Chapter 32
Chapter Thirty-Two
RAFE
I’m the only one to disembark the plane, and I’m immediately overcome with nostalgia when I lay eyes on my home country. That nostalgia quickly fades when the sweltering sun beats down on me. The air smells just as I remember when I was a child, if dry and dusty could be considered smells. It’s already pushing close to a hundred degrees Fahrenheit, something I don’t miss not one fucking bit. Between the intense sun and the heat radiating up from the black asphalt, it feels like I’m being cooked in an oven.
My father’s compound is located near the town of Monclova, the “steel capital” of Mexico, or so it’s been coined. My childhood growing up here holds few good memories. I never thought I’d ever come back. Luckily, we’ll be leaving very soon.
Without sunglasses, I’m forced to shield my eyes with a hand as I look around at nothing. The private airstrip we landed on is out in the middle of nowhere. My uncle is standing next to a blacked-out Hummer parked at the side of the narrow runway. Six men carrying semi-automatics and wearing Sinner’s Fury cuts surround the large SUV.
Luis Echeverria is the oldest brother of my mother, and the bastard son of Dirk “Sinner” Carmichael, the president of the San Salamacha Sinner’s Fury motorcycle club. The Sinners, along with several other MCs, run drugs across the border for various cartels and gangs. One of Dirk’s side pieces he would fuck on the regular while passing through was my grandmother. There was no denying my mother and Luis were his kids because they got his blue eyes. So did I. When I was old enough to understand the significance of that particular genetic trait, it made me wonder about Alejandro. He has dark brown eyes. Or he did.
Luis flicks a finger at one of the men wearing a prospect patch on the back of his cut, then slowly heads my way. He looks exactly the same as the last time I saw him a decade ago. Tall like me, broad-shouldered and thick-muscled. His hair is peppered with gray, as is his beard. Wrinkles crease his face, unlike my father, who has tried to hold back the natural aging process with plastic surgery and collagen injections.
I meet Luis halfway.
Smiling broadly, he refrains from embracing me in a familial hug. Eyes are watching us from the Hummer.
Speaking in Spanish, he says, “You’ve grown into a man, Rafael. No longer a little boy.” He steps back and looks me over.
“And you look just the same,” I reply.
He laughs at that and pats his stomach. “With old age comes a wider girth. Not that I’m complaining. Carmella’s cooking is too good.”
“Carmella?” I ask, not knowing who she is.
“Wife number three.”
“Ah.” I know better than to ask what happened to wife number two. I barely remember wife number one. Like my mother, she died of a drug overdose when I was little.
“Your old man is frothing at the mouth to have you back.” He spits on the ground, but it evaporates within seconds.
There’s no love lost between Luis and Julio. They used to be friends once upon a time. But that all ended when my mother died.
I recall our phone call days ago when I reached out to him, feeling like I had no other choice because the guys hadn’t been able to find Andie. If I’d only waited five more minutes, that call would’ve never happened because Andie was able to escape Alejandro and had stumbled her beaten body into the lobby of Falcon Tower. By then, it was too late. My promise to my uncle was already set in stone.
Jerking my chin at the Hummer, I ask, “Does he suspect anything?”
Luis stifles his laughter but not his calculating toothy grin. “Not a damn thing, the stupid cunt. Alejandro?” he asks about my brother.
“It’s done,” I reply emotionlessly.
He strokes his beard a few times. The silver rings adorning his fingers glint in the oppressive sunshine. His skin is much darker than mine, attesting to the amount of time he rides his hog every day.
“You sure you want to do this? Because once it’s done, there’s no going back,” Luis says, scrutinizing me intensely.
Fuck. I scrape a hand over my face and exhale loudly. Fuck. Fuck! Andie will never truly be safe until both Alejandro and my father are dead.
Luis has been waiting for a chance to take my father down but hasn’t been able to make a move against him because the cartel is much more powerful than the MC and has many more friends in low places. I’m about to hand my uncle his wish on a silver platter.
“Yeah, I’m sure.”
Luis flicks a hand, and the man next to the back passenger door of the Hummer opens it.
There always comes a time in a man’s life when he makes a choice of the type of man he will be. It doesn’t matter the environment he grew up in, the parents he had, the friends, the education—whether it was book-learned in a school or lessons learned on the streets. It doesn’t matter the religion or the god he believes in, or whether he is rich or poor. When the time comes to choose which path in life to take, he will have to make a choice. To walk the path of angels or delve into the depths with the devil.
And staring into the eyes of my father for the first time in almost a decade, I realize that I made my choice when I watched my mother die, and I ran away from home. I made a choice when I first picked up a gun and killed a man. I made a choice when I first laid eyes on Andie and promised her my heart and my love. And now it’s time for me to be that man; the one who walks in the footsteps of my namesake. Except, instead of the path of light that the Archangel Rafael adhered to, I’m one of the fallen.
Luis takes a few steps back when Julio approaches.
“Rafael,” my father says, looking polished in his thousand-dollar suit.
Due to the copious amounts of plastic surgery, he looks like he’s made of wax, like one of those creepy as fuck figures in a museum. I wouldn’t be surprised if he started melting right before my eyes. It’s that fucking hot.
His gaze rakes over me, searching for something, and I meet it with a blank expression that Jax would be proud of. I refuse to appear weak in front of this man.
“I forget how much you look like your mother.”
I hold in my fuck you , knowing this entire charade will be over soon. Uncle Luis schools his features quickly enough, but not before I see the fleeting rage pass over his face at the mention of his sister.
Julio reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out a white linen handkerchief, using it to dab across his brow line where sweat has gathered. His black eyes drift behind me where the plane is taxied.
“Where’s Ale?” he asks Luis.
“Fucking his whore.” The lie flows out of my uncle like a leaky hole in a dam.
The mere thought of Alejandro fucking Andie makes me want to vomit. I curl my fists, putting a leash on the immense urge to grab Luis’s gun and shoot my father where he stands. Luis was right. My father hasn’t a damn clue what’s actually going on. He really is a stupid cunt.
Julio smirks. “He can play with the Rossi bitch when we get back to the compound.”
When he starts to walk toward the plane, I stop him by saying, “The only bitch I see here is you. Heard Alejandro pushed you out, and you didn’t put up much of a fight.”
My cheek stings when my father backhands me, but I was prepared for it. I stand there and take every hit he gives.
“You know nothing, boy.” Another backhand. “You thought Rossi could protect you from me?” Another slap. “And then you go and hide behind Levine’s skirts instead of coming home where you belong.”
When he finishes, he’s breathing heavily and sweating profusely. It’s almost over .
The humid, soupy air becomes electric, and the fine hairs on my neck and arms raise. I feel her presence before I see her. Andie comes to stand beside me, her face a mask of stolid beauty, her long hair flowing over her shoulders like spun gold. A small red rose is tucked behind her ear that matches the color of the dress she’s wearing.
I do a slight double take because she wasn’t wearing that when we landed. And where in the hell did she get the rose?
She looks up at me and sees the handprints on both my cheeks, and a fire lights behind her violet gaze.
My father’s eyes, on the other hand, fill with lust at the sight of her. “ Muy hermosa .” He switches to English. “Come, let me have a look,” he tells her, signaling her with a hand gesture to come closer.
It takes all of my self-control not to punch him in his smug, victorious face. It’s almost over .
“I can see why Ale was obsessed with having you,” he says. He leers at her, taking in every gorgeous inch of her curves. He turns to speak to Luis. “We will put her to good use, sí ? The Rossi girl?—”
“Actually,” Andie says, cutting him off, her red-handled knife suddenly appearing in her hand.
My father never sees my beautiful ángel de la muerte coming. She slits his throat open in one clean line. Her smile grows wide when he clutches at his neck, mouth agape in utter disbelief.
“My name is Andie Levine , motherfucker.”
Julio stumbles back, mouth open but no sound coming out, blood percolating in his throat like a pot of water coming to boil.
Luis and the other armed men circle around us. My father isn’t leaving here alive or in one piece. I can see the instant he finally realizes what’s going on, but that realization comes too late.
Andie hands me her knife.
“Just so you know,” I tell him. “Alejandro is dead. He died on his knees, screaming like a weak little bitch.”
I throw a sealed sandwich bag that contains the eye I cut out of my brother at his feet.
“An eye for an eye,” I tell my father, right before I grab his head and do the same thing to him.
My father’s death is played out on a shitty airstrip in the middle of an arid landscape, like a scene from a dystopian Shakespearean play.
As I watch the men in Sinners cuts bag up the dismembered pieces of the man whose DNA I carry, Luis steps in front of me, hand outstretched and a grin pulled across his face behind his beard. My blood-soaked hand takes his, and we shake.
“Your mother would be proud, mi sobrino . Or should I call you jefe ?” Luis smirks like an asshole, and a wide grin stretches under his thick beard.
My chuckle is devoid of humor. “Let’s not.”
My reign as the head of the Ortiz cartel is going to be very short-lived. I sure as fuck don’t want the position. I’m going to burn the Ortiz compound down to ashes. If the Sinner’s Fury MC wants to pick up the leftover mangled dregs of the drug business, they’re more than welcome, but I doubt Luis would be interested.
Luis raises Andie’s hand—the one she slit Julio’s throat with—to his lips. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Andie. I look forward to doing business with the Levines.”
She gives him one of her genuine smiles, and I swear to God, his breath hitches. I snatch her hand back, and he laughs. The guy is already on wife number three. He doesn’t need to make a play for a fourth. And definitely not with my woman.
“Likewise. I’ll have Pearson contact you soon,” she replies.
Andie has been quietly standing beside me. Just her presence is enough of a balm to calm my inner chaos. I pluck the rose from her hair and twirl it between my fingers.
“Ready to go home?”
Her smile is brilliant and beautiful. “Absolutely.”
“Jax!” I shout, my voice carrying over the tarmac.
He and the guys have been waiting inside the plane the entire time.
“What?” he yells, coming to the open cabin entry door, wearing only a loose pair of jeans that hang low. I’m about to ask him what happened to his shirt but decide to let it go.
Andie notices, however, and her low, lusty hum has my dick perking up. Once we get airborne again, we can initiate her into the mile high club.
I swirl my finger in the air. “Send in the drones,” I tell him.
Even from here, I can see the maniacal glint in his eyes behind his glasses.
“Fuck, yeah!”
Andie came up with the idea of equipping explosives to drones and has been eager to see her idea come to fruition.
Minutes later, as the plane rises in altitude, we watch from one of the small windows as smoke plumes and hot licks of red and orange flames engulf my childhood home below.