Chapter 19 Angel
Angel
Sitting across from the man who ordered my death was a slap in the face. Worse than any literal slap in the face my father had ever given me. Luis Rojas was an opportunistic bastard, and he had been actively trying to kill my men and me for weeks…and now he wanted peace.
“I’m surprised Gustavo sent a boy still wet behind the ears,” Luis said. “Your father wouldn’t deign to meet with me himself, is that it?”
I was going to put a bullet between this man’s eyes.
I could imagine the whole thing playing out in my mind.
I could kill him before anyone in this café could react.
Then, I would take care of the young man sitting beside him: Matteo Rojas, Luis’s only son and heir to the family empire.
With both of them dead, the Castillos would have no direct competition in the area, and there would be no more assassination attempts.
The license plate that Manny gave me came back to a man connected to the Rojas family. It wasn’t just the incident at the club. They went after the youngest of us too. Fucking bastards, the lot of them.
“My father trusts me to do what must be done,” I said and glanced at Matteo. He was the same age as Lili. “I see you brought your own boy to watch.”
Luis ground his teeth together; I could see how his jaw clicked back and forth. “Matteo is learning.”
I agreed. “And I have learned.” I sat back, casual and unbothered. “Why are we here, Luis? I’m a newlywed, and I’m eager to get back to my bride.”
I’d woken up still wrapped around her, and the sight of her relaxed face, utterly unguarded, had made my stomach twist. Looking at her like that was like staring into a bear trap and wanting to step into it.
I’d reluctantly left Emma in bed, creeping quietly so as to not wake her in order to take this farce of a meeting.
“I want peace between our families,” Luis said.
I bit back the insult that rose on my tongue like bile. “Your man shot at my cousin last night,” I said. “You sent a spy to assassinate me in my own club. And now you want peace?”
“Are you calling my Apá a liar?” Matteo demanded and sounded every bit like a little boy. Lili had a better hold of her tongue than this; she would never interrupt.
Luis cuffed his son on the back of the head, nearly sending Matteo to the floor. “Grown-ups are talking, Matteo,” Luis said without taking his eyes off me. “I told you to hold your tongue and watch.”
I smirked but didn’t rise to taunt the boy in return. That would make Luis think that I was beneath him. “I’m waiting for your answer, Luis,” I said. “Why now?”
Luis sighed. “I realized the error of my ways,” he said.
“Fighting with you now would cut into both of our profit margins, and I doubt the Miami PD would tolerate an all-out war for territory like they did when your father and I were young.” He smiled, as if that were a happy memory for him, and I calculated how much force I would need to snap his neck.
He was older, frailer…it wouldn’t take much.
“Just think of how much we could achieve if we weren’t cutting each other off at the knees? ”
I didn’t believe a word of it. “So, this has nothing to do with the retribution that I owe you for the men that are dead because of you?”
The older man waved his hand, as if I was overreacting. “I apologize for the misunderstandings between our families,” he said. “I think I have a solution that will benefit both of us, if you’re willing to listen.”
I was going to make this man swallow his own tongue.
“Of course, we will listen.” Fuck. Padre settled beside me, and it was everything that I could do to keep my face and body neutral.
If I tensed for a second, he would notice, and it would cost me when we got home.
“I told you he wanted peace, did I not?”
“Sí, Padre,” I said through my teeth.
“I didn’t think that you were coming, Gustavo.” He pointed at me, and I dug my nails into my palms in an effort not to snap it. “This one said that you trusted his judgment.”
“I do,” Padre said, “but the appointment that I had was pushed back an hour, and I was intrigued with the business opportunity that you mentioned. I’d like to hear it.” He looked at me. “We both would.”
I didn’t want to hear it. I imagined the man’s head separated from his goddamn shoulders, but with Padre here, there wasn’t much that I could do. “Tell us,” I said.
Luis glanced at Matteo, who had been absorbing the exchange in silence since his earlier rebuke. “As you know, we have a sizable business in…transportation, and we don’t have the manpower to keep it running along with our other ventures. We would like to turn over this business to you.”
“Transportation?” I asked. From the intel we had on the Rojas, I knew they had their hands in a little bit of everything. Where we had dug into one market — moving substances — and used legitimate business to shield that movement, the Rojas dabbled. But I hadn’t heard of them smuggling.
Luis nodded. “We help those who wish to enter the country do so and find work once they’re on American soil.”
A pit opened in my stomach. “Trafficking,” I said.
Padre squeezed my arm. “We’re in public, mijo,” he said without looking at me. “Watch what you say.”
My face burned. I’d forgotten where we were for a moment. I bobbed my head in acknowledgment, but my eyes didn’t leave Luis. “This employment you help them find,” I said, “is it the kind they can leave at any time?”
Luis shrugged. “If they’ve repaid our fees associated with their relocation, they’re free to go. We’re not in the business of keeping people against their will.”
I didn’t believe that for a second. “How long does it normally take for someone to pay off what they owe?”
Luis shrugged, a pleasant smile still etched onto his face. “The duration is set by the person owing the money, isn’t it? How hard they work directly translates to how long they have to work.”
No one has ever freed themselves — that’s what his words told me. I looked at Padre, and nausea rolled through me. He was smiling. “Padre, you can’t be serious.” He glanced at me, surprised by the objection. “Padre —”
But how could I say why I objected? To admit that the idea of selling anyone, selling women, made my stomach turn would be a weakness. Never show your enemy what you love or what you fear, I thought. It was one of the first lessons that my father taught me.
But the image of my mother, slumped against the side of the tub, was burned in my mind; her blood had turned the water pink.
Her eyes were open, and I would never forget the lifeless, gray haze in them.
She had been gifted to my father because her family thought they could trade her for a better life.
She’d survived under my father’s hands for as long as she could, but there was no way out of this life for her.
From the moment she became his wife, she was trapped.
I would never understand what was the tipping point, but something about her life had become so bad that she decided that she only had one solution left.
I couldn’t be a part of an industry that broke people like that. My mother’s spirit would haunt me for the rest of my life if I did.
But I couldn’t say any of that to Luis Rojas. My father would see my body disposed of in the Everglades first.
“They shot at Manny,” I said instead, pushing myself to my feet. “They killed half a dozen of my men trying to kill me.” I looked at Luis and Matteo and then at my father. “There will never be peace between our families.”
I walked away from the table knowing that whatever punishment Padre would conceive for me would be bad. Not fatal, hopefully, but bad. In the parking lot, I pulled out my phone and called Emma. “I wasn’t sure if I was going to hear from you today,” she said when she picked up.
“Why wouldn’t you?”
“Usually if I don’t see you before breakfast, you don’t come home until after I go to bed,” she pointed out. “Are you okay? You normally don’t call like this.”
She was far too observant for her own good. “What if I just wanted to hear your voice, mi esposa?”
Emma scoffed. “That isn’t it,” she said. “So what’s wrong?”
“I…don’t know why I called,” I said honestly. “I really wanted to hear your voice.”
Her breath came out in a stutter. “Oh,” she said. “I missed you.”
There was no way that she did. “Really?”
She hummed over the line. “Your sister has been kicking my ass across the mats in the gym all morning.”
“Why?”
“She’s teaching me self-defense,” she said. “I thought I should learn.”
While I didn’t like the idea of anyone putting their hands on my wife, even if it was my sister, I couldn’t deny that some self-defense training was a good idea.
“Don’t let her get too many hits in,” I said.
“I’d prefer it if I didn’t find you bruised when I came home. ” If I come home, I added in my head.
She laughed. “I’m doing my best. It’s my first day doing this, after all.” There was a pause; I listened to her breathing. “Angel, seriously, are you okay?”
“I’m fine, mi esposa,” I said. “Go have fun with Lili.”
I could practically hear Emma rolling her eyes. “Oodles,” she said. “See you at home later?”
“Later,” I agreed and hung up feeling more unmoored than before. Why did I call her? Why did I need to hear her voice like that? I had been perfectly content to exist without Emma for years before I met her. Her voice shouldn’t give me that kind of relief.
“Mijo.” I turned around, and my father’s hand flashed out, making contact with my cheek. It rocked my head to the side and split the inside of my cheek. “Come with me to my appointment,” he said. “We need to talk.”
The inside of my mouth filled with blood. I spat it out on the ground. “Sí,” I said. “Did you drive, or did Tío Andre drop you off?”
“You’ll drive,” Padre said.
We climbed into my SUV and I started the engine. “Are we going to Sylvester Comprehensive or Baptist Health?” Padre had been to both, to get second and third opinions, and he never included anyone on his treatment days, so I wasn’t sure which hospital had gotten his business.
“Sylvester,” he said. “That other doctor didn’t know what he was talking about; he’d given me a prognosis of less than six months, and it’s been seven.”
“Doctors aren’t fortune tellers, Padre,” I said.
“Do I need to split the other cheek?” he spat in return.
“No, Padre,” I said. “Lo síento.”
He harrumphed. “We’ll just see about that.”