Chapter 12 – Alejandro #3
“That better not happen. And if you’d done as you were told like a good girl and not made yourself come while I was on the phone to my associate, I’d have given you your panties back. But you didn’t. So they’re mine now.”
“You’re the devil,” she hisses as she grabs my t-shirt from the floor and slips that on instead.
“You’d better believe it.”
It is another two hours before I’m finally dressed and ready to go to the hotel.
I fucked Alana in the shower and then again in our bed, promising her that I’d make more time for her as soon as work calmed down—for me, that means as soon as this shit with the Ortega firm is over with.
They’re becoming increasingly annoying, and I’m running out of the very small amount of patience I had.
We co-exist with a lot of other organizations, all smaller than us, some even on friendly terms. But all of them operate on the understanding that we are in charge, that they exist only because we allow them to. The Ortegas seem to have forgotten that rule, and I’m going to have to remind them.
They’ve been making small, stupid moves, trying to get us in trouble with the licensing board and sending their goons in to start fights in our clubs and hotel bars.
Nothing that we haven’t stamped out immediately, but it makes me wonder if they’re just distracting us while they get ready to make their big move.
Making us look at the left hand while the right hand screws us over.
I’ve always excelled at this side of the business, but lately…
well I enjoy the actual business side of things more than the bloodshed.
Depending on whose blood I’m shedding, of course.
If it had been Blake Fielding’s, I’d have been overjoyed.
Still, none of this is new to me. I might run a legitimate business, have political connections, and regularly lunch with the mayor, but I’m no innocent.
My family made sure I served my time, did my apprenticeship in all aspects of the organization.
Between the ages of eighteen to twenty-three, I worked with my uncles as the family enforcer, and while I was good at it, my father and I both knew my head for business was more useful than my aptitude for violence.
We have an army of guys who can dole out beatings and punishments, but there is only really me and my father who can see the bigger picture, see how all the moving parts fit together.
Have any kind of vision for the future. That’s when he made me the CEO of the Montoya Corporation, and I became somewhat more legitimate, at least on the surface.
I still have to use brute force and inspire outright fear when the occasion calls for it, but at least half of the time, I get to solve problems with my head instead of my fists.
I feel like that’s slipping away from me now, though.
I’m getting dragged more and more into the murkier side of our business.
My family’s money was originally made in the arms and drugs trade.
Both are businesses that are dangerous and unpredictable, and I hope to be rid of them entirely one day.
The Montoya Corporation is a billion-dollar company with diverse interests all around the world.
We have employees, pay taxes, file returns.
We are respectable and successful. Financially, we no longer even need the trade from our illegitimate earnings, but that is the side of the business that is the hardest to break free from.
And it’s the side which the Ortegas are trying to get a piece of.
I can’t let them do that, because it would make us look weak.
And those who look weak are always the most in danger.
It’s only a matter of time before I need to consider a preemptive strike, nipping this problem in the bud. Not so long ago I wouldn’t have thought twice about committing to that, about throwing us into a turf war that I was confident we would win.
Now? Now I have Alana to think of, and that makes me question things more thoroughly.
I used to feel like I was invincible, but perhaps I was just reckless.
Maybe I didn’t care about dying, because deep down, I had nothing to live for.
Now she’s here, filling my life with her kindness, her intelligence, her radiant beauty.
Her hot, wet pussy. She is my world, and I know I’m hers.
Putting her at risk is unthinkable, and putting myself unnecessarily in harm’s way also now feels foolish.
For the first time, I have something to lose.
I remember a conversation I had with my father when he realized that my relationship with Alana wasn’t the safe marriage of convenience we’d planned it to be. He told me that love was dangerous, because a man with something to lose always has a weak spot—and there is no doubt that she is mine.
But she also makes me stronger, prouder. Makes me want to be a better man, to create a better world for her. If that means getting my hands dirty and eliminating the risk that the Ortegas currently pose, then so be it. I can wash my hands later.