21. Maksim
MAKSIM
Carina didn’t let herself stay upset for long after Enrique died. Or she wasn’t letting herself express any grief, bottling it in and funneling that raw, angry energy to use later.
I arrived with Adrik since I’d been out with him at the time. He came with me and demanded to know what was going on. Dean was most informative, telling us both what happened while the guards and Lev moved Enrique’s body. Carina went with them, insisting on helping with the burial.
Similar to how she’d acted at our wedding, she locked down with a distance that warned everyone to back off. Even me.
She didn’t want to be coddled.
She didn’t want to talk.
She didn’t want a hug.
I let her be, respecting that she clearly felt the necessity to be hands-on and assist with Enrique’s death. For the rest of the day, I hovered close by and supervised that she was holding up well all throughout the burial and cleanup.
It was hard to lose someone in the family.
While Enrique was someone from her Cartel and not someone within the Bratva, I wouldn’t hold a grudge against her for caring about a runner being beaten and killed.
There didn’t seem to be a direct link between Carina and the older man.
I wasn’t worried about her being particularly sentimental about his death, but I understood that she hadn’t wished for it to happen like this.
And she clarified that my assumption was right when I found her in the bathroom that night, showering and standing there under the pressure of the water as if it were soothing. I joined her, wordlessly, and waited for her to react.
“My brother got him killed,” she stated, the most she’d said to me since I came home and found her holding the old runner’s corpse.
I nodded, not in any position to argue with her.
“He is loaning out runners, he’s breaking protocol and risking the Cartel men for services and jobs that have nothing to do with the family’s interests. Loaning them out!”
I wrapped my arms around her slick, naked body, holding her close. She heaved out a deep exhale and leaned against me.
“He sent him out to assist strangers, probably for a pathetic fee, and he got him killed.”
I stroked my hand over the back of her head. I didn’t need to convince her to mold her impression of her brother. She was putting him on her shit list all on her own.
“He’s not doing as my father would have wished,” she admitted in a softer, guiltier tone.
I reared back to see her face. “Are you?”
She furrowed her brow, and I wondered if I’d found the critical conflict that was bothering her so much.
“Do you think that you are doing as your father would have wished?”
“Yes.” She swallowed hard. “It was inevitable that I’d be married off, and since my father struck the trade agreement with Dmitri and both of them saw each other as allies, yes, he would’ve been proud to see a marriage between our families.”
I saw how she truly believed that, but in the back of my mind, I wondered if she worried that she was letting the ghost of her father down by not being there with Arturo to stop him from making poor choices, decisions that weakened and hurt the integrity of the Cartel.
Before I could ask her something else—and perhaps because she intuited that if I asked her something, it would be a difficult question to address—she closed the distance between us and kissed me hard.
Pressing her hungry lips against mine in a desperate kiss, she indicated that she was fine with the dam breaking between us.
If she wanted to vent all her sadness, anger, and frustration out on me, fine.
I was here to steady her. To give her what she needed.
And for the rest of the night, that meant worshiping her body. Eating her sweet pussy until she screamed. Stuffing my dick into her until she moaned. Feeling her shatter and tremble as I pushed her to multiple orgasms between the shower and the bed, then back again.
Come morning, though, it seemed that she was ready to compartmentalize the loss of Enrique. She was prepared to be more direct in this investigation of what her brother was plotting and whether he’d continue to be a threat against the Bratva.
Over breakfast, with Adrik, Dean, and Nikolai accompanying us, I filled her in on the details of the operation I’d been planning with them.
“It’s risky,” she concluded as she finished her coffee. “Accepting a shipment directly from Bogota and bypassing his territory.”
I nodded. “But it isn’t anything that would outright break the trade agreement with him.”
I intended to challenge Arturo’s reach by ordering a shipment of assault weapons from the connections in Colombia.
While the agreement between my father and Miguel Garcia had designated the Cartel as our primary weapons source, we had an understanding with the guerilla and Cartel factions further south that we could order other, specific things from them on an as-needed basis.
“True,” Carina said. “But he’ll get word about the convoy coming through. And he’ll wonder why he wasn’t informed about your intentions ahead of time.”
Adrik shrugged. “Then he will. And his reaction will give us more of an indication of how he views working with the Bratva any longer.”
Nikolai scoffed. “His reactions to this surprise request for arms will hint to whether he’s working with Gregori.”
“It will put him on his toes,” Carina said with such a blunt, matter-of-fact confidence that made me believe she had tried to keep him on his toes often.
“This operation will be riskier just for the sake of the Colombians bringing it all themselves. They’re not the most trustworthy or reliable runners.
” She twisted her lips. “But this smuggling run will be manageable so long as the handoff site is scouted in advance for any of the federal agent presence that can happen near the city.” She pointed at the screen of her phone, where she was viewing the emailed map of the route proposal that was provided with encrypted coordinates that she had no issue deciphering.
“I assume that how we went about arranging the plans for this should work in our favor too,” Adrik said.
I nodded. “That’s what I’m angling for.” Yesterday, I pitched making this hasty request with the Colombians to throw off Arturo.
The last-minute and rushed nature of this smuggling run should surprise him.
He wouldn’t be expecting a run to happen near his territory south of the border, and we could catch him off-guard about our intentions.
My goal was that this would shake him up and make him question who he’s better off siding with—us or Gregori.
“When do we leave?” Carina asked.
Adrik shot me a look, but I ignored him. This handoff site would be the closest she’d been to her Cartel villa since we’d been married. But I wasn’t worried. Not about her homesickness luring her to stray from me.
“In an hour.”
I’d take whatever heat I had to from my brothers to let her come with me.
Carina was too much of an expert to leave at home.
Should anything go wrong on the way to the handoff or at it, she’d be just the person to offer a fix on the spot, under the pressure of a deadline and time constraint because runs were always prone to obstacles in the field.
Challenging Arturo’s reach was the first step in figuring out whether he had to be eliminated, but when we headed out into the desert less than an hour later, I wondered if I was subliminally challenging Carina, too.
This was the initial action of testing out how her brother had fallen out of our good graces, if we would see the Cartel as an enemy to eliminate and fight or if Arturo could correct his actions and redeem himself for why our weapons were lost.
Will she choose me?
Or her past?
Is she under the impression she’s failing her father and the memory of him?
Or is she willing to move forward with me?
Halfway toward the location, Carina became more alert.
I was driving, following Dean in another car. Another vehicle was behind us, the van that would be loaded up. She sat up straighter in the passenger seat and furrowed her brow.
“What’s wrong?”
“We’ve passed two scouts already.”
I frowned, pissed, annoyed, and amazed all at once. Later on, in hindsight, I bet gratitude would fit in there as well.
Two scouts?
Where?
I hadn’t noticed anything, and I wasn’t exactly new to this.
When I first started as a soldier for the Bratva, just like my brothers and cousins had, I was expected to be on the frontline for a while.
I rode along on runs and assisted in transactions.
Supervising this branch of the Bratva hadn’t changed anything. I knew what to look out for.
“That truck back near that first gas station,” she reported. “That was one of the Cartel’s.”
“Where was the other?” I asked, focusing on the road.
“That broken-down car we passed several miles ago.” She glanced at me, concern written on her gorgeous face. “That one wasn’t the Cartel’s, though.”
“Whose was it?” Knowing who was ordering lookouts would make a difference.
She shrugged. “Independent, maybe.”
In other circumstances, it seemed like a stretch for her to guess—based purely on passing them by—that someone could be placed as a lookout on a smuggling route.
But this was Carina. Miguel Garcia had practically trained her himself, according to what she’d told me.
He’d shown how she was a daddy’s girl in a working sense.
She lifted her hand and rubbed the back of her neck. “I’m not sure that’s a good sign. If the Colombians don’t trust this deal because of how suddenly you’d made the request or what.”
“Report it to Dean.” He had to be aware of the eyes on this road, and he’d relay the information to the man driving our van.
Before she finished texting, she cursed as we passed another derelict truck abandoned on the side of the highway.
It looked like a broken mess of rusted metal that had given up on another mile of driving.
I noticed her frowning at it quickly enough that I could spot what had really made her study it.
A man was lying in wait on the other side of the truck. He wasn’t down low to fix the car, but with a phone out and a scope up at his eyes.
He was watching the route.
But was it Arturo or the Colombians?
It used to be that we’d know this part of Mexico was fine for us to pass through for business. Under Miguel Garcia’s rule, we could count on a friend in this area. Now? With Arturo at the helm—and Arturo without Carina there to advise him?
“This feels like a setup.”
Carina didn’t object, not completely. “It can’t be a setup.
You initiated this. You made the request with the Colombians.
Yes, it was sudden, but still legitimate.
The surveillance on this route does seem like a setup, though.
” She caught my attention for a second, pausing in telling Dean and the others about the observations so far.
“They could be setting you up to get back from this handoff.”
“So, what, your brother’s turning the Colombians away from doing business with us now?” I demanded.
“I don’t know. I am wondering if he got word of this sudden shipment and wants to thwart it.” She cringed as she admitted it, as if this wasn’t good news to share.
“If he is…”
“Maybe he’s just trying to catch up with what’s going on adjacent to his turf.” She pointed out the windshield. “This route bisects this territory.” Looking toward the east, she tipped her chin. “That’s all Garcia territory. It could be that he’s being diligent in what’s going on.”
Or it could be that he’s trying to tease us. To remind us that things aren’t as certain with him anymore.
I clenched my jaw and hated how this former ally could be so severely interested in going against us now. “If he tries to get his hands on these guns and redirect them…”
“Then you’d have your answer. I would too.” She set her phone back down on her lap as she resumed watching out the window. “It would be a fact that he’s not interested in any show of good faith between the families anymore.”
With what Enrique said, we could speculate as much. If Arturo was up to sabotaging his shipment and compromising the handoff, then it would be evidence.
“You stay close to me,” I warned her as we neared the handoff location. The coordinates weren’t too far ahead. “You stay with me in case anyone is planning to do anything stupid.”
“I know.” She nodded, not showing a hint of that sass that she still held on to when being controlled or ordered.
“You stay right with me.”
Because I’m unwilling to risk your being taken.
I cared too much about her and she’d be leverage to use against me now.