2. Carina
CARINA
Dusting red dirt off my knees sent a plume of rusty filth into the air. It didn’t matter how dirty my black jeans were. All that I cared about was that the vans and trucks heading into the States would deliver as expected.
“How come they don’t have the new trackers on them?
” I asked the runner who stood nearest me in this open area of the Cartel’s compound.
Behind me, the lavish residence my parents bought offered some shade.
This far from the grounds and the ornamental landscaping that surrounded the Spanish-style villa, we were under the mercy of the Mexican sun.
Hot and unrelenting, it beat down on my back.
Yet, the discomfort would only be temporary.
Enrique, a runner my father personally selected before he was gunned down near the border, lifted his head and faced me.
“Se?orita Carina,” he chided gently with a kind smile as he stood as well from checking under this specific truck. “You don’t need to be out here and getting all filthy.”
None of the Cartel men would ever dare to scold me or speak to me with any authority.
Or they damn well shouldn’t. It didn’t matter that half of the Cartel had known me since I was a young girl, standing to my father’s knee.
They’d all witnessed me growing up over the years.
But they also had watched me disabuse the notion that I should look or act like a typical Cartel princess.
In a white top, black pants, and boots that were more for practical purposes of hiking out from the property than to look sexy or cute, I was dressed like I usually did.
Dressed down, in other words, because there was no way on earth that I’d let myself be excluded from personally touring this site and making sure our runners were equipped to succeed.
Enrique wasn’t as bad as the others. Younger recruits would scorn me for being present at all.
New soldiers and runners would smirk and show disdainful amusement at the fact that I didn’t stay inside and worry about being pretty.
But the older ones, the ones who’d known my father when he was the leader of the Garcia Cartel, they tolerated me well enough.
“I will decide where I need to be,” I replied, leaving out any bite in my tone since he wasn’t ridiculing me or being nasty about my quality check here. If anything, he was likely chastising me only because he feared what would happen if he didn’t.
This lot where the runners prepped their vehicles for a smuggling run wasn’t public property. This wasn’t an area where anyone on the Cartel compound could leisurely linger and stroll around.
That excluded me, though, and I wasn’t letting my question go unanswered. “Why are the new trackers not on these vehicles?” I asked again.
He shrugged then rubbed the back of his sunburned and leathery-tanned neck. “I’m not sure, Se?orita. I was told to leave them off.”
I arched one brow, curious and annoyed. Those new trackers would enable us to ensure no vehicles were lost on the run. I’d just bought them and handed them to my brother, Arturo, to have them installed. “Who told you to leave them off?”
“The boss,” he answered, lowering his gaze.
“My brother?” I huffed, shaking my head.
“No. That can’t be right.” Arturo had asked me to investigate which tracker could go undetected by the border patrol agents.
After a few issues last year, he’d finally come to the conclusion that we needed something to track the vehicles when they were lost or captured.
It was nothing more than insurance for our equipment, a tracking system for us alone, to better inventory what was where.
While we didn’t run any legal kind of business here, this still was our business.
Running drugs was how we stayed a true power in the region, and it only made sense to better our operations however we could.
Hence the trackers I’d researched and purchased.
Enrique shrugged. I’d get nowhere fast asking him to explain my brother’s choices.
Ever since our parents were gunned down and Arturo took over as the main boss ten years ago, he’d wavered between terrible and impulsive choices and making level-headed decisions.
I was often the variable that could sway him from his rash decisions.
Unafraid to argue with my brother and never shy about pointing out why he wasn’t thinking straight, I was the principal check and balance on the Cartel leadership.
Except right now. I thanked Enrique for his explanation and left the runner where he was, checking the tire pressure. Then, I strode for the tall figure of my brother, my only sibling.
And sometimes, the stupidest idiot on the face of the world.
Anticipating an aggravating argument, I heaved out a deep sigh and approached him. The driver who was speaking with him nodded at me in deference before he turned away.
“What?” Arturo looked twice his age with this moustache and beard, but I supposed he did that on purpose. Still holding on to too much of a baby face, he likely had to rely on his facial hair to look distinguished and older than he actually was. I knew better.
I furrowed my brow at him checking his phone instead of facing me. Lines bracketed his eyes and formed a V over his nose. His left foot tapped quickly, sending up a series of little dust balls from the disturbance of his boot.
He was distracted.
Or peeved.
Both were often, but I could read this man like a book.
“What’s bothering you?”
He snapped his testy gaze up to me. “Right now, you.”
Used to him putting me down, I let his attitude roll off my back. I’d spent my whole life fighting with him, a curse I was subjected to as his younger sister.
“No. Something else.”
“What, am I supposed to take my concerns to you before sorting shit out on my own?” He rolled his eyes and shoved his phone into his back pocket.
“Considering how poorly you ever sort out anything on your own, I guess so.” I crossed my arms. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Nothing’s fucking wrong,” he retorted, too terse for it to be remotely true. Something clearly was getting him on edge. And if something was going down, I’d be the one to inevitably advise him on how to clean it up.
“That’s not true.”
He narrowed his eyes on me. “You calling me—your boss—a liar?”
I didn’t react to him puffing his chest out. “Yes. I’m calling my brother a liar. Something is wrong.” I pointed in the direction of the other vehicles. “These aren’t ready to go yet.”
“The fuck they aren’t,” he argued, sneering as he scanned the trucks and vans.
“They don’t have the new trackers installed on them yet.”
He shrugged. “Yeah.”
“Yeah?” I mocked, trying not to let my temper get the best of me. Once he saw how pissed I was, he’d see it as a victory. Keeping my cool with this idiot was my lifelong war to fight. “They’re supposed to be installed before they go on the road. You know this.”
“In theory, we should be tracking them.”
I growled and closed my eyes. “No. There’s no theory about it.”
“In theory, if they were going on the usual route, they would be fitted with the trackers.”
I frowned, watching him closely. “What? What do you mean? They are going on the usual route to deliver to the Vegas clients.”
“No, they’re not,” he replied as if it were a horrible pain and cost on his patience to point out that difference to me.
“Since when?” I asked, following him as he walked toward another vehicle where runners were loading crates of weapons. “Since when, Arturo?”
“Since I said so.”
Another growl burned up my throat. I kept it locked in, bottling my annoyance at his attitude. At his power-tripping mentality. Since the day our father bled out at the border, Arturo had taken it upon himself to think he was a god or something immortal and unstoppable.
“How about for once in your life, you mind your own fucking business, Carina?”
I smirked, not letting him walk away from me yet. “If I minded my own business and didn’t help you after you fuck up, this Cartel would’ve been ended years ago.”
He never missed a chance to remind me that he was the leader, not me. He never passed up on the opportunity to rub it in my face that he was the one who should determine everything, not me.
Usually, I could tolerate his belittling treatment.
But each and every time, I was peeved and bitter after the fact.
If I were just a Cartel princess who cared about looking good and lounging by the pool, fine.
Then he’d have an excuse to bemoan my opinions.
That wasn’t the case, though. Not at all.
I pulled my weight around here. I always had. My father had never sent me away when I wanted to tag along and listen to him carry on with business. My mother had never tried to shelter me when I asked to help her with any functional part of the Cartel’s business.
“This Cartel is thriving because of me,” he snarled.
Again, I didn’t cower or slink away. I, more than anyone else, knew he was all bark and no bite.
“Because I am the boss, Carina. Not you. I know?—”
“Some days, you know nothing at all,” I finished for him.
He stopped short, narrowing his eyes at me as he put his hands on his hips. Glowering at me like this, he tried and failed to intimidate me. I wasn’t sure he ever could prove his superiority to me.
Not when I was the one who wrapped a tourniquet around our mother’s leg after a snake bit her when we were kids and Arturo panicked and let me drag her to safety.
Not when I was the one who alerted our father to trespassers coming into the compound late one night and Arturo hid under his bed and cried.
Not when I was the one who could take a gun and execute a traitor who’d almost gotten us all caught at the border and Arturo choked and couldn’t pull the trigger.
Countless examples came to mind when I’d done the hard thing or had to find the courage to be brave when he'd failed to. Some people were meant to be the leaders and bosses, and he wasn’t one of them.
“Do I need to remind you—again—that I’m the one who studied smuggling routes under Father’s eye? Do I need to point out all the times that my input has saved our asses?”
How dare you insinuate that I can’t make any decisions around here?
I couldn’t make a single decision with the insufferably patriarchal confines of this organization. But he could at least do himself the service of listening to me!
“Do I need to remind you again to mind your own fucking business?” he replied before stalking off again.
I bit my lip and shook my head, too incensed to let him have the last word like that. “This Cartel is my business too.” I was just as much of a Garcia as he was.
“You have no authority, Carina. To question me?—”
“Oh, like I don’t already need to constantly do that.”
He gritted his teeth, walking faster. “You have no authority to challenge me.”
“If I don’t, who would?” Going over these points would get us nowhere. This was far from the first time that I raised an issue with his plans. I only had to allow the curiosity as to why he was so determined to brush me off this time.
“You are nothing but my sister. My tagalong younger sister. And you’d be wise to keep your mouth shut.”
The rebuke stung. His words were poisonous barbs that sliced my soul because of how hard I wanted to combat his message.
I was just as good as him to lead this Cartel. I’d paid more attention to our parents when they were alive. Yet he had to be the new leader, all because he was the son? It was bullshit!
As I stood there and he stalked off, leaving me in his wake, I fumed and tried not to lash out or make too much of a scene. More than anything, my brother hated to look like he was wrong when I was right. Causing a spectacle in front of the men would provoke him to want to fight back harder.
Don’t push it. Don’t push it right now.
Shaking my head and watching him stalk off, I decided to let it go. Only for the moment.
Later, I would demand to know why he was acting so defensively. Why he was bothered and insisting on leaving the trackers off these vehicles.
Hotheaded and too prone to impulsive decisions and whims, my brother was ill fit to lead any company or any family, legal or not.
Let him fuck up and come crawling back to you for help.
I let out another rush of an exhale, steaming with the irritation only he could make me feel.
If he messed something up, he’d eventually admit his “mistake” and come ask me for assistance.
That was just the way he wanted this to work.
With me constantly advising how to clean up his messes—ones I tried my best to avoid in the first place.
Huffing once more, too mad to linger out here and wonder what he was planning, I stormed off to get away from the sun’s unforgiving heat.
Are all men as stupid as he is?
Some days, I seriously had to wonder.