"Drink?" he asks as he sets a shot down in front of me.
I nod my acquiescence while he wets his hand between his thumb and forefinger with tequila. Then he pours salt on it, licks it, and downs the shot, sucking on a wedge of lime afterwards. I follow his lead, feeling the burn of the alcohol as it rolls down my throat, leaving a trail of numbness in its wake. I can't help but think that, if he's going to kill me, I'd like about five more of these so I don't have to feel the bullet tearing through my flesh and bone.
"I like you, Guapo. I always have. You did good work, and you were useful when we wanted to keep the Santos Mexicanos out of our pockets. Your padre has been very clear for years that he wants you alive, and as long as I kept you that way, he stayed out of my business. It pissed him off, and you don't even know all the times he tried to take you away so I'd lose my leverage, but I've always thought you were worth it."
He leans back in his chair again, his hands folded across his stomach. "Now though? Now I'm afraid your padre has become more than I can reasonably handle. With him here in the country, he's got access to resources he didn't from Mexico, and you've become more of a liability to me than an asset. Please know this is all just business, kid. Nothing personal, no?"
"Yes, sir," I respond, already dreading what's coming next.
My heart is frantically pounding away as I wonder if I can negotiate to get Beth released before he kills me. Maybe as a last request? Maybe I could ask him to let Destiny drive Beth back to the halfway house. If I don't get her off this property today, she's liable to end up dead in an alley or as a junkie being sold on the streets for the gang's profit. She wouldn't be the first girl they've turned junkie against her will. The very idea makes my blood boil and my stomach churn.
"So," Jefe continues, "your padre has been kind enough to offer me a very lucrative exchange rate. I'll get some capital I need for a new venture and he'll get his boy back. He's missed you very much all these years, Guapo, and he's looking forward to being with you again."
My head spins as his words sink in. Exchange? Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. My guts lurch and I have to clear my throat as the bile surges up.
"You sold me—" My cool-gangster act is blown to shit. I can't pretend to be anything other than stunned right now. "To my father?" I run my hand through my shorn hair.
"No worries, Guapo. Just think—you'll be rich. The lone heir to everything he has, and believe me when I say he has a lot. And someday, when you're in charge of it all, I hope you'll remember your friends here at the RH. Good relations between our two familias benefit everyone."
I swallow. "When?" My voice sounds choked. "When do I get sent to him?"
Jefe checks his watch just as the door to the room opens and Lobo leans his head in. "They're here, Jefe."
Jefe looks at me, a smile of triumph on his face. "2Ahora," he answers. Right now.
I was ten years old the first time I asked my mother about my dad. Or maybe I should say I was ten when I asked for the details. As a small child, I questioned her once or twice when I noticed that other kids, especially my best friend David, had an extra parent. Mi madre's answer was always something along the lines of, "Some kids have dads, some don't." At the age of six, that was adequate. At the age of ten, I realized it was biologically impossible for a child to exist without a father in the mix somewhere. I pressed my mother until she gave up the briefest bit of information she could.
"Your padre," she told me as she swept the floor of our apartment with more force than usual, "is in Mexico, and he can't ever come here to America. He is not a nice man and so we don't want to live with him."
"So, will I be a mean man when I grow up?"
"No, mijo," she answered, looking at me with such sad eyes. "That's why you live here with me—so you'll grow up to be the nicest man ever."
"Good," I told her. "I want to always be a nice man, Mom."
"You will be, mijo. You always will be."
That explanation of my father's existence and subsequent absence was good for several more years again—until I hit fifteen, itching to be a man, sometimes resenting my mom's rules.
"I won't ever be good enough for you, Mom. Maybe I should go live with Dad in Mexico. I bet he'd be happy to see me."
"Don't you ever say that to me, Juan Antonio," she gasped out, and I knew I'd gone too far. "You have to promise me you will never try to contact your padre. You can't ever let him know who you are or where you are. Promise, mijo."
"It's not hard to promise, Mom, since I don't know his name, where he lives, or anything else about him. I've never seen a picture. I don't know if you were married to him. I don't know anything. It's like half of me is this big mystery."
My mom sank down into a chair, suddenly looking older and more tired than I'd ever seen her. "Come and sit," she told me. "I think you're old enough. I'll tell you about your father, but if I do, you will make me the promise to never, ever seek him out or let him know about yourself."
I was so desperate for any sliver of information about the man who'd helped create me that I was ready to promise I'd give up girls if she'd tell me about him. Promising never to see the guy seemed like a good deal at the time.
"Yes, Mom. I promise."
"I was very young when your abuela died and I had to quit school and find work. I got a job cleaning at the house of the local 3Patron. He was a rich man, but I didn't understand that he made his money from crime—all sorts of crime. At his house, there were many men who worked for him coming and going every day. Men with guns, men who drank too much and were violent. The woman who hired me, she was the head of the house staff, and she made sure that I only worked in the back rooms—the kitchen, the laundry room—where the men wouldn't see me."
She took a deep breath, and I noticed that her hands were shaking. Right then, I felt like a real cabrón for making her tell me the dirty secrets of my origins.
"But when I turned sixteen," she continued, "it was time for me to do an adult's work, so I was promoted to one of the regular maids. That's how I met your father. He was the Jefe's second-in-command, and he lived on the property in a guesthouse. He was ten years older than me—"
She paused, her eyes getting a faraway look in them. "And he was very handsome. Muy guapo. I was so flattered when he paid attention to me, and by the time I was seventeen, I was pregnant with you. As soon as your padre found out I was expecting, he insisted I quit my job and had me move into his casita on the grounds.
“Without my work and the friends I had in the main house, I was very lonely, and Miguel, your padre, was gone a lot with work. He would leave in the middle of the night. He would go for days at a time. I never knew when he might disappear or reappear. He told me to enjoy not having to work and to make sure I was healthy. He wanted a son, and he was very particular that I eat right, get plenty of sleep, and not lift a finger to take care of the house or myself."
I interrupted. "I thought he was a really bad guy, Mom. He sounds like he cared a lot."
She shook her head sadly. "Oh, mijo. The line between caring and controlling is so slim. Once you were born, I began to learn that he didn't know the difference between the two things. He was obsessed with you, and I was there to ensure that every directive he had regarding you was followed to a T."
She stood and began to pace around the room. "By the time you were born, I had also begun to get wise about the business your padre and the Patron were in. I realized that all their money didn't come from any normal sort of businesses, but rather from threatening and blackmailing and, most of all, from selling drugs.
"You were almost two when I stumbled onto your padre doing his work one night. I needed to get some fresh milk from the big house for you. You had woken up and nothing but a cup of milk was going to help you go back to sleep."
I remembered the warm milk that my mom used to give me to help me sleep, and it seemed so odd that she'd been doing that for me in another country, another time, someplace I had absolutely no memory of.
&nb
sp; "Walking between our casita and the main house, I heard angry voices. I tiptoed to the fence that surrounded the parking circle and peeked between the iron bars. What I saw… Oh, mijo, that's when I knew I could never stay there and let your padre raise you. Your father was torturing a man—burning him with a red-hot poker while some of the other men held him down. The man was screaming, but they'd stuffed a handkerchief in his mouth to keep him quiet. I still remember the way his legs thrashed as your padre pressed that metal into his skin. There was a thin line of smoke that would rise each time and a smell of burning flesh that wafted through the air as far away as I was."
My stomach roiled as my mother described the torture, and I began to understand why she'd kept this from me my whole life. I also had the beginnings of a niggling voice in my head that asked, "If I came from someone who could do those things, what did that mean I was capable of?" Just two years later, I was forced to answer that question, and it wasn't an answer I wanted.
My mother managed to run from my father just a few days after my second birthday. She paid a coyote—a smuggler—to get us over the border, where she knew good old dad couldn't get to us. Then she kept me safe and out of his sights until that horrible day when the INS found her.
Now, as I stand in Jefe's den, everything my mother told me about my father comes crashing down around me. I realize that I've been running from him, desperately trying to keep him from finding me for so long that he's reached the status of a mythical monster for me. I almost expect him to have horns and a spiked tail.
Instead, the door to the room opens and a well-armed bodyguard enters, sporting a bulletproof vest over his dress shirt. Following right behind him is a good-looking man in his early fifties, hair perfect, suit pressed and fitted precisely. He strides inside, glancing at Jefe, who steps forward with his hand extended. But Miguel, my father, barely acknowledges him and makes no effort to shake his hand. Instead, he focuses in on me and walks until we're just an arm's length apart.
I look at him, and for some reason, I'm surprised as much as anything. There are no horns, no flaming eyes or foaming lips. Instead, there is a familiarity. Not one particular thing, but a definite sense of having seen this face before, watched those eyes before. And I realize it's because I've looked at it every day of my own life. I look just like him, and it's akin to having a mirror placed in front of me, but a mirror that travels through time, showing you yourself decades hence.
For a moment, we're both silent, and I wonder what he's thinking as he looks at me. I see his eyes mist up, and the corners of his mouth draw tight.
"Juan Miguel," he says in a thick voice. "Mi corazon." He puts his hands on my shoulders and then pulls me to him and hugs me hard. I'm frozen, both in fear and shock. I stand like a mannequin, arms at my sides, at a loss for what to say to this man without whom I wouldn't exist.
Miguel pulls away but keeps his hands on my shoulders. "Let me look at you," he whispers as his eyes run over me from head to toe. He steps to the side to see the back of my neck. As he touches the RH tattoo and then my arms, he says, "Don’t worry, mijo. I have doctors who can take this filth off of you." He shoots a look of disgust at Jefe, who shrugs.
He gives me the once over again then stops, his eyes suddenly hard and his grip on my shoulders nearly painful. He drops one of his hands, moving it inside the edge of his jacket lapel.
"What the hell is this on my son's ankle?" he spits out.
His guard and another who entered after him both stand up straighter and maneuver so that none of Jefe's men are at their backs. They're smooth and the whole thing is seamless, but I notice things like that. When you've lived in prison for years, you recognize combat maneuvers though they seem like random movements to civilians.
"What do you mean?" Jefe answers, craning his neck to see my ankle.
"This fucking cuff courtesy of the 4policía," Miguel hisses, pointing at my leg.
"Oh, Señor Ybarra, my men were supposed to take that off, I'm very sorry. We'll get the tool to remove it right away. It'll only take a moment."
I'm surprised because Jefe actually seems afraid of Miguel. I didn't think Jefe was scared of anyone. But I guess there's badass and then there's my father. I still have no idea what I'm supposed to do about any of this, so I just stand, my father's hand on my shoulder while he glares at Jefe.
"I will remove my son's cuff," Miguel answers.
Then, with no warning whatsoever, no tell, no blink of his eyes, no twitch of his fingers, in one continuous smooth movement, he removes a gun from his inside jacket pocket and blasts Jefe in the chest. At the same moment, his guards take out Jefe's two men who are in the room with us. One of them is Lobo, and I see his eyes look at me in desperation as he falls, blood pouring from his mouth. The whole thing takes less than five seconds.
At the sounds of gunfire, my natural reaction is to move for the floor and then the door. It’s kept me from getting shot several times, so I figure why screw with what works. This time though, my father's hand on my shoulder and the commanding tone in his voice keep me motionless.
"You stand, son, while these scum take the floor like they're meant to. You're no lowlife gangbanger, Juan. You're royalty, and today, you take your place at my side. 5El Príncipe de Los Santos Mexicanos." He turns away from Jefe's body and looks me in the eye. "Welcome home, mijo."
* * *
1 Lo siento = I’m sorry
2 Ahora = now
3 Patron = boss, group leader
4 Policia = police
5 El Principe = the prince
ABUELA leads me down a hallway to the private rooms of the house and knocks on a door. It swings open and there stands a pretty girl about twenty-one years old, dressed to the nines in skintight, black leggings, spike-heeled pumps, and a hot-pink, satin bustier.
"Who's this?" she asks Abuela as she picks at one of her fingernails.
"1Gracias a Dios, Guapo's home," Abuela answers. The girl's eyes dart up. "And this is his girl, Angel."
I watch the girl's face fall, and I’m instantly struck with jealousy. Was she his girlfriend before he went to prison? Did Juan have someone waiting for him to come home?
"Hey," the girl says cautiously. "I'm Destiny. You, uh, want to come in?"
I look at Abuela for confirmation, and the older woman nods. We all three walk into the bedroom, and Destiny points to an overstuffed chair in one corner.
"Have a seat."
"Destiny will take good care of you, Angel." The older woman smiles at me. "You stay here, and you don't let nobody in. Guapo will come get you soon. Don't be scared, yeah?"
I reply, “Okay.”
Destiny smiles at Abuela. "Don't worry. I'll make sure we stay put."
"Good girls," she answers as she leaves, closing the door behind her.
I turn to look at Destiny, feeling unbelievably awkward. "So, um, thanks for letting me hang out here." Then I take what I realize is my first full breath in nearly an hour.
"Sure. No big thing," Destiny answers softly. "Juan's in trouble. They're taking him to my dad."
"Your dad?" I swallow. Hard.
"Yeah." Destiny looks up almost apologetically. "The boss man, El Jefe. That's my dad."
"Oh."
"Yeah." She sighs. "So, you're Juan's girlfriend?"
My lips turn up into a small smile at the thought. How I’d love to be Juan’s girlfriend. It sends shivers through my whole body. But I answer truthfully. "I don't exactly know what Juan and me are."
"You known him long?" Destiny asks.
"My whole life."
"But you were never around before. I mean, before he went in, all those years he was here in the RH. Where were you?"
"He ran away from us. From me and my family. He was my brother's best friend while we were growing up," I explain. "Then his mother got deported and he disappeared. We looked for him, but he never got in touch again."
"What about when he went to Huntsville? You visit him there?" Destiny pursues.
"It probably don't matter much. I went to see him and he wouldn't agree to the visit." Destiny shrugs, continuing to pick at her nails as she flops down on the area rug at the foot of her bed.
"Really? He wouldn't let you visit?"
"Nah. He didn't want to see me, I guess. My boyfriend, Pretty Boy, he visited a couple of times, and some of the other guys when they had jobs Juan needed to do. But he wouldn't see me."
I watch Destiny, certain there’s more to the story than she’s telling me. There are feelings floating in the room like wisps of smoke or vapor.
"You call him Juan," I observe.
Destiny's eyes shoot up. "Yeah. So?"
"Well, no one else here does."
"Yeah, I guess."
"You were friends?"
"You want to know if I slept with him?"
The question is blunt, and it surprises me, setting off a cascade of emotions—sadness, fear, and of course envy—but I try not to let it show. I’ve already noticed that you don't let your real emotions out around the RH. Everything is an act, a façade. I think of the women I work with at the halfway house. How closed off most of them are, how hard their outsides have become. After seeing this place, these men, I think I understand better what makes them that way.
"It's none of my business who you slept with," I answer. The politically correct answer, even though I definitely want to know, and in fact, I’m already burning inside with jealousy at the thought of this girl touching Juan, kissing him, feeling him in places and ways I myself haven't.
"It's okay. I'll tell you. He don't love me or nothing, so you don't need to worry. But you can't tell anyone here, ‘cause if Pretty Boy ever found out, he'd beat the shit out of me and then try to kill Juan."
My heart squeezes hard. This is going to hurt, but it’s like watching a car crash—I just can't look away.
"I always had a thing for Juan, you know? He was different. Nicer. But Pretty Boy, he came after me real hard, so I ended up with him. But then Juan got arrested for the drive-by. Everybody knew he'd end up doin' hard time one way or another. I knew it might be the last time I got to see him, so the day before his sentencing, I got one of Abuela's friends to get me a conjugal visit."
Buried (Hiding From Love #3) Page 9