Chapter 3 #3
“Because he’s a nigger! He’s a nigger like your madre (mom)! He doesn’t want you with a nigger, which I don’t understand because you’re a nigger yourself!” Maura yelled while groaning.
“There we go, peg leg!” Don whistled. “It’s because he’s a nigger, Solana.
The Rinaldi organization—my organization—is good for lending money.
The Rinaldi Mob is good for protecting daughters, but were not good enough for Mexican pussy?
Shits foul, Ledesma. And that”—Don pointed—“That’s gone cost ya.
I want an extra twenty percent on top of what you owe. ”
“Is that true, father? I mean… You are aware you made me with a Black woman, right?”
“I’m not a racist! I just… I didn’t want you to keep going through what you’ve gone through your entire life. I wanted… I wanted you to be accepted. To belong, Damita.”
“I’ll never belong! Not here anyway…” Solana turned to Don. “How much does he owe?”
“1,421,732,000.00 pesos. Whatever that is in USD. Oh, and the twenty percent too.”
I could see Solana trying to convert the pesos into dollars, her body still sealed to mine. “Sixty? Sixty million American dollars?”
“Eighty,” I corrected. “But the number changes by the day. Currency is unpredictable.”
Solana shifted when I spoke, as if she remembered her hands were in my grasp, before she snatched away.
“I need a fucking address. Her bitch-ass fiancée has my daughter. Or did you already know that, too, Don?”
“That’s why I’m here. I got the call from Ines about five hours ago.
Though, I gotta admit… I’m impressed by your resourcefulness to get here so quickly, and I’m not impressed easily.
I didn’t think you’d let some shit like this slide by you, though, Shio.
Hell, I’m trying to figure out how it slid by me.
You must have a baby by Invisigal. Ines hasn’t given me the address yet, though.
” Don glared up at the man who had caused so many issues with his dishonesty and bullshit.
“I’ll give you the address, Don Demise. I have no idea what Felipe has going on, Shio.
But my son is not a part of it. He’s only there so that we can try and get some insight.
It wasn’t easy getting him in. I’m risking my son’s life.
Do you think I’d conspire on anything while you have my daughter in your possession? ”
“Had. Had your daughter in my possession. You risking your son is for your benefit, not mine. Once I get what’s mine, whoever dies, dies. Whoever doesn’t, don’t. Y’all can deal with your own beef.”
This shit was too much. I don’t know why Don’s nice ass let Ledesma borrow that type of money, but knowing Don, there was some underlying shit he hadn’t divulged.
“Whatever the fuck you and Don giggle about behind closed doors can continue as long as you remove me from the fucking equation. Fuck you and your high-ass daughter.”
“High?”
“Ah, Don… You ain’t know that either? Princess here powders her fuckin’ nose! The fuck can I do with a cokehead? Fuck outta here.”
If looks could kill, Solana would have shot my ass down.
“Shio… She needs your help!” Ines rasped in a plea.
I laughed and looked at his ass like the dumb nigga he was.
“She needs fuckin’ rehab! Ain’t shit I can do for her.
All this shit was stupid to agree with from the jump.
Poor fucking planning. How the fuck I’m gone teach her how to be a wife?
I don’t have a fucking wife myself. Oh, my bad…
That was just some made-up shit… Hunh, Don?
“And you… You want me to protect her, but you don’t want her with a nigga like me?
Nah! You wanted protection, and since I’m the only nigga that doesn’t have a bitch at the crib, I was the fucking chosen one.
And stop fuckin’ saying I looked at her a certain type of way.
I’m a man. Solana ain’t shit special! I looked at her the same way I’d look at any fuckin’ pretty girl.
Do I look like a bitch-ass nigga to you?
To any of you? This ain’t Rosetta Stone!
The only thing I could teach her gullible ass is how to take long dick, but with the way you check her fuckin’ hymen every three to four business days, that shits impossible.
“Ion want Cocaine Barbie. What’s the fucking address?”
Solana took a step back, chest heaving. Ines stood, blood on his hands, leaving his wife to cry and nurse her own wound.
“My phone… It’s there.” He pointed to a table that was near Don.
Don grabbed the phone and opened it with a few swipes. My fucking head was spinning from all of this shit being brought out into the opening. No matter how Don looked at it or tried to flip it, he’d set me up.
Crossing the room in a fury, gun in hand, I placed it under Ines’ chin before he saw it coming. “You think this shit is a fuckin’ game?”
“Wh… Wh… What?” The metallic smell of blood on Ines’ hands was heavy.
“Make me fall in love with the pretty girl who belongs to another nigga… Have us two cartels go at it. With both organizations out of the way, you couldn’t do nothing but win. No debt owed. A fuckin’ clean slate.”
Don chuckled. “Awl, shit. See… That’s why you my favorite Cuppacio. I ain’t even think of that.”
I watched as he scrolled through Ines’ phone while his phone was in his other hand. Pussy has been men’s downfall for millions of years, but me—I wasn’t so easily fucking fooled. I could feel Solana boring a hole into me with her eyes.
“Shio!” she yelled after I wouldn’t look at her.
I gritted my teeth, tired of her fucking voice and her fucking smell. She’d stepped paces away, and I could still smell her scent. “Shut the fuck up, Solana!”
Sweat formed at Ines’ hairline, but he kept his composure with my gun ready to blow his head off. Swallowing, he held his hand up to silence his daughter as if I already hadn’t.
“Lesson eight, when two men are talking, don’t insert yourself. Stand… the… fuck… down,” I addressed Solana but kept my eyes fixed on her father and Don.
Lifting his chin with my gun, he held his hands up as I spoke. “You wanted us to take each other out? You trying to get out of your debt with the Rodríguez Cartel?”
“No… No!”
I hooked my hand around the trigger.
“Shio!” Don spoke quickly, tone even but urgent.
“Nigga, what?” I snapped at him, my eyes not leaving Ines.
“There’s sum’n else…”
There was always something else with Don. It wouldn’t be the fucking Rinaldi Mob if there wasn’t something else.
“The Rodríguezes, as you know, are into trafficking. What those niggas do to make their money isn’t my concern, but it is when it’s on my turf. Law enforcement came knocking, asking me if I knew anything.”
That was news to me. I tuned in, but I kept my gun on the flesh of Ine’s esophagus.
“The laws coming to me is some shit ion fuck with. As you know, we can’t afford that. I did eight years… I ain’t doing another muthafuckin’ day. So I did some digging, and the shit them cops was talking... It leads back puntas—”
“Perras, Don.” I corrected him. He was trying to call the Rodríguezes bitches in Spanish but was saying it all wrong.
“You know what the hell I’m sayin’, nigga. Anyways, them bitches hard to catch. They hadn’t come to Jagoda Bay themselves until…”
Solana and I popped out.
Don let the realization hit me before continuing.
“I have a duty to keep the Jagodians safe, and now, you do too. If anybody terrorizing my people, it’s going to be me, and I ain’t even on that type of time.
So, the war was bound to happen anyway. This ain’t a war over pussy, it’s bigger than that, Cuppacio.
“Jagoda Bay wasn’t random either. They been trafficking in Atlanta, New York, Cali, and Chicago. But it looks like the big Cuppacios were eliminated only for a knockoff El Paso brand to take over… I got the address.”
Ignoring the questions swirling around in my brain, I moistened my lips. Sniffles could be heard from Solana, but I kept my eyes on her father. “Keep your fuckin’ daughter away from me, Ines!”
“If you leave her here, Shio, they will get her. I will die to protect my daughter, but then I’ll just be dead, and she will be taken.
My debt will never be paid. You undermined him in the States; my son told me about it.
I had no idea he was taking something from you, and my son couldn’t have known because he would have told me ahead of time.
He just told me hours ago. I called Don Demise the moment I found out. ”
“What part of ‘I don’t give a fuck about your daughter’ don’t you understand?”
“Okay, she stays. She stays, they take her, and they kill her. You were able to flip my army, so that tells you that I don’t have the manpower to keep her safe. Demise, is that what you want? Not to get paid? For my entire family to die and the Rodríguezes’ take over my operation and business?”
“Papa!” Solana shrilled at his words.
“No! You need to hear this. My biggest regret is having you tied up in this life. It’s why every time Maura got pregnant with a girl, we ended the pregnancy.
I didn’t want another daughter and having to play politics.
When they take you, Solana, Felipe won’t marry you.
That’s off the table now. They will sell you, make money from you, and then they will kill you.
That’s a fact. Lo siento nena. (I’m sorry, baby girl.)”
Shifting my eyes from Ines to Solana, I gave her a once-over before zoning back in on Ines. Solana wasn’t crying, but the look on her face was of a woman who had accepted defeat.
“We keep Solana,” Don disclosed, interrupting Ines’ pleas of forgiveness.
When Ines’ eyes fell as if he was questioning why I still held the gun to him, I raised the gun and hit his ass across the head. Maura shrieked like she wasn’t bleeding to death as I grabbed him by his shirt and held him back upright.
I kissed my teeth. “Well, you take her to the big house. I’m done with her. Y’all think I’m gone keep entertaining a cokehead?”
“She was stressed here. It was harmless. I had a handle on it!” Ines yelled out.
“She’s a fuckin’ cokehead! A young, fuckin’ cokehead that loves to party and sleep all fuckin’ day! How the fuck you got a handle on some shit, and she was with me still doing the shit?”
“I didn’t think she’d be able to get drugs in your care!”
“Nigga, I sell drugs! She ain’t get the shit from me, but how the fuck did you think it was smart, handing your daughter to a fuckin’ coke dealer? The fuckin’ coke dealer of Jagoda Bay.”
“I wasn’t thinking,” Ines said with blood now staining his teeth and dripping from his nose. “I just needed her safe.”
“Ines, you didn’t tell me she was a young Whitney. That’s an extra ten percent,” Don said nonchalantly, adding to the Ledesma debt.
We’d been here too long, and this wasn’t what I’d come here for. I was aggravated to the max, or so I thought, before Don opened his mouth and said, “She stays… With you. Trust me on this, Shio.”
Pushing Ines, he stumbled over the sofa and landed beside his wife. Solana was rubbing her arm up and down, heels still in hand, her expression blank.
“You’re not mine. You will never fucking be mine. Know that. Understand that. Plant that shit in your fucking brain, Solana.” I snarled toward her. “You got one hundred and eighty seconds to put some shoes on and meet me at the fucking car.”
Blinking, Solana nodded and rushed past me. Before she could get out of reach, I grabbed her arm, halting her steps.
“You’re going to wish like hell you stayed here with your people, Solana. I ain’t the nigga you ever want to play with, and you most definitely fuckin’ played. Hurry the fuck up.”
Letting her go, I watched as she ran across the courtyard, ass spilling out of her dress.
Not sparing Ines and his whore of a wife another glance, I headed out the same way I came in, leaving Don there too.
Once I was seated in the rental, my cell phone in the cup holder beside Solana’s started buzzing.
Don had sent me the address, and it was forty minutes away.
Once Solana made it to the car, I was aiming to make it in ten.
It still baffled me how they knew I had a kid before I even knew myself.
Honestly, that’s what fucks with me the most. I pride myself on thinking through all possible scenarios, but in just forty-eight hours, I had been blindsided by four unexpected twists: The Rodríguezes showing up at the club, Don dropping us in the middle of Egypt, Solana’s drug problem, and me being an absent father.
Then, there was the feeling brewing within me that Ines was cooking some shit up.
Don could believe he was just this helpless motherfucker, but I didn’t.
Things were spiraling, and I didn’t handle chaos well. If things couldn’t be handled with planning and precision, then I typically resorted to killing whatever that thing was—people included.