Chapter 7
Jasmina
EVERYONE CLOSE TO THE family came to Paolo’s for one last hurrah that night. Hours of food and drinking, low music and laughter.
I wasn’t in the mood to converse and kept to myself mostly. I walked the house like it was a memory. To me, it sort of was.
I’d lived in it with my own parents until they were murdered. The house was gigantic and extravagant, which I’m sure is why Paolo took it over after my parents died, but I moved out to Tía Perla and Tío Monte’s home.
It was for the best. Their home was where I wanted to be with my cousins and them, but as I turned down the upstairs hallways, I remembered how I used to love running up and down them.
I didn’t get to spend much more time reminiscing, though, as Perla called me back downstairs to say goodbye to our last guest.
“Ay.” My aunt looked around in dismay, and Monte walked up to her to wrap an arm around her. “He was never tidy, was he? I’ll have the cleaners come tomorrow.”
“We should go through some of the cards. Make sure nothing out of the ordinary is in there.” Monte gave me a look. We didn’t need any more surprises.
“I can stay back and do that.”
“You sure?” he asked and then waved to some of our armed security. “Stay back with—”
“No. I’m fine.” I waved them off. “You know I’m fine. I’d like to be alone here for a bit, and then I’ll meet you all at dinner.” I placed a soft hand on his arm.
Everyone was meeting to have a few drinks at the local bar.
It might not have been respectable as a tradition, but we needed an outlet after listening to cheap condolences and empty promises through the night.
We’d rubbed elbows with those who had killed him and laughed with others who’d wanted him dead, and that was about as traditional as we could be at this point.
I was marrying a Diamond. That had to be good enough.
And when I told them to go with my cousins one more time, my aunt smiled. “Gracias, mi corazón. Paolo and Lex were a burden, no? But our weight all the same.”
Didn’t I know it?
“They shouldn’t have done what they did.” Going after Jameson’s daughter had been a death sentence. They’d been greedy and stupid and selfish.
“Left us always to clean up his mess, didn’t he?” Uncle Monte glanced at the books on Paolo’s shelf. “What a dumbass venture that was.”
“And now we’re left again with the repercussions of that stupid ego of his.” I sighed. “I’d kill him myself if he was still alive.”
My aunt huffed, and Monte nodded in agreement.
“Are you sure you’re good?” Monte asked.
“Of course,” I said.
“I’ll lock up,” Monte told me, and I waved them all out. After everyone left, I let my lungs expand for the first time in hours.
The house felt different without their presence, but mostly it felt different because Paolo wasn’t in it bellowing about something.
The man had been rude, belligerent, loud, and violent most of the time.
More than once, he’d smacked me in his office for not explaining accounting well enough to him.
More than twice, he’d told me I was useless before he used me for something else.
And more than thrice, he’d cursed my father in this very home, saying he left him with nothing.
Never once did he consider he was living in the home my parents tried to raise me in.
I sighed. “What a damn mess,” I grumbled before I decided to start in the kitchen, washing dishes and staring out the backyard window. I put together and rearranged the flowers that had been sent.
I worked through putting food away and rearranging the furniture back to how it once was and then went through some of the cards.
The condolences were canned and fake. Most of them made my skin crawl from how empty they all were. How could we lose someone and not miss them at all?
Yet, I’d known my uncle.
Still, I came across the Knights’ card and narrowed my eyes.
We don’t share sympathies or pay our condolences. But a partnership will suffice.
Sincerely,
The Knight Family
Freaking jackasses. I took a deep breath and walked back to the study to sit down and pour myself a tumbler of his best tequila.
The expensive stuff he said was only for victories, which made me laugh because what victories did we have left?
I lifted the glass in a mock salute to the framed picture on the desk of him and Lex. Both smiling like they hadn’t just detonated our entire legacy.
“Didn’t think you’d leave before me,” I muttered. “You two really fucked it up … and left us with nothing but problems.”
I turned toward his laptop and opened it to log in.
I scanned his accounts, his folders, everything again just to be sure.
Bank accounts were dismal. Offshore accounts not much better.
Emergency funds would have to be tapped into soon if we were going to continue to pay the men running drugs for Paolo.
I didn’t agree with that part of the business, but there wasn’t much Paolo would allow me to say about it. We’d had the conversations. I knew the firearms business was more lucrative for us, but Paolo wouldn’t hear of it.
“When you build a man up and let him sit on a pedestal your whole life just for them to topple over and knock you down with them,” I whispered to no one, “seems he doesn’t just land on you … he buries you.”
I leaned back in his chair and pinched the bridge of my nose.
Paolo hadn’t ever been good with money, but he’d managed to hold onto our territories’ trust because my father had once ruled them and paid men well enough for their loyalty for a time. They’d done right by many for a long time, but loyalty only took us so far.
I’d been the one who’d tried to help my uncle clean it up. I pushed and pushed to expand Fuerte Firearms, and so far it had worked. “We could get out of drug trafficking and trade for good,” I’d told him.
“You don’t make those decisions, mija. I do. So shut the fuck up, and do what you’re told.”
God, how he loved that I did what I was told most of the time.
From the time I was barely old enough to understand I did what he told me to, I’d been sitting beside him learning how to move money without leaving fingerprints.
I’d be around learning to throw a knife to save his ass, I’d let men court me just to get a good deal going.
While Maribel and Annarose played, I sat and researched and learned and honed, all for Paolo.
All for the family.
Now I knew how to launder money, how to protect myself, and how to run illegal and legal businesses.
And I liked to think I was better than most at all those things.
I sighed, then turned in his chair to face his bookshelf.
Maybe it’d all been for nothing, though.
Paolo’s bookshelf filled with first editions mocked me.
He’d bought book after book with no intention of reading them.
He just liked the aesthetic even if it was astronomical in price.
“You were never a good investor,” I grumbled, because we’d have to sell this place for sure.
Honestly, I’d have to get a freaking job to help my aunt care for my cousins at this point.
The idea was enough that I dropped my head back on the headrest of the chair right before I heard it.
A floorboard creaked.
It was small, but I had a trained ear, one that was listening for attackers even on a night of mourning like tonight.
I froze first, all my muscles tightening, and then opened my eyes very slowly without making a movement at all. I scanned the bookshelf for anything that could help, but a reflection and the gong was all I got. A blur of a movement over the glossy finish.
I’d locked the doors, but an intruder could have come through a window.
Only problem was I didn’t know who I was up against. And I figured the best defense was a great offense. So, I spun as fast as I could, but it wasn’t fast enough.
A large, muscular arm looped around my throat and yanked me backward into the air up over my chair, the crook of the elbow locking under my jaw, crushing my windpipe.
With the tumbler still in my hand, I used the momentum to break it against the desk.
Tequila and glass flew everywhere, hopefully catching my attacker off guard enough for me to swipe the glass shard in my hand up methodically.
Aim to kill. And aim quick.
The sweet scent of agave mixed with that metallic smell of blood hit me almost immediately as the man screamed while I twisted the glass into his face before jerking it back and jabbing it again into his arm as hard as I could.
I needed him to let me go, but he didn’t.
His grip loosened enough as I heard him grunt in pain, and I gasped for breath before twisting in his arms and driving my heel back to kick him.
He yelped this time, but I stayed focused.
I had knives at my thigh that I needed to grab.
I kept his attention on the hand with the tumbler that I was flailing about as I reached for my deadly weapon.
And that’s when I saw them.
Two more men were in my peripheral vision.
Fuck.
Three against one was never good odds, especially when one was already choking me out.
I figured the tumbler would have to do for one of them. I hurled it like a dagger at the closest one’s face. It cracked against his cheekbone with a satisfying thud.
The first man lunged again. I ducked low, sweeping my leg out, knocking him off balance. My palm hit the floor, and I sprang back up, adrenaline turning everything crisp and sharp.
“Grab her,” one of them barked in accented Spanish.
The second man rushed. I met him halfway. I moved my wrist just right so my knife slid out and sliced at his jaw. He staggered in disbelief, eyes wide.
I didn’t even take a second to breathe; I drove my knee into his stomach, then stabbed him again in the gut before he fell over, choking like he might be down for the night. That gave me a second to look toward the entryway, but the third man came from behind and slammed me into the desk.
My ribs screamed, but his hands gripped my arm, banging it onto the desk over and over until I lost hold of my blade. Another set of hands pinned my shoulders. I thrashed, twisted, bit, kicked, fighting with every bit of training I’d completed over the years.
“Quit fighting, bitch,” one hissed and hit me hard in the mouth.
“Fuck you,” I spat back before managing to get an elbow into his gut.
I heard an oof, but it wasn’t enough to get him down.
“Then you die,” he growled, and his knife came out fast.
I blocked the first strike with my forearm against his wrist, just barely missing the blade. The second strike landed across my stomach, though, shallow but enough to burn.
I hissed and drove my head backward, cracking my skull against a nose behind me. Warm blood sprayed.
Thank God.
His grip loosened just enough for me to break free for about half a second.
Or maybe half a heartbeat. It was long enough to see what they’d come for, to see a man in a ski mask kneel at the corner of the rug.
They’d come for my uncle’s safe. I lunged, but pain exploded in my abdomen as another fist slammed into the fresh wound, forcing me to collapse to my knees.
“Hold that bitch and stop fighting,” someone snapped.
Two sets of hands pinned me down while I writhed and fought.
“Stop.” One hand grabbed my hair and slammed it back into the floor. “Fighting.”
He did it again, and my vision went black for a moment.
Again.
And I was out.
It had to be for more than a moment this time, because when I came to and groaned in pain, no one was holding me down.
I blinked a few times and felt liquid seeping across my arm from my head.
I glanced down and saw the blood. It was such a pretty red that mixed with the black and blue of my hair.
I wondered if the bruises I would have tomorrow on my face would match too.
If I lived till tomorrow.
I could only watch as they peeled back the rug.
Then, the men were efficient and cranking on the floorboards one by one until they found the safe.
One man sat close and seemed to listen as he worked the lock.
He was practiced at opening them because it swung open in one try.
Then, they rifled through the contents. Cash. Documents. A black ledger.
A flash drive.
It had fake passports of ours, maybe a couple thousand dollars. Our reports on flash drives. I knew all the information there. When it came to the accounts, my memory was near photographic, I swear. I’d studied them front to back.
The only thing I didn’t recognize, they didn’t see.
Up under the large oak desk my father had in this room that Paolo had adopted and never changed was a small crack. It was the exact spot I used to tap on for my father to stop working. It wasn’t supposed to be there—it was too clean of a crack.
So clean like it had been carved out.
My uncles had never shown me. My aunt had never pointed it out.
It meant they didn’t know it was there either. It meant my father had done it.
And for some reason, I felt focused on that only. Not on what the men were doing, not on what they were stealing, just on that marring of the wood.
No one was paying enough attention to me to catch the movement.
As they stood to leave, one crouched down in front of me, tilting my chin up with a gloved finger. I didn’t so much as breathe when we locked eyes. I tried to focus on his features, but I saw three of him rather than one. He didn’t look away as he brought a phone to his ear after pressing a button.
“You said there would be more money,” he murmured, and then, “Yeah, I’ll be sure.”
Fuck. They were going to slit my throat to “be sure.”
He hung up the phone and said, “Pity we have to gut you now, sweetheart.”
He shoved my face aside, and I made my move quickly.
I scrambled for a weapon as men descended on me.
I was more than injured, though. So weak, I actually grumbled to myself that I was a little bitch and to knock it off.
Mothers could lift cars off their babies.
There had to be some hidden adrenaline I could tap into.
For a moment, all I could hear was my heartbeat pounding in my ears.
Then the pain hit all at once. Catastrophic into my stomach again as I rolled and kicked and screamed. They’d attacked the same place, stabbing deep into my center. I took the sharp pin from my hair. It was a last-ditch effort, but I swung it at my aggressor.
The gurgle and stumbling I heard after meant I’d got him where it mattered.
“Fuck. Breathe, man.” I watched as one grabbed another, his blood spraying from his neck everywhere. “Just breathe.”
And then their footsteps retreated and there was silence.
Silence and pain.
My shirt dampened with blood as I pressed my palm against my stomach, trying to keep pressure, trying not to panic, trying not to cry because weakness was the one luxury I wouldn’t allow myself.
They’d left me to die, and maybe I would, but before I did, I picked slowly at the crack in the desk and the wood moved and fell away. Under it was an SD card and I tucked it away deep in my pocket.
Then, I let the loss of blood overtake me and passed out.