Chapter 24
Omar
“If you are not on a boat home in twenty minutes, I am going to send someone to collect you,” Angel snarled. “It will not end well for you.”
Mierda. I was completely out of excuses as to why I couldn’t come home. I told him about being attacked on my return to the island and the crash, leaving out anything to do with Lyse, but my bruises were already fading, and we both knew that there was another speedboat in the dry dock.
“Angel, trust me, por favor. I need more time.”
My brother let out a sound that could only be of frustration. “Explain why you aren’t here,” he said, “and I’ll consider it.”
But what was there to say? I have Luis Rojas’s daughter here, and I’m pretty sure that I’ve fallen in love with her? Pretty please don’t have her murdered? It was laughable at best, a death sentence for us both at worst.
I sighed. “I just need time, hermano. I promise I’ll explain as soon as I can.” I hung up before Angel could say anything else. It didn’t ring again. The chances of him actually sending someone to get me are a good…eighty percent, I thought. What a fucking mess.
When I stepped out of the office, I heard music coming from the kitchen. It wasn’t totally unusual for Helena to put on something that she could move around to, but today, something about the happy beat soured my mood even more.
I stormed into the kitchen and shut off the radio that she’d set on the counter.
She and Lyse turned on me: it seemed I caught them mid-cooking lesson.
Helena was teaching Lyse to make cachitos.
The dough for the pastry was resting, and they were currently shredding the cheese that would be baked into it.
“Omar?” Lyse asked, and I ground my teeth together. She looked beautiful, covered in flour, and it was impossible to be upset by the sight of her doing anything remotely domestic. It gave me too many ideas about the future. “Are you okay?”
“I have a headache,” I lied. “Could you two make breakfast without the concert going on?”
Helena’s frown told me that she didn’t believe me for a second, but it didn’t matter. I didn’t need her to believe me. I just needed her to keep the damn radio off until I didn’t want to punt it through the wall. “Do you need to go lie down?” Lyse asked. “I can bring you—”
“I’m not a child,” I snapped back and hated myself for it. She was being wonderful; she didn’t deserve to bear the brunt of my foul mood. “I don’t need you to coddle me, all right?”
Lyse blinked. “I’ll treat you however I like, pendejo,” she hissed, drawing herself up to her full height…
which was still woefully short compared to me.
“Helena and I were having a good time. If you have a problem with that, find your way out of the kitchen. If you’re not feeling good, go take a nap.
But don’t come in here and snipe at us because you’re in need of attention or whatever. ”
It was unfair how hot Lyse was when she was standing up for herself. It shouldn’t be possible to be pissed off and turned on at the same time by the same person, but I both wanted to shake her for her impertinence and carry her off to the bedroom for it.
I needed to break something. That always helped when I was in a mood like this. Whether that meant going to the gun range and obliterating targets or finding a woman who didn’t mind if I got rough with her, it didn’t really matter.
I ran my hands through my hair. “My apologies,” I said through my teeth.
For Lyse, I wanted to be better. I wanted to be more than just the guy who needed to destroy things.
So, in the interest of not being that guy, I left them standing in the kitchen, wearing identical expressions of bewilderment.
As much as I didn’t want to go back to my office, it was the only place that no one would bother me…
except for Lili, who had called my phone no less than a dozen times.
“Puta madre,” I muttered and returned her call.
While it was never a good idea to keep Angel waiting, it was even worse with Lili.
If she demanded that you call her back, you did it, or faced the consequences… and my sister could be very creative.
“Where. Are. You?” Lili answered the phone screaming, and I winced.
“On the island,” I said, as if she didn’t know. “I’ll be home soon.”
“Tonight,” Lili said. “It has to be tonight.”
My hand curled into a fist. If I put it through the wall, would that make me feel better or worse? “Why does it have to be tonight, Mija?”
“Angel is being released from the hospital. You have to be here when he gets home.”
It should be a joyous thing that, after being in a coma for two weeks, Angel was able to come home to finish up his recovery. It was a good thing…and yet, a pit opened in my stomach. “I’ll be home as soon as I can,” I said.
Lili was quiet for a moment. “That wasn’t you promising to be here, idiota. I know the difference.”
Damn her. “I’ll be home as soon as I can,” I repeated.
“If Angel kills you, that’s not on me.” She meant it to be a joke, but it fell flat against my ear. Until this point, I never thought of my brother as someone I would have to seriously worry about…but if I brought Lyse to the compound, there was a good chance that that would change.
I was quickly coming to a fork in the metaphorical road — one that I never saw myself coming to. My family had always been the most important thing in the world to me…but the idea of losing Lyse made me want to smash things apart with my bare hands.
“—mar? Omar! Idiota, what the hell are you doing?”
I startled out of my thoughts. “I’m here,” I assured her. “I didn’t hang up.”
She sighed. “What is going on with you? I know that everything went bad for a little while there, but the police have backed off, and Angel is going to be okay! Why are you being weird?”
Because I killed my father and then went on a murderous rampage and kidnapped the woman who might be the love of my life.
But there was no way to say all that without sounding absolutely crazy.
I was the Castillos’ enforcer. Death and violence came with the territory, and I was nothing if not loyal.
One woman should not be testing me this way.
“Do you ever get tired of it all?” I asked.
“What are you saying?”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. Maybe having Efrain set me up a range to practice at wouldn’t be the worst idea. “Nothing,” I said. “I think that concussion has scrambled my brain a little. I’ll make preparations to come home, okay? Stop worrying about it. I haven’t run away.”
Except that you did, my brain whispered to me. “Okay.” Lili didn’t sound entirely convinced…but I guess I couldn’t fault her for that. “We’ll see you soon, then.”
“Soon,” I promised.
I had to stop myself from throwing the phone at the wall after I hung up. It would have been satisfying to see it smash into tiny pieces, but it wouldn’t make a dent in the dark feeling that was eating me up from the inside out.
That red, hazy rage was building again, but this time, it had no target. I was furious with myself, and I’d never really been the type for self-destruction. Instead, I would take it out on someone who needed punishment, or on furniture, or on the range.
When my office door swung open, it was the very last thing that I needed. “The cachitos are finished!” Lyse announced, coming to the office holding a plate of the ham and cheese stuffed pastries up for me to see. “I wanted to—”
I looked at her, and the world around me faded. “You’re not allowed in here.” The words came out deadly calm, and Lyse jerked at the tone. “I’ve told you that countless times. Not in my office.”
Her mouth twisted into a frown. “You told me not to be in your bedroom either, but that’s where I slept last night.”
“I’m not fucking you in here. Get out.”
She put the plate down on my desk hard. The porcelain of the plate clattered against the hardwood, and the cachitos jumped. “If you keep speaking to me that way, you won’t be fucking me anywhere.”
It was the wrong thing to say. I snatched the plate off the desk and threw it past her so that it burst into an explosion of porcelain. Lyse yelped and shrank away, making herself smaller. “Get. Out.”
“Omar!”
“Get out!” The words came out in a scream, and when Lyse turned and fled, I went after her.
“You don’t get to do whatever you want,” I pelted the words at her back.
“You can’t just barge into my office, full of documents that are important to the Castillos, when I have specifically told you that it was off-limits.
Do you want to die? If Angel found out that I let you near any of that, he would flay you alive! Do you understand?”
I chased her up the stairs and down the long corridor until she flung herself into her room and slammed the door in my face. It locked from the outside, of course, so she couldn’t really keep me out. But the sound of the door snapping shut forced some sense into my brain. The haze retreated.
What have I done?
Taking a breath, I gently knocked at the door. “Lyse? I’m so sorry.”
“What in Heaven’s name are you doing?” Helena came barreling down the hallway at me.
Her sharp hands shoved at my shoulder, and I winced at the flare-up of pain.
The bruises from the attack and accident were fading to a mottled yellow, but it didn’t mean that it didn’t hurt if a grown woman bulldozed into me.
“Carrying on that way?” Her voice was shrill; it made my head hurt. “You’re acting like a child.”
“I’m—” I swallowed. “She—”
“She was bringing you breakfast, not trying to gather the business secrets of the Castillos, and you know that.”
I did. Lyse couldn’t have been clearer about how much she didn’t care about the business end of either family. “I’m sorry.”
Helena snorted. “It’s not me that you should be apologizing to.”
I gestured to the closed door. “What did you think I was doing when you came running into me?”
“Chasing her up here and changing your mind at the last second is not the time for a sincere apology.” She smacked me again. “Honestly! ?Que te crio?”
“Helena.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Don’t try to intimidate me now, jefe. You know you’re in the wrong, so you’re getting defensive, but I won’t put up with that nonsense.” She pointed her finger in my face: a bold move, even for her. “You find a way to make it up to her, do you hear me?”
I shouldn’t let her get away with how she talks to me. But instead of saying anything, I just nodded. “I will.” She pushed me down the hall, away from her door. “What are you doing? How am I supposed to apologize?”
“First, you’re going to clean up the mess you made in your office,” she said. “That’ll give you time to think before you say or do anything else that stupid.” She tsked softly. “You’re better than this, Omar.” Helena sounded so disappointed that it actually hurt.
But I wasn’t better than this. Big and violent was all I’d ever be.