Buried (Hiding From Love #3)

by Selena Laurence

  He huffs out a laugh. “Really? The RH didn’t ask you if you wanted to be kidnapped and sent to Mexico with a mob boss?”

  I roll my eyes. “The main thing is I’m safe and I’m back home.”

  We move to his desk, where I take a chair in front of it and he sits behind it.

  “You are,” he says slowly. “But you’re home alone, and if I know you, that’s not going to fly.”

  “Am I that transparent?” I ask, heat climbing into my cheeks.

  “No, mija. No. I just know you pretty well. I also know how much you’re in love with that damn kid. So what the hell am I going to do with the two of you?”

  “I want to get him back, Max. Back here to the US, safe and not in prison. How can I do that?”

  Max leans into his reclining desk chair, his hands laced behind his head. He sits like that for a few minutes, and I keep quiet as the clock on his cabinet ticks and tocks and the hands sweep on just like time does.

  Finally, he sits up straight and rests his arms on the desk. “Tell me where he is and what he’s doing.”

  “He’s at his father’s house in Leon. He’s working for his dad, getting trained to take over the family business someday.”

  “And you’re sure he didn’t just decide all that money and power were more his style than being on parole here in Texas?”

  I shake my head vehemently. “No. Not Juan, Max. He doesn’t care about any of that. He’s loyal and honest and too damn noble for his own good. He’ll always put everyone else before himself, and that’s what he did. He put me first. He consigned himself to a life of crime and violence and living under the thumb of that man in order to save me. I can’t let him do that. I can’t let him end like that.”

  “Okay, mija,” he says. “I’ve got a possibility for you, but it’s not going to be easy, and it’s going to force Juan and maybe you to make some pretty hard choices.”

  “What is it?” I ask, desperate for any chance at all, no matter what the price.

  “I can’t believe I’m even suggesting this.”

  I narrow my eyes at him. He sighs.

  “WITSEC.” he answers.

  I sit and stare at him for a minute as my mind tries to remember the acronym. “What?”

  “Witness protection.” He taps his beefy index finger on the desk as he talks. “At this point, Juan’s got a lot of information on the Santos Mexicanos cartel, and if we can convince Homeland Security that he can give them useful intel about Miguel Ybarra’s business, we might be able to negotiate a new identity and protection for Juan here in the US as well as the elimination of any charges relating to his parole violation.”

  I can feel how big my eyes are in my face. “So the government would send him somewhere with a new identity and they’d drop the charges against him too?”

  Max nods solemnly.

  Then the logistics clarify for me. “He’d have to testify against his own father. Turn Miguel in.” Max nods again. “But what about me? I mean, if he has a new identity…”

  Max looks at me sadly. “You’d have to get one too if you want to go with him. Otherwise, it’d be far too easy for the Santos Mexicanos to trace you both.”

  “And I’d have to move?”

  “Mija. I think you know the answers to these questions.”

  “I wouldn’t be able to see any of you?”

  “Not for a while anyway. Maybe eventually, but it could be years. It wouldn’t be safe for any of your family or friends to know where you were or to talk to you.”

  My heart stutters, and for a moment, I’m afraid it might stop altogether. Years. Without my family. Without David, Alexis, my parents, Jill. My heart is sick. My head aches.

  “You’d better think about it all for a bit,” Max says kindly. “If you decide you want me to approach the feds, we’ll have to get all of our ducks in a row. I’ll need a full deposition from you about the events from when the RH first approached you at the halfway house all the way through your drop-off at the border. Then we’ll have to get them to agree to give you immunity from accessory charges before we take you in to talk to them.”

  “Oh my God,” I say, feeling like the weight of the world’s just been placed on my shoulders.

  “It’s a huge decision, mija. One you can’t make without a lot of thinking. And one that you shouldn’t feel guilty about—no matter which direction you choose. So for now, go home. Rest. Be with your friends. We can talk more in a few days, yeah?”

  I nod and stand.

  Max walks around the desk and puts his hands on my arms. “You’re the smartest young woman I’ve ever known, Beth, and I’m an old bachelor, but I still believe in love. You love each other. You’ll figure this out. And when you do, I’ll be here to help you however I can.”

  He gives me a kiss on the forehead and walks out of the office with me. After I’m ensconced in my car and Max’s waving form has faded out of sight, I pull over to a side street and I cry.

  MY father has invited women to dinner. Men too, but other than the occasional wife of an associate, this is the first time we’ve had women here. Young women, single women, women, it appears, he expects me to fuck.

  “Juan,” he says as turns his best charm on the blonde sitting between us. “Did you know that Miss Lopez here is the niece of Señor Candelaria, our associate in Chihuahua?”

  I look at the woman, whose cleavage is oozing out of her sequined tank top. She flicks her long hair over her shoulder and curves her plump, shiny lips up into a semblance of a smile.

  “My uncle has such good things to say about you, Señor Ybarra. And we didn’t know that you had a son, much less such a handsome one,” she simpers.

  I know I should say something smooth back, but I just don’t have the energy. I’ll play the heir on the job, but I refuse to let him control my sex life too. He can throw as many stacked hueras at me as he wants. I won’t take the bait.

  “Yes,” my father answers when I don’t fill the gap in conversation. “Juan was raised in the US and only recently came home to help me with the business.”

  “I’m sure he’ll be a very fine addition,” she says as she lays a hand on my arm and squeezes gently.

  I move my arm away from her as I toss my napkin on my plate.

  “Speaking of business, if you’ll excuse me, I have some work to do.” I stand, give Miguel a small nod, and head to my suite.

  An hour later, I’m in gym shorts, sprawled on the sofa, watching some MMA match on TV, trying really hard not to think about how the blonde’s tits compared to Beth’s—a comparison that Beth will win every time.

  A sharp rap comes at the door. I’m startled—no one ever comes to my suite. The cleaning staff slips in and out invisibly while I’m working with my father during the day, and the guards stay outside, never making a sound.

  I stand up, run a hand through my hair, and mute the TV. When I swing the door open, I find my father standing there, looking uncomfortable. He’s holding a bottle of port and two glasses.

  “I thought perhaps we could have a drink?” he asks.

  I raise an eyebrow but decide not to push it, so I gesture for him to come in.

  He goes to the bar and pours out the dark, thick liquid. I shut the door, go back to the sofa, and throw myself down without making any effort to be welcoming. Apparently he’s set on changing the rules we’ve been surviving by, but I’m not in the mood.

  He brings the glasses over and puts them down on the coffee table before taking a seat in an armchair.

  “You were rude to Miss Candelaria at dinner.”

  “Miss Candelaria is nothing but a high-class hooker looking to catch herself a rich man. She doesn’t seem to realize that I’m not a rich man, just a rich man’s gangster son.”

  “Juan,” he admonishes, scowling.

  “What? You think you can push women on me like you pushed the business? Well, it’s not going to work like that.”

  My father looks shocked, his mouth opening and closing a coup
le of times before he speaks. “We had an agreement, and I’ve done nothing more than expect you to uphold your side of it. You agreed to learn the business if I returned Ms. Garcia to her family. I don’t see how that’s pushing the business on you.”

  “No, you’re right. It was an arrangement and I’ve stuck by my end and I’ll continue to, but fucking associates’ nieces or daughters was not part of that arrangement. You can bring a whole damn cathouse of Miss Candelarias in here and I won’t negotiate on that. No women.”

  “Son,” he says quietly. “I really only meant to provide you with some company your own age. I can see that you’re unhappy since Ms. Garcia left. I thought some other young people might cheer you up. I do not expect to dictate who you sleep with.”

  I huff out a bitter laugh. “Yeah, unhappy. That’s one way of putting it,” I mutter. “Well, you don’t need to worry about my happiness. That’s not part of the agreement either. My social life, my bedmates, my moods—those are all my business, not yours.” I stand up and walk to the door. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  My father sits and looks at me for a moment as if he’s trying to see past my skin down to my very bones. Then he stands slowly, looking weary in a way I’ve never noticed before.

  “Very well. Goodnight, Juan.” He walks through the door I’ve opened for him.

  I swing the door closed a little more firmly than necessary. Then I collapse on the sofa, unmute the TV, and close my eyes so I can remember the feel of Beth’s skin under my hands.

  My father spends the next few days tiptoeing around me like I’m a bomb waiting to explode. And maybe, in a way, I am. When I sent Beth back, I was so certain I was doing the best thing, and I still know it was the only choice to make for her, but I’m starting to question whether I really thought through the choices for myself well enough.

  I didn’t know it was possible to miss something as much as I miss her. It’s like someone took a piece out of my body. I have this hole inside me and it doesn’t get any better. It’s raw and ragged and it stings and aches and throbs all day, every day. At night, it bleeds. It bleeds in my sleep, it bleeds in my bed, it bleeds in my soul. I wake up each morning a bloody mess, and I spend all day trying to ignore it. I thought it would get easier with time, but it doesn’t. If anything, it’s getting harder.

  I don’t know what my father would have done if I’d tried to keep walking over that bridge to the US. I assume the slew of henchmen I had with me had been given instructions to keep me in Mexico, but would they have shot me? I felt, at the time, like it wasn’t a risk worth taking. The fact is that, even if I’d managed to get across the border, he’d find me, and then he might bring me back under less pleasant circumstances.

  I could try to make a run for it now and turn myself in when I get to the US, end up back in Huntsville. It might be the only place he can’t get to me. I think a lot about whether it would be better to be in prison than here. It’s a choice I always thought I had the answer to. Now, things simply aren’t that clear. Yeah, here is like a high-end hotel, but the isolation is almost more than I can stand. Spending my days learning just how much product the Santos Mexicanos are putting out into the world doesn’t help. The idea that I’m supposed to help create hundreds of thousands of drug addicts, wrecking families, health, and entire lives, is revolting on a good day and unbearable on a bad one.

  I’ve just come back from a meeting with a petty local pimp who we use to move product in and out of Guanajuato, the nearest big city. The guy makes my fucking skin crawl, but his girls are very good at stuffing bags of heroin places the sun doesn’t shine so they can get it past roadblocks the police sometimes set up at the major roads into the city.

  I enter my father’s office and find him sitting in an armchair, looking out the window at the swimming pool.

  “The meeting went well?” he asks absentmindedly.

  “Yes. He wanted to up his fee by twenty percent, but I told him I’d only do it if I gave it directly to the mules. I’m not going to pay his filthy ass more to continue treating his girls like shit. As soon as I said that, he didn’t need more money after all.”

  My father chuckles quietly. “You have a very original way of doing business, mijo, but it’s effective. You put your own stamp on these dealings. I enjoy watching it.”

  I don’t answer—just lean against the wall parallel to where he sits.

  “You played fútbol in high school, yes?” he asks, completely off topic.

  “You mean American soccer? Yeah.”

  “I played too,” he says, glancing at me quickly.

  “Huh. I don’t think you’ve ever mentioned anything about growing up.”

  He smiles sadly. “I grew up in Guanajuato. We were poor, there were a lot of kids—all the normal things you’d expect from a Mexican family in the 1970s. But I got a scholarship when I was thirteen to attend the Catholic school. I was a good student like you were. And they had a fútbol team. In my neighborhood, we played all day long in the roads. If we had a ball, that was good. Most of the time, we made balls out of garbage that we would smash together and wrap in some sort of plastic or tape. We made do.”

  “I’ve seen pictures of the kids in South America doing that,” I say, moving over to a chair now and sitting down.

  “At the Catholic school, we had real balls and a team. One of the priests saw me playing in the schoolyard before class and told me to try out for the team. I made it and then played the rest of the time in school. I was a striker. Goal scorer. And you?”

  “Center mid.” I look at him. “Playmaker.”

  He laughs a big, hearty laugh, not his usual restrained, controlled self. “Of course you were. It explains everything. You are always looking around you, figuring out how to set up the people and the events the way you want. Anticipating how the other players will move, respond, behave. It’s a different way to lead than mine but just as valuable.”

  I sit silently for a moment and digest what he’s said, fascinated that he was able to assess me so accurately when I’ve never even thought about myself that way.

  “The men often play a game of fútbol after dinner in the evenings,” he tells me as he stands. “Tonight, the Ybarra men will join them and we’ll see how the playmaker and the goal scorer work together.”

  That night, after dinner, I follow my father out to the big lawn at the front of the house. Half of the security staff is out there, some of them just in shirtsleeves and bare feet, others in shorts and T-shirts. I’ve changed into a pair of track pants, a T-shirt, and tennis shoes. I’m not sure how well I’ll play without cleats, but no one else has them either, so I guess I’m not at a disadvantage. The fact is, my greatest weakness right now is that I haven’t played in years. There were a few guys in the RH who’d screw around with the ball once in a while, but it’s been at least five years since I’ve touched a soccer ball.

  There are several balls lying around on the grass, so I grab one to start juggling just trying to get a little touch back. In a few minutes, I’m dribbling around trees, maneuvering, feeling awkward and stiff when suddenly a flash comes from my right and Ryan skims past, grabbing the ball neatly from me as he runs by. A cheer erupts from the men, and I see my father raise one eyebrow at me in challenge. Without another thought, I charge down the field. Game on.

  It takes me about ten minutes to get back in the swing of things, but once I do, very few of the guys stand a chance. I was a star player as a teen, playing on the top club team in the area and four years on varsity in school. We won State my junior year and probably would have again my senior year if I’d been there to play. Unfortunately, that was another dream interrupted by the INS.

  By the end of the game, I’m dominating the play, feeding my father ball after ball that he then slips past the other team’s goalie. He doesn’t have the power I’m sure he once did, but he’s damned accurate, able to place a ball in the tightest spots you can imagine. It’s possible that the guys are so afraid of Miguel that they
always let him win, but I doubt it. Most of them haven’t had much in the way of formal soccer training, and my father doesn’t lose at many things in life.

  After we’ve all exhausted ourselves entirely, we collapse on the ground, everyone sweaty and happy. Clara sends some of the staff girls out with big jars of ice-cold water and 1horchata, and we all drink up.

  “We work well together,” my father says as he sits near me, wiping sweat from his forehead with his arm.

  “Yeah,” I concede. “We do.”

  “You love this—the fútbol.”

  “I did. A long time ago.”

  “Our true loves never die,” he says. “We can ignore them, forget to nourish them—despise them, even—and they won’t die. They wait patiently for us to find them again. You’ve rediscovered one tonight. Others may be waiting for you as well.”

  With that, he stands, says goodnight to his men, and leaves. I realize there may be depths to my father that I haven’t wanted to see.

  * * *

  1 Horchata = a sweet, rice milk drink

  IT’S been a week since I spoke to Uncle Max, and I finally know what I have to do.

  I remember that my oldest brother Tomás once told me, “Family comes first, but you can’t help your family if you’re not being true to you.” Tomás is a very smart guy, and all of us have looked up to him our whole lives.

  I’ve spent the last seven days trying to imagine what my life will look like without Juan. A few months ago, I had visions of finishing my degree, getting a job working in a nonprofit or going on for a PhD, dating when I met someone worth dating, hopefully finding ‘Mr. Right’ eventually. Now, all I can see are the endless days, months, and years without Juan. The nights of dreaming about him, the hours of worrying about what’s happened to him, the endless days of combing newspapers and the Internet for any scrap of information I can find on him.

  Then, yesterday, something new occurred to me. Not only would my life be moving forward without him, but his would be going on without me as well. The thought of him with other women hit me like a sledgehammer to the heart. Beautiful women, sophisticated women, women who know how to be the mistress of a mobster—or worse, the wife of one. I realized that, if WITSEC is my only option for getting Juan back and I don’t pursue it, Juan’s life will go on without me. Juan will sleep with other women. Juan will live with other women. Juan could marry another woman. The idea that I might open a newspaper someday and see a photo of Juan Martinez, purported leader of the Santos Mexicanos, walking his wife and child into a hotel somewhere is more than I can stand.