I squeezed the wound together, and then I used the liquid stitches to glue them together. Manny bit back a whimper at the burn, but he sat still while I blew on it, trying to dry it as quickly as possible.
When I was satisfied that the wound wasn’t going to tear itself open, I opened a sterile gauze and covered the area and taped it down.
It wasn’t the most professional work, but it would hold.
I fished out some of the higher dosage painkillers out of the kit — they weren’t labeled with anything more than a dosage, but I wasn’t going to question it — and gave it to him.
Manny dry-swallowed them. “You’re going to scar,” I said, “but you won’t need real stitches. ”
Manny gave me a wobbly smile. “Thank you, Emma.”
I ruffled his hair. “You’re welcome, kid.”
“I’m not a kid,” he insisted, but the very real fear on his face made him look even younger than fourteen.
I hushed him. “Lie down,” I said. “Rest until Angel’s done with his meeting.”
He laid back. “You’re not going to leave me, are you?” Manny sounded so afraid, and my heart throbbed in my chest. Poor, sweet kid. He shouldn’t be mixed up in all of this.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said. “Angel and Omar can handle the meeting without me; I wasn’t much help out there anyway.”
Manny sniffled softly; the painkillers helped lull him into an uneasy sleep. I sat, stroking his hair, until the office door swung open again. “Is he all right?” Angel asked.
I glanced at my husband. For as handsome as he was, especially in that suit, I was no longer in a mood to flirt.
My skin felt like it didn’t fit anymore; it felt itchy.
“He was shot,” I hissed. I wasn’t angry at Angel, not really, but I was angry, and my body didn’t know what to do with it all. “No, he’s not all right.”
Angel sighed. “Emma —”
“He will be fine,” I snarled. I should watch my tone – I knew better – but I couldn’t. Not right now. “He probably needs actual stitches, but I did what I could and gave him some painkillers to numb it all. God willing, he won’t get an infection and lose his fucking arm.”
Angel crossed the room to me and pulled me to my feet. I wasn’t sure what to expect — a reprimand or something similar — but for him to wrap me in his arms wasn’t it. He buried his face in my hair and breathed deeply. “Thank you for taking care of him,” he said.
Not even when he was talking about his siblings had I ever heard Angel so emotional about someone.
He was worried about the boy. Shock echoed through me.
“You’re welcome,” I said, a little stilted, and put my arms around him, holding him as much as he was holding me. “How did the rest of the meeting go?”
Angel was quiet, and for a moment, I doubted that he would tell me. Then, he said, “We’re going to partner with Miguel to build a facility in Venezuela. The Vitalis are looking to expand and will throw in some capital with us, so we all benefit.”
I wasn’t sure if that was entirely a good thing or not, but it was the desired outcome. “I’m glad you got what you wanted,” I said. I couldn’t bring myself to say that I was proud of him because I couldn’t be.
He hummed against my hair and then let me go. Reaching over, he gently shook Manny awake. “Time to get up, mijo,” he said.
Manny jerked into consciousness, yelping as he shifted. “Angel, I hurt,” he said in a drowsy, childish kind of way. Noticing me there, he forced himself to sit up. “But it’s fine. I’m fine.”
He wasn’t, and Angel and I both could see it. “Tell me what happened,” Angel said.
Manny began picking at his blood-spattered jeans, suddenly nervous. “I was at the skatepark after school,” he said, “and someone pointed a gun out of a car window as it passed. I threw myself on the ground, so they only grazed me.”
“That was smart,” I told him. “You did good.” I glanced at Angel, who nodded in confirmation. Some of the tension in Manny’s shoulders relaxed.
“What kind of car was it?” Angel asked. “Anything you might have noticed.”
“It was a dark SUV,” the boy said quickly. “The license plate was JIFK13.”
Angel grinned. “You’ve always been my smartest cousin,” he said. “We’ll run the plate and take care of things. I promise.”
Run the plate? Like the police do? The question of how was on the tip of my tongue, but I decided it wasn’t worth it to ask. “What will you do?” I asked. “When you find out who shot him?”
Angel gave me a look that gave me my answer: he would eliminate that person.
Probably in the most painful way possible, considering he could have killed Angel’s favorite cousin.
It should be disturbing, how quick my husband was to murder someone, but the fierce look in his eyes dropped a hot weight in my stomach.
Why was it that the most unhinged things that he did turned me on? What kind of person was I?
“Is your meeting over?” I asked. “Can we go home?”
“Yes. Omar will take Manny back to his mother’s. I’ll drive you home.”
I was more than ready to get out of this dress…but I was worried about leaving Manny. “Are you sure Omar can take care of him?”
“Hey.” Omar’s deep voice made me jump. My brother-in-law was standing in the doorway, glaring at me. “I’ve taken care of more people with injuries than most nurses in the local hospital.”
I had no doubt that he was right. “Can you be gentle with him?” I asked.
Omar scoffed. “That’s his mother’s job,” he said. “Not mine.”
Angel rubbed at his eyes. “Omar, just get him home, all right?” He reached out and put his hand on my shoulder. The heat of his palm seeped into my skin. “You come with me.”
I glanced at Manny, who was smiling at Omar, and agreed. “Take me home,” I said and wondered, distantly, when I started thinking of the compound — and Angel — as home.