The Guzzi Legacy: Vol 1

by Bethany-Kris

  They wouldn’t go far.

  Chris let his hand drift over the shuddering coat of the animal before he patted it. “Merci,” he told the horse. A quick slap and a shout to go from him, and the horse took off, hooves beating against the ground fast to get far away from the noise.

  More bullets hit the side of the house.

  Fuck.

  Chris darted for the back porch, flinging himself over the railing and rolling to the back door that looked like someone kicked it open. The dead body in the hallway—a Lòpez guard he recognized—was a grisly sight he stepped over as he headed deeper into the back of the house. His gun was already back in his hands and aimed in front of him. He didn’t put on as much tactical gear as the rest of the team, like covering his face, because he had plans here.

  He wanted Jorge to understand.

  He never said whether he would kill the man to Abril—it felt more like an unspoken agreement between the two. Jorge needed to go. Not only for what he did to his wife and child, but because Abril needed no question to her place here once it was all said and done.

  A man popped his head around the corner, down the hall. Near the staircase that led into the upstairs of the home. They used this house for the guards, and servants on the property. He didn’t recognize the man’s face, although even if he had, he still would have fired.

  The more gone, the better.

  Less work when the team got here.

  Chris pulled back the trigger before the man even realized what was happening and stepped over the corpse when the noise started upstairs. The shouts in Spanish, orders, he thought, although he wasn’t sure.

  Didn’t matter.

  He recognized that voice.

  Jorge.

  A spray of bullets came in through a broken window five feet to his left, peppering the wall with more bullet holes. It looked like swiss cheese.

  Damn.

  Chris took the stairs two at a time, keeping that gun in front of him and ready for whatever was coming next. He took no time at all to find where the group upstairs hid themselves in a back bedroom with three large windows. With the glass gone, they were using the windows to rest their own assault weapons.

  Four, he counted.

  One glanced over his shoulder.

  Chris grinned.

  It was like staring into a fucking mirror.

  Corrado.

  “Brother,” he murmured.

  Corrado returned his smile. “Chris.”

  Their quiet exchange drew the attention of the other three men. Two, guards for the family that Chris recognized, and the other ... Jorge. Corrado was quick to lean back along the windowsill, readjusting the aim of his gun before he pulled back the trigger twice in quick succession. Just like that, the two guards were done.

  Jorge turned with his gun already aimed for Christopher. His eyes widened, shifting between Chris in the doorway, and Corrado on the other side of the room.

  “Figured it out yet?” Chris asked, his own gun ready, blinking red light from the sights nailed to the spot between Jorge’s eyes. “Meet my twin. The Marcellos say hello, but me? I only want to say fuck you.”

  He pulled back the trigger.

  He didn’t care to let the man talk.

  Jorge just needed to die.

  Chris watched the bullet rip through the man’s head, sending him flying back into the windowsill where he’d been standing to shoot. His body damn near flipped out the window, but instead, hung there.

  “How far are they away?” he heard his twin ask.

  “Not far now, I imagine. And thanks.”

  Chris looked Corrado’s way.

  His twin shrugged.

  “Wasn’t a big thing,” Corrado murmured.

  That was a lie.

  This was a huge thing.

  “Sometimes, let me watch your back,” Corrado said. “It can’t always be you looking out for me, man. That’s all.”

  Chris nodded. “Sometimes. We have to wait, now.”

  “For what?”

  “The white flag.”

  A false surrender.

  • • •

  “Alto—para!”

  The command cut through the air when a figure, womanly in her shape with a white rag held high, emerged through the smoke in the middle of the dirt road. With her head tilted down, the darkness behind her form made her quite a sight with the gray cloud lingering in the air.

  The shouts for the firing to stop came again, louder the second time. Through the broken windows of the house, the men of the García cartel passed verbal orders between them, one at a time.

  Stop.

  Stop the firing.

  Halt.

  Repeatedly until the bullets stopped flying, and a silence settled over the ranch. Oh, there was still noise, sure. Hooves clattering in the distance, and the crackle of flames from buildings that were still burning to the ground.

  The war, though?

  All at once, it stopped.

  “Where is Samuel?” Chris asked.

  Corrado glanced his way. “What?”

  “The other brother—Samuel Lòpez.”

  “Never saw him.”

  Chris wasn’t even sure his brother knew what the man looked like, but perhaps Jorge had been so distracted in the gunfight he’d forgotten about his other sibling. It didn’t matter as he had other things to focus on right now.

  Like the woman outside.

  Abril kept her head tilted down low as she walked the road, one slow step at a time. Still, she kept her hand and that white rag high, a clear signal that the Lòpezs were giving up. During his time in the house, he pinned down where the leader of the other side had been hiding out—in a barn that didn’t burn—because the García men flanked the structure from all directions, never turning back to retreat, but only facing forward to keep anyone from getting too close.

  Chris hadn’t been wrong.

  The man that emerged from the barn, hands free of a weapon, dressed differently than the rest. He carried himself differently even in his steps—confident and sure. A war had been raging all around him, and yet the man’s suit looked tailored to his form and without even a speck of dust on the dark fabric.

  He tipped his head back as he came closer to Abril, a pleased smirk curving his lips as though he just caught his prey.

  “Abril,” the man—Roberto García, the man Abril would have to marry through an arrangement made by her father—called about thirty feet away from the approaching woman, “Thank you for helping me.”

  Abril said nothing.

  She kept walking.

  “What’s happening?” Corrado asked.

  Chris made a noise under his breath. “With her, you never know.”

  It wasn’t a lie.

  The García men gathered behind their leader, allowing Chris a quick count of the remaining men on their side of things. About twenty, he thought. How many were here before?

  Twenty wasn’t a large number though.

  Easily handled.

  Twenty also wasn’t the entire cartel, but Chris bet Roberto had been smart enough to bring what would be more than he needed to strong-arm the ranch under his control. His mistake to assume, however.

  He’d learn soon enough.

  Abril and Roberto stood face to face before they spoke again. Abril stared up at him, her face a mask of nothingness. She gave nothing away—the calm in the eye of a hurricane.

  Chris thought ... God help the souls who come up against her.

  She would be a force.

  “You’ve given me all I wanted, princesa,” Roberto said clearly, his voice traveling over the silent ranch to reach even Chris’s spot in the window, “I have the cartels, and I have you.”

  Abril laughed light and sweet, her lips curving salaciously at what he implied. “Is that really what you think?”

  Roberto stiffened. “I don’t—”

  “I only needed to make this easy,” Abril interjected, her gaze burning as she dropped that white rag
to the ground, “and round you up like dogs.”

  Roberto took a step back.

  Abril dropped to the ground, body flat on the dirt as a line of figures came out of the smoky darkness where she first emerged. The team arrived, it seemed, and Chris finally figured out where Samuel Lòpez had gone.

  It looked like he’d been waiting on his sister. Everyone had loyalties. Rarely did others know what they were though.

  The Garcías made it easy on the team by gathering behind their leader. Samuel fired his AK first, peppering Roberto García with at least fifteen bullets before the man’s bloodied body fell back to the ground.

  Abril covered her head.

  The team moved in.

  Chris looked to Corrado. “Time to go.”

  “We should stay out of Mexico for a while, huh?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  Most certainly.

  19.

  Valeria thought she knew what exhaustion was, but she had no idea until she was in the backseat of a town car, driving through dark streets, and feeling like if she closed her eyes, she would instantly fall asleep. She didn’t know where Alessio was driving to, and he didn’t answer many questions once he had guided their boat to a port where he paid a waiting man a bribe to look the other way.

  Still, Valeria forced her eyes to stay peeled open even as her daughter had fallen asleep with her head in her mother’s lap. The kitten—she still wasn’t sure how Maria snuck the cat into her bag—slept happily on the floor of the car near her feet, unbothered by the occasional swaying of the vehicle.

  “Not long now,” she heard Alessio say from the front.

  “Oh?”

  “We’ll be staying at a hotel for just long enough to get the jet in the air.”

  Valeria glanced up, confused. “The jet?”

  “Compliments of your friend. They also brought papers along—forged, mind you—that will get the two of you through customs without problems when the time comes. We need to keep moving. The others will follow, but through their own plans.”

  She still didn’t understand.

  Her tired brain again.

  “They will be okay, right?” she asked.

  Alessio’s gaze darted to the rear-view mirror, meeting hers for a moment before he put his attention back on the road ahead of them where it needed to be. “They better be.”

  His underlying threat couldn’t be missed.

  It reminded Valeria of what she had heard Chris say about Alessio to her daughter. Spouse was the word he used, but to her, he had also told her that married was not the right way to describe his twin’s relationship.

  “How long have you been with Corrado?”

  Alessio’s stare darted back to the mirror. “Straight to the point, aren’t you?”

  “I need to talk or I will fall over.”

  “It’s okay to sleep.”

  “It’s okay to talk, too.”

  The man chuckled. “Many years—we have been together many years. However, we have only been with Ginevra for a little over a half a year.”

  Valeria blinked.

  He laughed.

  “Wait, it’s three of you? Together? All of you?”

  A part of her had thought Chris’s twin was gay. This man suggested something else, with an extra twist, and she had to process that to respond appropriately.

  Alessio nodded. “Poly. New concept?”

  She thought about that for a moment.

  “Well, if it works for you.”

  “It does,” he murmured. “For us, it is perfect.”

  “That’s what counts.”

  Silence drifted through the car for the rest of the drive. She was grateful that Alessio had been telling the truth, and the hotel wasn’t far away. Another ten minutes of driving, and he pulled the vehicle into the underground garage.

  She would have carried Maria inside, but Alessio stepped forward to take the girl before she could even try to get her out of the car.

  Valeria wouldn’t say it out loud, but she doubted she had the strength or energy to carry her daughter inside the building. She was happy to follow behind Alessio as he strolled through the main lobby of the hotel as though he knew where he was going, and he had been here before.

  Maybe he had.

  How long were they planning this?

  Valeria knew better than to ask.

  It didn’t matter.

  She was free.

  “We should get a call soon,” he said as they stepped into an elevator.

  “From who?”

  “Whoever is still alive at the ranch.”

  Valeria stiffened.

  A cold dread slipped down her spine.

  Alessio chuckled, passing her a look. “Mmm, and now you know what I have been thinking for the last several hours. It was me, or Corrado, though, and since he is the only one who looks like Christopher, it made sense for him to go in. Which meant, no matter what, I had to stay behind ... our—Ginevra, well, at least one of us has to go home. That’s what we promised her. This time, it’s me.”

  Valeria smiled, as faint as it was. “Him, too, I’m sure.”

  “He better.”

  She heard it loud and clear in his tone—that threat again. Only this time, she realized he wasn’t only making it for the woman in his life, but because he loved someone back at the ranch, too. She understood that feeling all too well.

  It ached in her chest, too.

  Soon, the elevator reached the floor that Alessio had chosen, the structure jumping before the doors slid open to expose a hallway that led to only one door at the end. At her questioning glance, he shrugged.

  “Marcellos have expensive taste,” he said. “And he wanted the best for his wife while she waited. I guess she didn’t want to stay in New York ... she wanted to see you as soon as she could.”

  Valeria froze. “Do you mean—”

  “Val? Oh, my God, Val!”

  Haven.

  Valeria found her best friend coming out of the door down the hall. The person who had helped to protect her for years when she was hiding from Jorge, who helped to raise her daughter ... the woman who helped to teach Maria how to speak English, who read her daughter nighttime stories when Valeria had to work late nights, and couldn’t be there to put her child to bed.

  Haven.

  She hadn’t been able to think much about her friend after Jorge caught and took her back if only because she didn’t want to draw attention to Haven. God forbid the cartel go after Haven when all she had done was help.

  “Haven,” Valeria said, her voice faint, locking gazes with the blonde-headed woman down the hall. “Why did you do all of this for me?”

  Haven, in her skinny jeans and silk blouse, tall and confident, head high because she had always been proud, came forward with arms already opened. “It was nothing ... nothing you wouldn’t have done for me. I’m sorry it took so long.”

  She shook her head.

  “Don’t be sorry for that ... don’t be.”

  It was all she said before her beautiful friend came all the way down the hall to wrap her in a hug that reminded her of home. That was the thing—Valeria never had a home for so many years, and then she stumbled upon this woman. Who gave her a place to live, fed her, taught her how to survive, and helped her raise her child.

  She adored Haven.

  Loved her so fucking much.

  Valeria let out a hard breath when her friend’s arms tightened harder around her frame, but it was so fucking good, too. Down the hall, a man came to stand in the hotel’s doorway room. His familiar face, still stone cold, and his frame, filling up the doorway as though he should be on a defensive line for a football team and not the head of a major crime family, watched them from a distance without intruding.

  Andino.

  Haven’s new husband.

  Valeria just kept hugging her friend.

  “Come on,” Haven murmured in her ear, “we’ll get food into you. We have enough time for that before the jet will
be ready for us to leave. It’s not safe to stay here—it won’t be long before people find out where we are. Apparently, bribes only last so long in this country before someone else’s bribe becomes more interesting. Maybe we can wake Maria up so she can eat, too? I miss her so much.”

  She nodded, but Haven still hadn’t let go.

  That was okay.

  Home almost seemed like home again.

  Except it was missing one person, now.

  Chris.

  • • •

  The plan to remove Valeria and Maria from Mexico was in motion long before Chris came on the scene, she came to learn on the long flight back to New York. It was how they would retrieve the two from the clutches of Jorge and the rest of the cartel they needed help with.

  Removing them from the country?

  Protecting them after?

  Easy, Andino explained.

  Valeria had no reason not to believe them, although she didn’t think it was as easy as the man said in his dismissive way, but it still stunned her. They only stayed at the hotel long enough to get food in their stomachs before they were on the road again. A Marcello-owned jet waited at a private gate for them to board at an international airport with agents that barely glanced at the fake passports Andino gave her.

  Although, they looked kindly upon the envelop of cash Andino passed to them when he walked through first. It worked the same way when they entered the states after landing in New York at a small airport outside of the city where apparently, the Marcellos had connections and didn’t mind pulling them to get their business handled.

  It all happened so fast.

  Simple.

  Valeria still felt like she was floating.

  Once in New York, they moved to a hall of suites in the Manhattan Waldorf where she found more people waiting. She tried to keep track of her daughter, but let Maria run freely amongst the rooms with Haven when she figured out that the woman looking her in the face was Chris’s mother.

  How did she know that?

  Alessio.

  “Cara,” Alessio said, smiling as he leaned in to kiss the pretty, red-headed woman with lines around her eyes that appeared whenever she grinned. “No phone calls from your boys yet, but they told me some phones ended up in the water on the way down the ladder.”

  Cara frowned. “As long as they didn’t end up in the water.”