by S. Massery
I shrug and tilt my head back. “So, Spike, how’s work?”
“Titillating,” he replies dryly. “They weren’t too happy with my abrupt vacation time.”
“I know the feeling,” I mutter. “Mason, you?”
“I left the company in good hands while I went on this little adventure. Business is good.”
“Griffin?”
He’s quiet for a minute. I look over at him. A shadow has settled on his face.
“You’re going to need care for a few days. Once you’re settled, I leave for Europe.”
All of us are shocked into silence.
Finally, Spike musters, “Why the hell are you going to Europe?”
“That’s where most of my business is,” he says. “The people are a bit more superstitious. There’s a more solid underground network. And while traveling between the countries is easier, the countries’ law enforcements don’t always communicate.”
“What is it that you do again?” Spike asks.
Griffin chuckles. “I’m a medic. I specialize in trauma, which is great for the people you are trying to bring down in your day job. Sometimes I work with spies or people who can’t go to local hospitals. The rich pay well. The other people… Charity.”
I recognize what that’s worth. He’s doing his part to wipe his ledger clean. He does it much quieter than me, with my hero complex, rescuing damsels in distress from oncoming wildfires.
No. We’re all trying to make amends in our own way.
Spike doesn’t reply. He doesn’t get it—all he’s ever done is be a good guy. Not like us.
23
DELIA
I wear all black and feel like a ninja.
It’s been three days since I got back to Vegas, but tonight is the first night where it feels like I’m going to be gaining valuable intel.
My first stop is my old home. I guess it’s still my home, but it feels too foreign. I race upstairs to Father’s study and flip open the folders with the funeral home paperwork, the cemetery plot information, copies of my father’s and stepmother’s social security cards and birth certificates. And there, in small font, is my stepmother’s given name: Margaret Elvira. I had been searching for a connection, almost subconsciously demanding threads to be connected. She was in on it. She was going to walk out of that house alive, and it was because James would never have killed his sister.
The fact that she didn’t...
I close the folders, leaving them exactly where they are, and go to meet Edgar.
He’s sitting at the diner bar, a cup of coffee in front of him. I look around. It’s surprisingly full for so late at night, and slide onto the open stool next to him.
“Busy place,” I comment.
A waitress comes over and smiles at me. “Coffee?”
“Yes, please,” I say.
“It’s always busy,” Edgar says, stirring his coffee idly. “They have free Wi-Fi, and the local college kids come here for the pie. And to study.”
Half of the people are younger than me, and most of them are on laptops. A good percentage of those have dessert and mugs beside them. “Hmm,” I answer.
The waitress sets a mug in front of me, then the creamer and sugar. She pours the dark liquid from a steaming pot. “Anything else, dear?”
“No, thank you,” I murmur.
I eye Edgar out of the side of my eye.
“Yes,” he says to my unspoken question. “A quiet place would’ve drawn more attention to us. Imagine if we were the only two people in here, and we chose to sit next to each other? Anyone who walked by would talk.”
“But now it looks like I had no choice but to sit next to you?” I ask.
He smiles into his mug.
“Where are we going?”
He pulls out car keys and sets them on the counter. “There’s a shipping company a mile from here. We have to be there at ten.”
I glance at my watch. “What are we going to do for an hour?”
“I’m going to tell you what I know,” he says.
I sip my coffee and stare at the wall as he tells me what his father has done recently. I don’t care about half of it—trades and shipments and whatnot—until he mentions weapons.
“That’s our division,” I cut in. My father always said not to incriminate myself. Here I am, doing a fine job of that.
He shakes his head. “Not anymore.”
What the hell is going on?
“Does your father know that James is planning on declaring war?”
“Not officially,” he answers. “Can’t say I’m surprised. Dad didn’t deliver.”
“Deliver what?”
“You. Dead.”
I tell him about my day.
I woke up to Alexa banging on my door. I opened it, bleary-eyed, and she informed me that James was calling a family meeting. I wanted to snort, but her serious expression stopped me. So I followed along as Oliver, Alexa, and I piled into her car and drove the short distance to James’s house.
I stuck to the back of the room and watched as James interacted with thirty of my closest cousins. Nearly all of them wore black in mourning. Rachel and Sorella were both there with purple scarves wrapped around their shoulders to signify that they were now widows.
“You haven’t cried,” Lauren said in my ear.
I tilted my head.
“Your father and uncles died, and you haven’t cried. You don’t seem remorseful at all.”
“Is that your main worry?” I asked in a low voice.
Her blonde hair was coiled in a braided bun on top of her head. She was the definition of put together.
“That I haven’t cried in front of you?”
“Have you, though?”
“Have I what?” My temper danced along a razor-sharp edge.
“Cried,” she snapped.
“Of course I’ve cried.” For once, I didn’t have to lie. The first two weeks after their brutal murder, I had a constant flow of tears. I sobbed until I fell asleep every night. I wasn’t ready to take it off the back burner, even now that I was home. There were still things to be done before I could sit down and focus on silly emotions.
Yet my words soothed Lauren. Her shoulders lowered, her face relaxed.
“And Delia has returned to us,” James said in a booming voice.
I started to step back, but Lauren grabbed my shoulders and held me in place. I cast a look at her, but her gaze was on James.
Everyone turned in my direction. Some surprise rippled around the room, some empathy, some hurt. I felt every single pair of eyes like a brand, and doubt reared up inside me. How am I supposed to lead them?
My father brought me along on his top-secret missions for what? Nothing. He tried to teach by example, but his examples were hard to decipher. They boiled down to:
Kill those who betray you.
Never trust someone with nothing to lose.
Family is business.
Nothing like a good pep talk from dear old dad.
James led the meeting, telling everyone about how I was so stricken by grief and, fearing for my life, I ran. He was so worried for me, so upset that the Castillos put a bounty on my head. People objected to that, murmurs rustling out of the dust.
I seethed while he painted me in a weak light, but there was nothing I could do. Lauren held my hand and ran her thumb over my knuckles.
And while I silently seethed, he told my family about the retribution coming to the Castillos. He talked about a new business venture, but he didn’t illuminate what it was. He only promised the family new opportunities. Family.
I tell Edgar, “He talked to them like he was one of them.” I can’t keep the disgust from my voice. “What is this new business venture?”
Edgar frowns. “What you see tonight—it’s not new. I don’t know what he’s talking about.”
James promised revenge to Rachel and Sorella, who watched him with red eyes. He promised war to be brought down on the Castillos.
“Hel
l is about to rain down on your family unless we can stop this.”
He looks at me. “You used to be ruthless.”
I cock my head. “When?”
“When we met for the first time.” He drains his mug and tosses money on the counter.
I follow him out the door, down the block to a blue sedan. He gets in the driver’s seat, and I slide into the passenger’s side, waiting for him to elaborate.
“Sixteen years old, you closely resembled your mother.”
I blink at him. “How do you know what my mother looked like?”
He pulls out into traffic. “Our mothers used to be friends,” he says quietly. “There’s a picture of them together in the attic. I used to play up there as a child to forget that my father liked to go on sprees of violence when he’d been drinking. It was a safe place, especially after my mom left.”
Just another thing Edgar and I have in common. I’m tempted to reach out and take his hand, to touch his shoulder, anything to offer comfort. In the end, though, I sit in silence and wait for him to speak again.
“Dad packed up everything of hers and stored it in the attic. I think he secretly hoped she would come back someday, and he wanted to be able to say he held on to her things. Anyway—that’s how I know what she looks like. It was one of the only photos I had of my own mother smiling into a camera.”
I nod.
“Anyway, we met, what, was it your sixteenth birthday party?”
“Yeah,” I murmur.
“My father wanted to do a show of good faith, so we stopped by. It was so tense when he rang the doorbell and your father answered. I thought I was going to shit my pants.” He chuckles. “We had bought a present for you. You know—the good faith thing. So your dad let us in, and we stood in the kitchen waiting for you. When you came in and your father said our names, your expression dropped. I got chills.”
“You said we didn’t have to be enemies,” I say.
“That was because I knew you’d destroy me,” he admits. “Sure, we’re older. Wiser. I’ve learned a thing or two—”
“Oh, have you?”
He rolls his eyes. “Business, women, it’s all the same.”
I snort. “Most definitely not, Edgar. Jesus, no wonder you’re still single.”
“Nah, I just haven’t found the right girl yet.”
I shrug and motion for him to continue.
“My dad and I got in the car, and he said to me, ‘Watch yourself around that one, son.’” He does a great imitation of his dad’s voice.
Well enough that I shiver.
“He saw the coldness in your eyes. But now? It’s gone.”
I sigh. “I can be ruthless when I want to be,” I argue.
“You’d kill a man?”
I picture Jorge’s man drawing the knife across my father’s throat. The feel of his blood on my skin. It’s James who is responsible. It’s James who will pay. “Yes.”
Edgar doesn’t turn into the main entrance of the shipyard. He kills the headlights and pulls around back, behind the building, and carefully backs into a tight spot between a truck and a junk car. He unbuckles. “No matter what happens, you have to stay in the car.”
I have my gun. I have an extra magazine in my pocket and a suppressor in my other pocket. I don’t answer, because I can’t make any promises to him tonight, not unless he wants to make me a liar.
“We should come up with a plan,” he says.
I glance over at him. Half of his face is in shadow.
“They’re bound to get suspicious. What if they suspect you?”
“Suspect me of finding out about… whatever this is?” I cross my arms over my chest. “I don’t know.”
He chuckles. “None of them are acting weird?”
Okay, they have been. I exhale. “What sort of plan?”
“If we miss a meeting with each other, we investigate.”
I nod. “Sure. More than just a cursory drive-by.”
He takes out a receipt from his wallet and scribbles an address on the back. “If I go missing, they’d probably take me here.”
I tear the paper in half and write down the address for the warehouse, handing it back to him. I tuck his address in my pocket. “They’d take me there. But I’d probably be dead before you got to me.”
That kills the mood.
We lapse into silence. Eventually, a van swings into the yard, headlights illuminating a sweeping arc. It stops next to one of the semi-trailer trucks. All of a sudden, there’s a flurry of motion. The back of the trailer is shoved open from the inside, and two men hop to the ground.
“I can’t see,” I mutter. Anxiety about being left in the dark—literally and figuratively—twists my stomach into knots.
Edgar wordlessly hands me a pair of binoculars.
Two more men get out of the van. The driver glances in my direction, and my heart freezes. Santino. He’s my cousin, two years younger than me. I haven’t seen him since I returned, but he appears haggard. I wonder if this job, whatever it is, weighs on his soul.
“What the hell?” I whisper.
The back of the van opens, and the men lift out huge, heavy bags. One of the bags squirms.
Nausea rips through me. I glance at Edgar, whose lips are pressed together in a flat line. He seems similarly stricken.
“What’re in the bags?” I ask him.
“Girls,” he whispers.
“Fugitives paying to get out of the country?” Damn it, my voice is too hopeful.
The hope shatters when Edgar just looks at me.
I yank my hood up and slip out of the car before Edgar can stop me. The four men have finished loading the girls into the truck. They don’t notice me as I wind my way through the shadows toward them.
Never have I felt such heavy disappointment.
This must be akin to what my father felt when he slit my ex-boyfriend’s throat. Every awful, dark emotion is rising in me. The hood gives me an ounce of anonymity, but I know it won’t help me now.
One man crosses behind the van. I whistle. It’s a sharp, clear noise that cuts through the night, and the man raises his head. Richie. Uncle Angelo’s oldest son.
“Get out of here, vermin,” he spits in my direction.
I forgive him for that, brushing off the name because he can’t see who I am.
I raise the gun. It glints off the low light of the moon, and Richie’s mouth drops open.
Elton was easy to kill. He deserved it.
Richie… He’s always been nice to me. The oldest of Rachel’s sons, with a dark sense of humor and an unfailing nose for cherry pie. He scooped me up on his shoulders when I was little and carried me around like I was a princess atop my noble steed. He’s Santino’s older brother, which just solidifies in my mind that this is family business.
I lower the hood so he can see my face.
“Delia?” he asks. “What—?”
I pull the trigger. The suppressor that I screwed onto my gun moments ago masks the noise, but it’s still a gunshot. I get him in the shoulder, close to his heart, and he sinks to his knees.
A distant cousin is the next one to step into my sights. His mouth drops open when he sees me, but he’s dead before he can utter a word. The driver appears next. I shoot him without hesitating, even though I want to scream at him, to demand where he would’ve taken the girls, and how many others he’s brought to shipping terminals in California or Mexico.
“Delia,” Santino calls.
I find him crouched for cover by the truck. I aim the gun at him, but I’m shooting to kill. Fury overtakes me.
“How could you, Santino?” I demand. “This family has never—”
“This family has always done this, you idiot,” he growls. “Your father thought you were too weak to know the truth. The Moretti Family does what needs to be done.”
He laughs from his hiding place, but I can see his eyes on me.
“Honestly, Delia, half of your inheritance is blood money.”
&nb
sp; I barely register the gun in his hand, the way he raises it at me without hesitation.
An unsuppressed gunshot cracks the night wide open, and I stagger back, feeling my chest. It’s as I feared—straight into shock. My heel hits a rock, and I fall on my ass. My hands are still trying to find the wound, and that’s when I realize there’s no blood.
Santino slumps to the ground, the gun clattering from his hand to the packed dirt.
The girls scream. Their voices echo and blend together inside the container.
I look around wildly, half convinced Jackson has saved me once again. Joy and awful, thick dread war within me. When Edgar steps out from behind the truck, his hands up in the air like he’s surrendering, the joy dies.
“Oh my god,” I murmur, staring at the bodies around me. Two cousins I loved. A stranger employed to get the girls across borders. A distant cousin, but family all the same. I killed them quickly, easily.
Do not throw up, Delia.
The truck’s back door has been closed but not locked. The screaming is half muffled. Tortured. It breaks me open.
Edgar helps me up. “We need to leave,” he says. “We’ll call the police on our way home. Let them help those girls.”
I start to shake my head, but Edgar grips my chin and forces me to meet his gaze.
“Now’s not your moment of grace,” he says to me.
If not now, when?
What was it I had said to Jackson? I need to see their faces. The men who attacked us in Wyoming weren’t cousins of mine—they were Castillo men. I didn’t even have a chance to kill them. But these men? My own blood was spilled tonight.
I let Edgar lead me to the car. My whole body tingles on the edge of numbness.
“This is our secret,” he mutters. “We were never fucking here. Got it? Shit, Delia—”
“Ruthless enough for you?” I ask, tipping my head back. I’m angry at him for bringing me here without some sort of warning. I’m furious at myself for what I’ve done. I almost can’t believe this has been going on beneath my nose for years. And because my father thought I was too weak? Because I asked him to stay out of that business when I was younger and he agreed—but he lied and didn’t want to hurt me?
I don’t have answers.
