40. Attila
40
ATTILA
I knew it would come to this. Although I didn’t.
Caleph somehow managed to make his way to Mexico. It had been decided that he’d have nothing to do with Coyin Castillo’s downfall. That would be all me and Cesar, with a little help from Dante Accardi. That was what was decided and agreed upon, to maintain the integrity of his budding relationship with Ariadne; he couldn’t afford to fuck that up before it even started.
Yet now he is here. And how. We argue back and forth about the Castillo cartel. Not that he’s not grateful that we’ve rid the world of the scum of the earth that was Coyin Castillo. But he seems to think we’ve got an even bigger problem now with the mess that Castillo has left behind.
“You really think his sons are just going to let this pass?” he asks, hands on his hips. A vein in his neck pops as his anger swells.
“The boys haven’t been seen in a while,” I remind him. “We don’t even know if they’re alive.”
“How can four of his sons. Four grown men. Just disappear off the face of the earth?”
“We’re working on it,” Cesar tells him.
Caleph turns his acidic gaze toward Cesar. He’s still not over The Jekyll’s role in Ariadne’s kidnapping, no matter that Cesar has made amends for that error in judgment.
“Why?” he asks. “Why are you working on it? You got your vengeance for your wife’s murder; why are you still here?”
Cesar stiffens. His back goes rigid with the implication of what Caleph is saying. It’s true; Cesar has gotten what he came for; why then, is he still here? We hadn’t spoken past what would happen after we destroyed Coyin Castillo. We hadn’t considered the road we would take; either together or separately.
“I did get what I wanted,” Cesar admits. “We all got what we wanted.” He pauses, looks out toward the sea before his eyes skirt back to us. “But there’s no telling what the aftermath of this operation will be; I’m not willing to leave Attila to deal with that on his own. We started this together… we’ll see it through together.”
“I commend your loyalty, no matter how misplaced it may be,” Caleph starts, but he’s interrupted by Dante.
“Cesar is right. There’s no telling what the backlash will be. We don’t want to be looking over our shoulders for the rest of our lives.”
Caleph thinks about this. He knows there will be repercussions from Coyin’s offspring. He knows there could be problems. In our years long search for the man, it’s the one thing we hadn’t cared about — because there’s never been anything any one of us had worth losing. Now there is. None of these men wanted the Castillo cartel touching anything good in their lives, including their wives.
I see movement out of the corner of my eye and turn toward the house. Luna is standing at the window watching us, obviously intrigued by this meeting between four men who are virtually strangers to her. She cocks her head curiously, and I know she’s trying to read the situation.
“What about the girl?” Caleph asks, following my eyes to the window. When I don’t respond, they all turn and notice her there.
“The girl has nothing to do with this.”
* * *
“What’s going on?” Luna asks, as I walk into the house with Cesar. Dante and Caleph are still outside talking. Honestly, I love my brothers to death, but their hovering over me gives me whiplash.
“Have you had something to eat?” I ask her, realizing she hasn’t eaten anything since probably before we picked her up at the auction.
“Why won’t anyone answer my questions?” she asks, furious. Cesar reverts to grunting as his main method of communication and leaves the room, opening the door for me to deal with Luna. I relent and sigh, then ask her what she wants to know. Eventually, she’ll know. And what’s more important is that we find her brothers — the Castillo boys — before they find us. “Who are all these people, and what are you doing here?”
It’s the first chance we’ve had to talk since the auction and the death of the man she considered her father. I fall into position on a sofa and watch as Gabriel rises and walks quietly out of the room, giving us some privacy. It amuses me that Luna refers to him as Scarface, but I guess she had no other option considering the circumstances. She sits on the same sofa, then angles her body so one leg is resting underneath her thigh and she is facing me. Maria was thoughtful enough to send over a bag of Luna’s clothes, and she’s settled on a comfortable sweatsuit that looks like she was poured into it.
“Well, you know who TJ and I are, but those two,” I wave my hand toward the window, “are colleagues. Dante Accardi and Caleph Rojas.”
She gives me an odd look. I believe she’s heard the names circulated before, because she doesn’t probe in that direction again.
“But who are you, really ?” she asks. “I know your name. But that’s all I know. Why are you everywhere I turn? And why did you kill my father?”
“It’s a long story, Luna.”
“And I have all day.”
I sigh and run my eyes over her. She’s starting to get her color back, although I think she’s lost weight since I last saw her a week ago.
“Your father’s death was inevitable,” I tell her. She may not want to hear it, but she needs to know that her father was going to die regardless of what he was doing to her. He was not a good man.
“My father was an evil man,” she affirms. “But why did you come to Mexico?”
“He came here because we had unfinished business with Coyin Castillo.”
Cesar walks into the room, his large frame overshadowing everything around him. His choice of words is not lost on Luna as she looks up at him. Cesar, in turn, looks at me. “She has to know,” he tells me. I wanted to delay this as much of possible, but he’s lifted the timestamp I set myself and forced my hand.
“Know what?” Luna gasps, looking from Cesar to me then back to him again.
“Your father was not a good man,” I tell her, still referring to Castillo as her father. Cesar, I know, is angling for a different direction.
She looks disgusted. “You think?” She of all people would know what her father is capable of.
“Your uncle killed my wife,” Cesar tells her, his voice low and solid, matter-of-fact. “Your father killed Caleph’s parents and he also killed your mother.”
Luna’s eyes shoot toward me. She’s looking for a reaction from me; when she doesn’t get one, she understands that I already know this information. And she’s wondering how we know this information if she never told us.