Alejandro Carrera.
Chapter Thirty
Nicole’s next breath sped out of her. And the next. She darted a glance over to the door.
“The marshal has left his post,” the drug lord informed her. “My men are currently distracting him. I would keep this as non-violent as possible, but that choice is ultimately yours.” Carrera gestured offhandedly between Manolo and Kalani.
Nicole’s heart hammered her throat.
“If you would join me, Miss Gamboa.” He held out a hand to her, as if he were asking her to dance.
She didn’t move. “What do you want?”
“You.” Carrera grinned. Not one of the more pleasant sights in the world. “Although if you prefer, I could take your lovely mother instead.”
Nicole’s blood froze down another few degrees, reaching subzero temperatures. The way Carrera had just said “take” implied he meant much more than just kidnapping. Mom as the starring act in one of this sexual pervert’s shows? Not even a little bit. “I’ll come.” Nicole reached for her purse—
“Leave it,” Carrera ordered.
She closed her fingers into a fist and dropped her hand. Think, Nicole, and be smart. Don’t start yelling or this loco asshole will hurt your parents. But Carrera doesn’t have a weapon drawn. You can kick his ass…once you get him away from here. She walked toward Carrera, her spine so straight and stiff it ached.
“Smile, my beauty,” Carrera said, taking her arm in a firm grip. “Everyone should be made to think we are good friends. Sit,” he ordered Kalani. “My men wait in the hospital for my command. If you try to call for help before they clear you, I will be contacted, and your daughter’s life will be the forfeit.” He glanced at Nicole. “Likewise, if my men don’t hear from me within a certain period of time—because you have attacked me, mi amor—they will kill both your parents. Are we all in agreement?”
Nicole didn’t answer. Couldn’t.
“Bueno.” Carrera ushered Nicole out of the hospital room and down the hall.
* * *
Cass Street Bar and Grill, Pacific Beach, San Diego
Eric reached for the beer pitcher and sloshed more drink into his mug. “Fucking Carrera.”
“Now where have I heard that before?” Mikey drawled, taking the pitcher from Eric and topping off his own beer.
“Another counterdrug op gone tits up.” Eric drank his beer and stared out the open street window at a couple of guys in wetsuits ambling by, longboards propped on their bleached blond heads.
Even though Cass Street Bar and Grill was located only a couple of blocks east of the tourist-heavy Mission Boulevard, the restaurant was at the end of Cass Street and tucked out of the way, making it more of a locals hangout than a place where folks with matching T-shirts might end up. Mikey lived just around the corner, and he and Eric were in here often enough to have a regular table: right next to the window, kitty-corner from the shuffleboard game, where a mural of a palm tree and waves silhouetted by a sunset stretched the entire length of the wall.
“How did Gamboa take the fail?” Mikey asked.
“Not great.” Eric didn’t elaborate on the real reasons it had been not great for her, or even how not great it continued to be—because he didn’t know.
Nicole had gone dark.
He’d tried calling her from Catalina before he climbed back on board his helo. No answer. At his squadron in Coronado, he called her again…three times over the course of the afternoon. Nothing. On the way home from work, he dropped by her apartment. She was either gone or not answering. You’re getting the boot, too. This is it, Eric. Leave me alone. He chugged half his beer. Fucking great. Nicole had kicked him to the curb, so screw the world. Time to drink. “I bet you’re glad you didn’t fly this op now,” Eric said to his friend.
“Nah. Any day I have my sorry hide in a cockpit is a great day.” Mikey grabbed some fries out of a basket they’d ordered. “Turns out it was good I was home, though. I got a call from San Francisco General Hospital. Looks like I’m a bone marrow match for my kid.”
“Hey, congrats, man.” Eric raised his beer mug in toast. “First good news I’ve heard all day.”
“Thanks.” Mikey grabbed the ketchup bottle. “They also told me I popped positive with an STD.”
Eric snapped his attention over. “What the fuck? I thought you wore condoms religiously.” As often as Mikey got busy, Eric had once questioned his friend about his protection habits.
Mikey raised his palm into an I swear position. “I’m the no-glove-no-love poster boy. Just not for, uh, blow jobs.” He blopped some ketchup onto the fries. “That Colombian pro must’ve had gonorrhea of the throat.”
“Jesus, Mikey.” Eric shook his head. “Leave it to you to get an STD from a BJ.”
Mikey chortled. “I know, right? And the rot’s been eating my dick for three months.” Mikey’s laugh faded into a sigh as he set the Heinz bottle down. “My luck with women continues to be outstanding. This time it earned me a tuckus full of penicillin. How’s yours?”
“My what?”
“Your luck with women?”
“Ah.” Eric shrugged the question away.
“You went on a date with the ballbuster Saturday night, right?”
“Yep.” Stick to single syllables when you don’t want to talk about something.
Mikey licked ketchup off his fingers. “Nuts in a stump shredder?”
“I’m still working out the details.”
Mikey sighed. “You’re not going to get weird again, are you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you remember that hop we took together when we were in flight school in Pensacola? It was your last solo flight before graduating, and my first time in a helo? We ended up having to land in a farmer’s field.”
“Oh, yeah. From that scary-ass bird strike.”
Mikey pinned his eyes on Eric. “Was it, LZ? Scary, I mean. It sure as hell was for me, blood and bird guts all over me, my face visor shattered all to hell. But you strolled away from the near crash like it was just another day at the office. Shit, you asked the farmer who came to help us for a Coke.” Mikey dipped a trio of fries in the ketchup. “Same as the zero-zero night off the Lake Champlain. You’re, like, ‘it’s over,’” he mimicked, “‘let’s grab some mid-rats.’” He stuffed the fries in his mouth. “I’m the last guy who should be lecturing another about how to act, but, LZ, that’s weird.”
Eric studied the dwindling foam on his beer. “It’s complicated.” How to explain what it was like trying to be someone other than Sean O’Dwyer’s son?
“Not that I wouldn’t rather fist my own balls than compliment Gamboa, but… You seem more chill when she’s in the picture. I mean, besides being torqued up about wanting to lay her.”
“Trust me, I’ve noticed that too.” He’d guess there were one, maybe two women per man in all the world who could make that guy a better man without driving him nuts about it, and Nicole was Eric’s rare one. His cell beeped the arrival of a message. He whipped his phone out of his pocket—please have it be Nicole—and glanced at the screen. Crap. “My father needs to see me,” he said, pulling out his wallet to pay his share of the bill. “This day just keeps getting shittier and shittier.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Eric stepped inside his father’s study and set his jaw like a man preparing for a blow. This room was the most fucked place on the planet. With its tall, regal bookcases and floor-to-ceiling paned windows looking out onto a perfectly manicured garden, where soft lighting cast a precisely artistic glow over a fountain of frolicking chubby cherubs, it presented a picture of cheeriness that Eric knew to be a massive joke. In here, dreams, hope, and a sense of belonging were vacuumed out of a person’s very marrow.
Sean O’Dwyer rose from behind his large mahogany desk, and Eric’s stomach did a strange clench-thing, like he was feeling a spurt of intimidation. Which, in all honesty, he was. His father was a giant of a man…although, here again, was
another long-standing illusion. In reality, Sean was the same height as Eric, so the misperception probably came from Eric having always been a boy around him. Or feeling like one. That, and Sean’s eyes only had two shades: steely and icy.
Eric made a show of glancing around the room. “I can’t remember the last time we were alone together. Oh, wait…yes, I can.” The night you all but disowned me.
“Scotch?” Sean inquired, slightly elongating the O with the remnants of his Irish brogue.
Same drink as the last time they were in this room together. I want to be a naval aviator, Dad… “A double,” Eric said shortly.
Sean cut a look at him as he strode for the bar in the corner.
“It’s been a crappy day.” Eric sat down on the leather couch across from the bar and smiled thinly at his father. Hell if he was going to sit in front of his father’s desk like some kid in the principal’s office. Not like last time. “And I get the feeling you’re about to add a-whole-’nother pile of stink onto it.”
“I wouldn’t think so.” Long O on the so.
Sean dropped off Eric’s scotch on the coffee table, then sat in the dark leather wingback chair across from him.
“Let me guess, then.” Eric sloshed a big gulp of scotch into his mouth. “You’d like to invite me on a father-son team-building day with you. Maybe paintballing?”
Sean rose, added another ice cube to his drink, then sat back down.
“Go to a football game together? Camping? None of those? Huh.” Eric peered out the window at the garden and murmured tautly, “Real shocker.”
“Sherry, your stepmother, is feelin’ unwell,” his father said.
Three large moths swirled around the fountain lights, occasionally bumping into one of the bulbs. “Isn’t it funny how you always feel the need to reintroduce her to me?” Eric looked at his father and sipped his scotch. “Maybe you think I’m not spending enough time at home. But then, whose fault would that be?”
His father drank his scotch and didn’t say anything. He was a man who used silence as a weapon; choked up on it, clubbed a guy over the head with it, then dumped the body in that perfect damned garden next to some rose bushes.
Eric broke eye contact. “What do you mean by unwell?”
“Cancer.”
“How bad?”
“The prognosis is very poor.”
“I’m sorry.” Although he only sort of was. Because he was supposed to be, as a decent human being.
“I’d like to travel around Europe with her.” Sean crossed his legs, the shish of his elegant silk slacks rubbing together sounded like…money. “She’s always had a longin’ for that, but I’ve been too busy.”
Sucks to be a multi-millionaire. “Uh huh.” Eric sneaked a glance at his watch.
“I’ve decided to retire from my software business.”
“Wow. Incredible news. Okay, then.” Eric set down his drink. “Since I won’t be summoned back for your bon voyage party, I’ll give you my best wishes now for having just a barrel of laughs with that travel gig.” He stood up.
His father remained seated. And looked at him. One look, and Eric was planting his ass back down on the couch. He glowered at his scotch glass, his face hot. He could crash the lip of it against the edge of the coffee table, then use the sharp, ragged edges to cut off his useless balls.
“I would like you to assume command of my company.”
He bolted his head up and gaped at his father, his jaw sockets suffering from a distinct loosening sensation. “What? But I thought…Brock…he’s the oldest. Or Lance…”
“None of your brothers ever stood up to me, Eric. You did.” Sean leaned toward the coffee table and lifted the lid to a humidor, releasing the aromatic scent of tobacco. “A man with your kind of bold fearlessness is who I want runnin’ my company.” He selected a cigar. “Would you like one?”
Eric shot a sharp glance at the humidor. “I can’t believe that after all the years Brock and Lance have worked for you, you’d do this to them.” Not to mention you obviously don’t give two shits about how much my own brothers will hate me for it.
Sean closed the lid and sat back. “Leadership is never easy.”
“Jesus Christ,” Eric hissed. “Do you know that in the dictionary next to the word ‘irony,’ this situation is highlighted in extra-bold.” None of your brothers have ever stood up to me, Eric. You did.
“I make decisions for the welfare of my company. I have no interest in coddlin’ my sons in the process. No one indulged me on the way to success. I earned it.” Sean gestured around the study with the cigar tucked between his fingers. “My life wasn’t always grand, like this. I was raised in one of the roughest neighborhoods in Dublin until the age of sixteen. My mother was a seamstress, my father, a factory worker who was loose with his fists around town. And at home.”
Eric set his palms on his knees and stared at Sean. “You said your father was a businessman.”
“I lied.”
Talk about being bludgeoned and left for dead in the garden. Sean O’Dwyer had once been a tough kid who probably wore dungarees, regularly dropped the F-bomb, and fought in alleys?
His father struck a wooden match and held it to the tip of his cigar, puffing steadily, his eyes remaining on Eric through the rising smoke. He shook out the match. “When I clawed myself out of that stew, I swore I would never allow myself to be anything but absolutely successful.”
Tension shoved up Eric’s spine. “So first thing you did when you got to America was find a rich girl to marry? Nice.”
Sean puffed his cigar. “Your mother was a beautiful woman.”
“How great to hear you focusing on all of the most meaningful things she had to offer, like how smart and funny she was.” Eric glared. “You should’ve married a woman who scraped gunk out of the garbage. Maybe she wouldn’t have buckled under being handed such a miserable life.”
“I hardly ill-used your mother’s money.” Sean gestured broadly, leaving a contrail of smoke with his cigar. “You see the empire I’ve created.” His mouth set in a ruthless slash. “I won’t be lettin’ anyone make a hagsmash out of it.”
Eric’s stomach boiled. His lip tautened along the upper edge. “What you’ve created is four idiots for sons and a dead wife.”
Sean unfolded himself from his wingback chair and strode to the bar again. He held up the crystal decanter of scotch. “More?”
Eric flattened his lips against his teeth. “You killed my mother. One day I’d like for you to be man enough to acknowledge that.”
Sean refreshed his drink, his demeanor relaxed, his movements easy and smooth.
Eric clenched his hands into fists on his knees. “Do you think your father would’ve been proud of the man you’ve become?”
“Without question.”
“Then he’s a dick.”
Sean turned, drink in hand, and drew on his cigar, making the ashy end glow brightly. “I’ve never seen you so angry, Eric—the last time you were at the house for Brett’s graduation party, and this evenin’. I believe it’s evidence of you maskin’ a deep dissatisfaction with your life.”
“Well, you would know,” Eric returned in a sarcastic tone, “seeing as we’re so close.”
Sean grabbed the decanter again and angled for the coffee table.
“Remember those model airplanes I used to build?”
His father paused.
“I didn’t make them because I fantasized about becoming an engineer, like you thought—or hoped. But because I dreamed of flying someday. Can you hear that? Can you get anything that doesn’t have to do with your own selfish needs? I didn’t go into the Navy as some glorious demonstration of my fearlessness against you. I joined because I wanted to fly and serve my country.” Eric’s back molars hurt. “Me taking over your business would be like you becoming a factory worker.”
Sean continued on, bringing the decanter over and topping off Eric’s drink. His father glanced at him from beneath his blond eyebro
ws. “Brett tells me there’s a woman you’re tryin’ to persuade into your life.”
Eric jabbed two fingers at the decanter to make his father stop pouring. You shithead, Brett. No more bonding with you, blabbermouth.
“What kind of future can you offer her?” Sean brought the decanter back to the bar. “One where she’ll have to move every few years,” he answered, “endure long separations from her husband, worry endlessly over his well-being, and watch her children suffer constant upheaval.”
The skin tightened across Eric’s cheekbones.
Sean sat down. “Women want and need stability.”
Eric glanced aside.
When I was a kid, we moved anywhere from every six months to every three years, and I don’t want to live that way anymore. So why begin something with you there’s no way I’ll ever finish?
A wad of loneliness jammed into Eric’s throat, the same as when he thought he’d never see Nicole again.
“If you take over as CEO of O’Dwyer Systems, you could give this woman of yours a solid, happy lifestyle, plus a godsamount of wealth. More than you have now.”
Eric dragged a hand over his mouth. The stench of Sean’s cigar was starting to make him nauseous.
“You need to ask yourself: Do you want the woman you love in your life or to fly helicopters?”
“Who says I love her?”
Cigar smoke drifted around Sean’s head. “You’ve had your fun in the Navy, son. Now it’s time to get serious and make a choice to serve your future family. It’s what men do.”
Eric’s cheeks prickled as all the blood evacuated his face. He sat there, unmoving, while Sean smoked his cigar.
Chapter Thirty-Two
On the drive home, images crowded insidiously into Eric’s brain. Front and center sat the knowledge that taking over his father’s company would catapult him to the position of Number One Son as soon as Eric’s butt hit the O’Dwyer Systems CEO chair. His father’s phone calls from Europe would be filled with cyber back slaps, and when Eric saw Sean in person, the man’s blue eyes would be filled with pride, honest-to-God pride.
Wings of Gold Series Page 20