by Bethany-Kris
“I don’t care what he’ll be!”
She flinched.
Except, the high level of his shout made their daughter wake up in the room she used across the hall from theirs inside the mansion.
Maria’s tired cries were muffled, but Valeria still heard them. She fixed her sleep clothes, but Jorge didn’t remove his hand from her body.
“She’s six,” he snapped, “and is fine—she’ll go back to sleep on her own.”
“It’s a new place, and it might scare her.”
“You can’t baby her forever.”
No, but she would right now.
Maria needed her.
And she needed to get away from Jorge.
Win-win.
“Please,” Valeria whispered, “I’ll just get her back to sleep, and then I’ll come to bed.”
Jorge sighed, and rolled his eyes, letting his hand drop from her throat as he took a step back. “Fine. Whatever. Go.”
She didn’t need to be told again. Hopefully, by the time she got back to bed, he would be passed out. Sometimes the universe worked for her, and other times, it only seemed to want to laugh in her face.
Valeria didn’t glance back as she exited the bedroom and crossed the hall. Once she was inside her daughter’s room, Maria reached for her from the sheets that were nothing like the ones she had loved so much in her pink bed back in New York.
Nothing here was like New York.
“Mamá,” Maria breathed, “someone yelled.”
“It’s okay,” Valeria murmured, slipping under the blankets with her daughter, and holding her tight. “Mamá’s here, bebita. I love you.”
4.
Chris checked the watch on his wrist as the jet jumped when the landing gear first touched down on the ground. He found that was the most nerve-wracking part of flying. He didn’t mind takeoff, or even being in the air. It was landing that always had his heart jumping into his damn throat.
Their flight was on time, according to his watch. Across the aisle from his seat on the private jet, his father cleared his throat as the pressure in the cabin became bearable, and their voices didn’t sound like an echo to each other’s ears.
“Not anymore settled about this, are you?” Gian asked.
In a tailored suit, unbothered and relaxed sitting in the white leather seat, Gian smirked in Chris’s direction, like he had known the whole time what was running through his quiet son’s mind. His father always seemed to have a good grasp on the complexities of his boys although Chris never understood why.
Sometimes, it felt like a curse.
Others, a gift.
“I don’t see the point in you coming along for this,” Chris replied, shrugging his broad shoulders under his own suit. He was thinking his choice of attire would be a mistake once they stepped off the temperature-controlled jet into the dry, Mexican heat. Not that it mattered. Guzzis were who they were, suits and class included, even when the weather called for board shorts and a dip in the ocean. “All I’m saying, is I can do this all without you needing to come along, Dad.”
Gian nodded and turned to stare out the port window as the plane slowed. Soon, it would taxi into the private gate at the international airport. According to their contact, guards would greet them although they arrived at a public airport.
It showed how far the cartel reached, and Chris refused to allow that thought very far from his mind. When people forgot who they were dealing with, they underestimated them at the same time.
He wouldn’t be doing that.
Not here.
They couldn’t afford to.
“It is a show of faith for me to be here for this first meeting,” Gian said, never turning back to give Chris his full attention as he spoke, “and you know that. In this life, this business, it is better when bosses sit down for a proper face to face, and then we go from there. It extends a friendly hand, and people are less likely to question our intentions. That is what we need here, isn’t it?”
Gian made all good points.
He wasn’t wrong.
Still, Chris watched his father from the side, and all he thought about was his mother back home in Canada. They were all at a rather comfortable place with la famiglia, and the family business. It had been a good while since the mafia touched their family violently, and Chris didn’t want this cartel job for The League to be the first thing in a while to remind their family—but especially not his mother—that this was dangerous.
They knew.
All of them did.
It didn’t change the fact that, sometimes, people became relaxed in their positions, and believed nothing would touch them in their lives.
Cartels were notoriously vicious, and risky, when doing business with them. A true statement whether someone learned it firsthand, or not. That, more than anything else, was what kept Chris on edge since they were using business as a front to get their in to the goddamn cartel here. Not only was he looking for a woman he wasn’t sure wanted to leave Mexico, but he also had to consider his father’s safety.
Like fuck would he leave here needing to tell his mother that her husband wouldn’t be coming home to her alive. That just would not happen. Not if Chris had any say.
Chris could have done this job alone without his father, but yes, it would be easier with his presence here to defer to until the leaders of the cartel trusted him. But as soon as that fucking happened, Gian was gone.
No questions asked.
“Did you call Ma?” Chris asked.
Gian’s lips lifted with a small smile. “I will call her once we’re off the plane, Chris.”
“You should call her now.”
“Stop worrying. You sound like her.”
Right.
Chris forced himself to shut up and let his annoying thoughts stay tucked away in his mind. There were a lot of reasons he could think of for why he shouldn’t have taken this job, but it was too late to back out now.
The phone in Chris’s pocket buzzed, and he took it out to check the text rolling across the screen. A simple message from his twin, but it calmed his overacting nerves. Corrado’s text only read, Call me if you need anything.
Chris would keep that in mind.
He might need it.
The private jet took a good twenty minutes to taxi to the correct gate where they could finally unbuckle and grab their bags from the cupboards at the front. Chris grabbed his own, a larger bag, than his father’s overnight travel duffle. If all went right, the overnight bag was all his father would need here, because Gian wouldn’t be staying more than a day or two.
They had to play their cards right.
“Merci,” Gian thanked the pilot at the front in French.
It was a toss-up with his father, and even his twin, or their oldest sibling, Marcus, which language they might use to talk. Chris was handy with English and Italian, but he had never picked up on French, for whatever reason.
Chris exited the plane after his father, giving the pilot a nod as he passed. He didn’t know where the flight attendant had disappeared to, but he didn’t care, either. At the bottom of the stairs, assault rifles in hand, stood three men dressed in matching outfits of denim jeans, and black shirts.
“Ah, good,” Gian muttered under his breath, “the cartel followed through.”
Chris swallowed the discomfort in his throat. “Good.”
It was unnerving when someone realized just how much control the cartels in Mexico— there were two major organizations that had long been in battle against one another—had in the country. From the government, to small businesses in the towns they used to make or smuggle their drugs through, it didn’t matter.
Blackmail.
Bribery.
Violence.
Cartels were not a game.
And here the Guzzis were, ready to play one with them.
Fun.
“Gian Guzzi?” the man standing ahead of the other two asked, his accent heavy.
“That would be me,”
Chris’s father returned.
The man nodded. “We’ll walk you through customs, sir, and take you to the drop.”
The drop.
Huh.
They weren’t even calling it a meeting today.
Good to know.
• • •
“This is not the compound.”
Chris’s declaration to his father was quiet and said before the guards who had already stepped out of the vehicle opened the back door for them to exit the car. He had to say it while he had the chance because he wasn’t sure what to expect here. Sure, the Lòpez cartel had not offered many details about where or how they would do business, but that didn’t mean he was comfortable going in blind, either.
“Let’s get the pleasantries out of the way first,” Gian said quickly, “and then we’ll worry about what is going on here, oui?”
Chris sighed. “All right.”
He only knew the yellow brick mansion with the terracotta roof, surrounded by a large stone fence where armed guards stood staring down at their vehicle, wasn’t the Lòpezs’ infamous compound because of The League. The aerial views The League had provided of the cartel’s home base was neither in the middle of a busy city, nor were there any mansions on the property. Small homes, stables, barns, and a few other buildings out in the middle of nowhere, but not this.
“Step out,” one of the guard’s said when he came to open the rear passenger door for Gian and Chris. “And they will open the gate for you to enter the grounds.”
Chris had a million and one questions to ask, but he stayed silent because this wasn’t his show. His father was the one who had come here as the front man, so to speak. He was the boss, the one wanting to make a deal with the cartel, and Chris was nothing more than muscle at his father’s side.
For now.
He needed to keep the act up.
The guard hadn’t lied.
Chris stared up at the almost white-blue sky, the sun so bright, it still hurt his eyes behind the dark sunglasses he wore. His distraction only lasted as long as it took for the creak of metal to bring his attention back to what was important.
The guards stepped aside as the gate opened.
Gian moved forward first, but Chris was fast to follow behind. Just beyond the wrought metal gate, a pathway made of red stone and lined with towering trees led them toward the front of the mansion. Waiting on white marble steps were two men, both of whom Chris recognized, although he kept that to himself.
Still needed to keep up that act ...
“Gian Guzzi, and ... son, correct?” the man standing just beyond the other asked.
Jorge Lòpez.
In his head, Chris did a mental inventory of the man and also what he knew about him. From the yellow silk dress shirt he wore, with the sleeves rolled up around his elbows, to the black slacks that looked pressed from an iron. This was the man they forced Valeria to marry, according to the information they had, and he was also the oldest son of the cartel’s former leader.
Well, that’s what they assumed. No one had a clue if the former leader was a former, but from all public appearances, Jorge ran the show now.
“Chris,” Gian said, “my son’s name is Chris. We were not sure what to expect today, but this home is a lovely spot for a meeting.”
“Our father’s,” the man just behind Jorge stated.
Samuel.
Second son of the Lòpez leader. Brother to Jorge. Chris wouldn’t concern himself with Samuel, except for the fact he was a Lòpez, and there. Part of it all and possibly keeping Valeria hidden somewhere.
Or was she even hidden here?
Yet to be determined.
Gian continued his greetings with the Lòpez brothers while Chris took in his surroundings. He blamed that on his training at The League, and not so much the fact he was a made man. They had taught him to find what he needed to deal with first. To take in his surroundings, and everything else, too.
Then, there were as little surprises as possible. Although, should a surprise come up on him, he would handle that knowing everything else around him. It was all in the details, really.
“And,” Gian said to Chris’s left as he noted the white trim around the windows of the mansion, “once we hammer down the main details, I will take a step back because I have business to attend to at home. I can’t leave it for long.”
“Which is where your son will come in, sí?” Jorge asked, his accent thickening his English.
“Chris will take over whatever you need here for my side of things. I intend to involve myself in all of this, even if it is from afar and I want to understand how things will work, where everything will be held, and how you intend to smuggle the cocaine over. I hope you understand, but I am a details man.”
Jorge chuckled. “As am I, Gian.”
“Oui, well, when I am guaranteeing you the ability to supply to all of Canada through my organization and contacts, I am sure you won’t be uncomfortable with allowing us a stay here, and time to understand your business, and process, Mr. Lòpez.”
“We’ll make it work,” Samuel muttered, “although we’re not accustomed to someone who wants all the details. We rarely work that way.”
“Except we will in this case,” Jorge added, “a deal with you ensures we will be the largest producing and supplying cartel in Mexico.”
Chris didn’t miss the way the two brothers passed a look between them, something unsaid lingering in their stares. He tucked it into the back of his mind and returned to surveying the grounds.
“And you won’t take issue with my son doing the majority of the work and passing word back then?” Gian asked.
“Is that why he’s currently scoping us out?”
Chris didn’t miss the sharpness of Jorge Lòpez’s tone. He came back to the conversation, smiling carefully to make sure the man didn’t think he was malicious in his perusal of the grounds.
He was all too aware in that moment of certain things he needed to be careful to do for this plan of theirs to work. Things he needed to portray to allow him inside the cartel’s top echelon to get closer to Valeria—wherever she was here, because no one saw her yet.
They needed to trust him, at all costs. He was to be no better or worse than them, in their eyes, and willing to indulge in whatever they asked of him to make sure they didn’t question his reasoning for being here. “It’s a beautiful home. Almost reminds me of my parents’ mansion.”
Jorge eyed Chris for a moment, his silence stretching on a beat too long before he said, “Large, is it?”
“Two wings. More acres than someone cares to count.”
“Not as protected, I bet.”
Chris shrugged. “Better not to make a show, in our part of the world.”
Jorge nodded. “I can understand that, I suppose.”
Gian cleared his throat. “Shall we begin this process, then?”
“Yes, let’s get comfortable inside. We figured ... a quick lunch, and then maybe a drink later in the back by the pool before a proper dinner. If that works for you, Gian?”
“It does,” Gian replied.
“Good. Lunch will be ready soon. Later, the rest of our family will join us for dinner.”
Oh?
Chris kept that question inside, but barely. Did the rest of the family mean Jorge’s supposed wife—Valeria—and his daughter, Maria, too? Because that would answer a lot of things that were still unknown here.
“I hope you like bourbon,” Jorge said, “as that is our drink of choice for business deals.”
“I do,” Gian said.
Chris smiled when the men turned their backs to him and his father. The Guzzis were in.
For now.
• • •
Lunch went well, and as Chris assumed, his father took over the majority of the conversation with Jorge. Chris and Samuel sat at opposite ends of the table, enjoying their meal and sharing a word when asked for it, but otherwise, staying out of the dealings between the other two.
Not that Chris minded.
He enjoyed being the silent one in a conversation more than he liked to be the one who talked. It allowed him to learn a hell of a lot more when he wasn’t concerned about what might slip out of his mouth.
Once lunch finished, and Jorge and Gian seemed fine with the specifics of their arrangement, with one supplying the other cocaine, the four moved outside.
Well, three, he supposed.
Samuel disappeared after lunch. He stepped outside with them for a moment, but left soon after, re-entering the mansion through the back without as much as a word why.
It didn’t matter.
Chris had other things on his mind.
The pool, for starters.
His anxiety picked up as he, his father, and Jorge walked along the side of the pool, each with a glass of bourbon in their hands to sip from. He wouldn’t enjoy the drink this close to water even if the fear seemed unfounded.
Chris could swim.
He learned to do that.
The pool on one end was not deep.
He could touch the bottom.
Even hearing those thoughts in his mind, a constant mantra that played on repeat whenever he faced water, it only helped a little. Not enough for him to forget what it felt like to have water rushing into his lungs with every breath he attempted to take in. It didn’t stop the memory of his garbled shouts as he tried to call for help as the water pulled him under the docks at his uncle’s vacation home.
“Chris,” his father said quietly.
His gaze snapped away from the pool, drifting to where his father had stepped out of his conversation with Jorge to bring Chris out of his head. A knowing glint in his father’s eye—that familiar concern—stared back at him.
“Do you like the bourbon?” his father asked.
Jorge, who seemed confused at the question, not to mention hadn’t noticed Chris’s distraction, glanced between the two men. Gian brought him out of a state of panic but also did it without making the other man aware of his son’s deepest fear.
It was never good to hand someone your weakness.
They used it when you did that.
“Yes,” Chris said, keeping the nerves out of his tone, “it’s fine.”