5. Sergio
CHAPTER 5
SERGIO
“Y ou cut off Javier’s fucking hand!” My brother Matteo thunders, slamming his fist on my desk later that night. “Are you insane?”
I shrug.
Maybe.
No, scratch that.
Definitely.
“He got handsy with the wrong person.”
“Who? The girl? How many times have I told you not to mix business with pleasure?”
“Enough so that I tune it out every time you say it?”
He stomps across my office and then stomps back to lash out some more. “I knew this was a bad idea. You trying to work a deal with the cartel?” He shakes his head. “It should have been me,” he grumbles.
“So that’s the big problem, isn’t it?” I say, jumping out of my chair. “That I’m the one who handled the situation. That I was the one who got the chance to make the deal!”
“It was a stupid decision made by the syndicate families,” he mutters. “And by Papa. Now look at the shit storm that’s blown in here because of the way you handled things!”
“Listen,” I say, standing in front of him. “Sure, maybe you’d have done things differently. Maybe you wouldn’t have gotten so fired up when you found out that he attacked an innocent girl. You’ve always had more patience than me in dealing with the real derelicts.”
He rolls his eyes. “I’m gonna assume that’s some backhanded compliment.”
I grin at him. “Yeah, sure, assume away. You know what they say about people who assume, right?”
He flips me off and keeps pacing. “You sent a message to Becerra, and that was after he offered you a piece of his distribution.”
“If he was serious about working together, he should have gotten his fat ass here the other night instead of sending his dipshit crew in his place. But he didn’t give a damn. He sent his own message by not showing up. And that message was ‘hey, kid, get ready to eat shit pie and beg for seconds!’”
“Look, we’re close to taking full control of this city, Sergio. You’re about to hand Nate Torres a windfall for access to his pussy empire, and we could have had the chance to hook into another drug pipeline, the biggest one. Everything was in place until you fucked it up!”
“It’s not like I killed the guy,” I say, sweeping a hand through my hair.
“You made a statement,” Matteo groans. “And now we all have to deal with the fallout.”
“Look, I’m sure Becerra will make contact and we’ll see what he has to say. As far as I’m concerned, we’re even now. He disrespected me by not coming, I cut off his guy’s hand. He’s lucky I didn’t cut off the whole damn arm.”
“Yeah, and that would have made you even how?” Matteo’s eyes darken. “Tell me about the girl. Why was she targeted?”
I avert my eyes, fumbling with a pen. “She was with me when he showed up here.”
“Here at the club?”
“No, here in my office.”
Matteo presses a hand to his forehead. “And why was she in your office, Jesus Christ?”
“Relax, she wasn’t inside.” Well, not until later, but I’ll keep that quiet for now. He doesn’t need any more ammunition against me. Knowing him, he’s filing it all away for the next sit-down with the syndicate families. Besides, I wouldn’t put it past him to stick this pen in my eye socket if he had all the sordid details of our little tryst, and I’m kind of attached to my eyeballs. “I guess he wanted to get back at me by going after her.”
“And who is she?”
“Don’t know.”
“Are you fucking kidding me? How can you not know? She didn’t have a name?”
“She didn’t offer it.”
“And you didn’t ask?”
“Not my MO.”
“Serge, you cannot screw up this meeting with Torres. If you don’t deliver, you give up any shot at grabbing that seat, do you understand?”
“And since I’m sure you’re rooting against me, challenge accepted.”
Matteo lets out a little roar, I guess out of frustration. If I were him, I’d probably do the same thing. I’m fucking infuriating sometimes, I know it.
“I have to get back to New York at some point,” he says. “I can’t stay out here forever to make sure you don’t fuck shit up beyond repair. I need to feel like I can trust you with our operations out here, and right now, I don’t.”
I can’t blame him, not that I’d ever admit it. I let my anger rage and didn’t think about the consequences. And yeah, I may have gotten a little crazy with that machete. I probably went overboard when I slammed it down on his wrist. Enrico read me the riot act when we were alone. But I couldn’t get the brunette’s tear-streaked face out of my mind. She’d been so sexy and self-assured in the club, white fucking hot.
But outside, after Javier attacked her, she seemed…I don’t know. Broken? Shattered? Something just…flipped.
And the sex…fuck.
Incredible is an understatement.
I couldn’t understand why she’d been so quick to walk away from that.
Before she left that night, she said she knew me, said she had to leave before making another bad decision.
It’s ironic that I did exactly that because of her.
I’d be lying if I said I haven’t lain awake at night thinking about my dick buried deep inside of her and those final words she’d spoken afterward, wondering if I’d have been able to make her stay if I tried a little harder.
Speaking of…
Who the hell was she?
And how can I find her again?
Because I’m damn curious to find out what bad decisions she was on the brink of making.