Chapter 21
21
B y the time the limo pulled up to the villa, the sun was rising over the Pacific. When I entered my bedroom I went out on my balcony hoping the peaceful sight and sound of the crashing waves would calm my wired nerves, but no such luck. Shivering I rubbed at my bare arms to ward off the misty breeze from the ocean.
My mind spun with what-ifs and different scenarios. I alternated between blaming myself, blaming my father, then blaming fate allowing me to be born into a family legacy of crime. In the end, I blamed Smoke most of all for being the one man I couldn’t resist, the one man who made me feel way too much. Exhaustion finally overcame me and after a shower I snuck under the covers and prayed for sleep.
What I experienced was fitful, disjointed dreams of Smoke, myself, and Manny. We were all struggling to keep our heads above the turbulent water of the Pacific until one giant wave pummeled us. A hand reached out to me, and as I clawed my way to the surface I stared into my mother’s face. Her lips moved with words drowned out by the crash of the surf. I struggled to hear her, but a second later she vanished .
I jolted awake breathless, drenched in sweat, with my heart beating double-time against my ribs. I forced myself to calm down rationalizing it was only a dream, but my mother’s touch was so eerily real. Like she had a message or warning just out of my reach.
The dream haunted me, but I must’ve drifted off again, because when I woke sharp streams of light filtered through the blinds. I rubbed at my eyes and flipped up my phone. Just a little after noon, yet I felt like I hadn’t slept at all.
The missed messages from Smoke popped up on my phone. In my exhaustion, I’d forgotten to text him, and now I didn’t have the words I’m sure he wanted to hear. I had to sort all this out in my own mind and confront my father even if it meant breaking my promise to Smoke.
I threw on a tank top and boxer shorts, then left my room. The silence of the villa was another reminder of my mother’s absence. When she was alive, vibrant Brazilian music filled the cavernous rooms with joy. She’d explained to me how this music came from a rich history of Portuguese and Indian cultures, and as a little girl it was a part of her everyday life. A heritage she loved sharing with me.
I’d sit and listen to her recount her life in Brazil and how she met my father in a Brazilian nightclub. Her stories always had a touch of mystery as she wove her own excitement around the words. She was very young when she met him and I assumed she fell for his striking good looks and the charismatic side of his personality.
Although she never voiced her disappointment to Manny or I, as I grew older I saw my mother differently. She always put on a good front for us, but the sparkle had left her eyes. Living with the truth of my father’s business couldn’t have been easy and perhaps she felt trapped in the only life she’d ever known.
I wandered outside hoping the warmth of the sun would somehow calm my restlessness and remove the inner chill from my disturbing nightmare. Thinking of my mother left so many questions and doubt. It was much easier when I had the Royal Bastards to blame, but now my turbulent feelings for Smoke left me edgy. I wanted to believe he wasn’t responsible for my mother’s death, but he could easily be playing me just as I played him. An outlaw biker would be a master of deception and far more duplicitous. He could’ve also used my weakness for him, then wielded sex as a weapon against me. The doubt of Smoke’s possible deceit tightened the muscles in my neck to the point of pain.
As I rounded the pool cabana, I spied Manny relaxing in one of the lounge chairs. How I envied his laid-back attitude. He missed and grieved for our mother but he seemed to take it all in stride. Of course, the aid of weed and alcohol helped but still . . . I didn’t think there was enough alcohol in the Baja Coast to relieve my constant anxiety.
“Hey, Sis.” Manny propped his perfectly tanned body up on his elbows. His handsome face breaking into a smile. “Gonna join me?” He motioned to the lounger next to him and I tentatively perched on the edge.
A few months ago, I couldn’t even come out here without a full-blown panic attack. So severe it would leave me gasping like I was sucking air out of a straw. With therapy I’d overcome the overt reaction, but my heart still thumped harder at the sight of the pool area.
Manny offered me a beer from the cooler next to his chaise, but I waved it away. The knot in my stomach tightened and beer would only make it worse.
“I envy you.” I hadn’t planned on saying it, but the words just spilled out.
“Really?” He pushed up higher to a sitting position. “Even though you’re the golden child? ”
“Maybe that’s why.”
Manny huffed out a rough laugh, then swigged at his beer. “I still can’t figure out why you ever came back. You were the smart one. You had the chance to escape and leave all this behind.”
“What do you mean?”
“Graduating with honors from Stanford. A fabulous apartment, auditions lined up in Hollywood. You could’ve gone anywhere, been anything, but instead you came back here to do his bidding.”
“And what about you with an accounting degree from the University of Miami? You even passed your CPA and yet you spend your days poolside.” I tempered my words leaving out the part about him drinking at noon most days. “I think we both know why we came home.”
“It’s funny you hate coming out here after . . . what happened, and somehow I feel closer to her here.” Manny laid down his beer. “Fucked up, but true.”
“Just different ways of handling a horrific situation.” I’d begged Manny to seek counseling, but he refused, playing the macho card when in reality I suspected he was afraid of his own pain.
“And I also know you made a huge fuckin’ mistake setting yourself up to be used by the master manipulator.” He waved his beer toward the house. “Do you really think he gives a shit about you, or what you want?”
“I don’t know.” I couldn’t analyze my relationship with my father now with everything else going on. Him and Manny had a strained relationship even when my mother was alive, so of course, it only got worse when she died.
“He’s just using you, but you’re so desperate for his attention you fell for it.”
“You’re wrong. It was my idea to help him take down the Royal Bastards. ”
“No, he made you think it was your idea. It’s what he does. He plants a seed, and then watches it grow. It’s the same way he orchestrates and manipulates everyone around him, everyone who works for him.” Manny spread his arms wide. “I mean, how the fuck do you think he got all this, by being a nice guy?” He twisted his lips. “He’s a ruthless, vicious bastard who would kill his own to get what he wants.”
“That’s a terrible thing to say. I have no illusions about our father, or what he’s capable of, but in his own way he loves us and he loved Mom.”
“Ha, yeah, right, until she did something he could never forgive.”
“What are you talking about?”
“When will you finally start seeing him for who he is?”
“I’m well aware of who our father is.” The last thing I needed was a lecture on family from my brother. Especially when he was already on his second beer.
“I know you think I’m stupid and I’m wasting my life, but you just don’t get it.” He took a drag off the blunt and blew the smoke toward the sky.
“I never said you were stupid, but I do think you’re wasting your life with this playboy attitude of not taking anything seriously.”
“You ever think why I don’t take anything seriously?” He huffed out a rough laugh. “Of course, you don’t because you are so enamored by our father’s presence, so caught up in his bullshit and lies you can’t see the truth.”
“I’m not caught up in anything, but what I don’t understand is how you don’t want justice for our mother. That you don’t want to avenge her death and make the people who were responsible suffer.”
“And you think you can do that?”
“I can try.” Smoke’s face popped into my brain .
“Well, I hate to tell you, but you’re blaming the wrong people.”
“What do you mean?”
“The only one responsible for our mother’s death is him.” Manny jerked his thumb toward the house.
“I agree, the people he does business with are brutal and vindictive, but it was the Royal Bastards who pulled the actual trigger.”
“You really believe that, huh?”
“We were both there. You saw what happened and you saw who did it.” A spark of doubt crept through me as I recalled Smoke’s words of denial.
“Or what you think you saw.”
Today wasn’t the day for Manny’s introspection on life or his abstract weed-driven philosophy.
“I just know I want to be a part of taking down our mother’s murderers.”
“Then I suggest you get a gun, barge into his office and shoot the bastard.”
“You can blame him in theory but?—”
“You’re such a little fool.” Manny averted his gaze to the pool. Drew deep on the weed, then faced me. “He hired the guys who shot Mom.”
“What? Why would you say that?”
“Cause it’s the fuckin’ truth.”
My heart pounded hard in my chest, and my lungs contracted to the point of pain. I braced my palms against the lounger.
“He told me months ago before you came home. In his twisted mind he thought he was justified since she betrayed him, so he came clean and told me the truth.”
“What truth?”
“He returned home early from a trip to South America and he caught Mom screwing one of the bodyguards. ”
“No. That’s not true. She would never do . . .”
“She knew what he was about and she knew he had other women.”
“How do you know all this?” All this time I thought Manny couldn’t care less about family and here he knew way more than me.
“She told me one time. She hated the life he made for them. She even tried to leave once but . . . Remember the time she spent two weeks at that spa?”
“She met with friends for a relaxing girls’ vacation.”
“Mom didn’t have any friends cause he wouldn’t allow it, and the spa was a secluded retreat at the tip of the coast where they treated her for a concussion and broken ribs.”
“What? How did?—”
“She got as far as San Diego when his goons found her and dragged her back, but not before they bashed in her head and cracked a few ribs.”
My mouth dropped open and I swallowed hard against a wave of nausea.
“She never tried to leave again, so she did the next best thing. She made a life separate from him and it worked—until she got caught.”
“If Dad had other women, why would he care what Mom did?”
“Don’t be so naive. A man like him wants it all. He thinks he owns everybody and he sure didn’t want her with anyone else, least of all one of his bodyguards. If he couldn’t have her no one could.”
“You’re lying.” I couldn’t comprehend Manny’s words. “You’re just saying this because you’re jealous Dad came to me to help him.”
“He came to me first. Bragging about how he took care of our faithless mother. Thinking he could talk to me as he said ‘man to man’. He played it off as the perfect setup. He hired some of his goons, copied the Royal Bastards’ cuts, and then staged it out by the pool with all the security around, and us to witness it.”
“He never said that to me. He told me it really was the Royal Bastards. He told me?—”
“I guess he didn’t want to repeat the same mistake he made with me, so he lied to you. Apparently, he thought I was as bloodthirsty as him.”
“But I still don’t understand. If he knows it’s not the Royal Bastards who shot her than why is he going after them?”
“For the same reason he made it look like they were the shooters. According to him the Bastards were cutting in on his territory so making it look like it was them, turns all the other cartels against the MC. This way no one sells to them, only to him. In case you haven’t figured it out yet he’s a sadistic bastard who has to have it all at any cost.”
I stared at my brother with a blank expression. Smoke gave me the same explanation. It was all too much to digest and yet, in some corner of my mind I believed Manny—and Smoke.
“Having me work at The Tropics and get close to Smoke made it easier for him to keep tabs on what was happening at the club.”
“When I turned him down, he said you would work out better anyway.” Manny narrowed his eyes. “I don’t think you wanna know what he said next.”
Smoke was right, my father pimped me out, not for revenge against my mother’s death, but for his own means.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I didn’t want you to know the truth. It’s fuckin’ hard to walk around every day knowing your father had your mother murdered. Most days I wanna go in there and put a bullet in his brain.” Manny held up the weed. “But instead, I come out here and anesthetize myself. ”
I pushed myself off the chaise on wobbly legs. “I have to confront him.”
This had nothing to do with Manny or Smoke—this was something I had to do for my own peace. It couldn’t wait.
“Won’t do much good. I’m sure by now he’s got some other plan in motion. He probably already senses your reluctance and with the Royal Bastards in Tijuana it will be easy for him to call in any number of favors to have them eliminated.”
“I have to try.” I swiped Smoke’s number on my phone and waited. I wanted to at least warn him about setting up any kind of meeting. When it went to voicemail I frantically sent a text, then headed for the villa determined to have a showdown with my father once and for all.