by Vivian Gray
“Look, Miss Espinoza – Maria,” he says to me, grimacing as he sets himself to sit upright in his chair, “I appreciate that you’re trying here. But what you’re advising us to do, to go into your father’s compound and take him down – well, it’s dangerous as fuck. And I’m not really aching to go into another situation like the one at the storehouse on Crescent Street.”
“Everything went right on that mission, boss,” Blade interjects. “I’m sorry that you got shanked, seriously, I am, but like I said, that’s on us more than it is on Maria.”
“And you’re sure we can trust her?” Crusher asks Blade, right in front of me, clearly not giving a shit that I’m standing right there. “What I mean is, you’ll vouch for her?”
“I don’t know if I’d go that far, boss, to be perfectly honest.” Blade casts a furtive glance my way and then immediately turns his attention back to Crusher. “But I do think that this is the best shot we’re going to have at taking down Juan Espinoza once and for all. And if Maria here is willing and able to provide that information, we ought to take her up on the offer. It’s one hell of a coup, in my opinion, to score this kind of insider information. Trust me. I’ve heard the way she talks about her old man. Maria doesn’t have any love lost for Juan.”
“It’s true,” I add, not caring that I’m not supposed to be speaking at this point. “And besides, at this point, the only thing I have to lose is you all. You’re my only protection against my father and his men. They’re coming for me. That note—” I point to the note on the table between Crusher and Blade. “—was meant as much for me as it was for Blade or any of you. He wants me to know that he knows I’ve sold out the Espinoza cartel. And he wants me to know that he’s coming for me. He knows I’m here, so I need you to take him out before he does anything rash.”
“Rash, like what?” Crusher asks, bewildered.
“Rash, like come after Blade,” I answer.
“He’s done that already,” Blade notes, pointing to his side, where he took a knife just weeks ago.
“Okay, Miss Espinoza.” Crusher sighs, letting his guard down just a little bit. “Let’s talk turkey. What can you offer us, and what do you want in return?”
I look at Blade, who can’t quite seem to meet my gaze. He and I both know what’s coming next – and it’s not that I want to stay his prisoner.
“I want to be free,” I tell Crusher. “I want to be free to go wherever I want to and do what I want to do. I don’t want to be beholden to the Blood Ravens or the Espinozas or anyone anymore. I want to live my own life. If you can do that for me, I am willing to give you the entire scope of my father’s operation. I will give you manpower movements, where they’re going to be at what times, where all the storehouses are, the works.”
I look from Blade to Crusher, doing my best to avoid looking at Slime, who’s gazing at me lecherously.
“So,” I say finally, after waiting for someone else to speak up, “do we have a deal?”
Chapter Fifteen
Blade
I knew she was going to ask for that. I just knew it. She isn’t interested in staying around with a guy like me. Maria Espinoza wants her freedom more than anything else. Oh, sure, she may have liked hanging around, playing house, even the ridiculously good sex we’ve been having. But at her core, in her heart, all she wants is to be shot of everybody – of the Espinozas, of the Blood Ravens, of everything in this godforsaken town.
I should have known better.
Jesus, what has she done to you? I sound like a little bitch, whining about how this little girl has mistreated me. I should be stronger than this. I should be the guy mad with power. For fuck’s sake, if it weren’t for Slime, I would probably be Crusher’s number two right now. I have no time nor patience for this kind of pansy-ass bullshit.
But the truth of the matter is, it’s how I feel. Maria has made me feel things I didn’t think I ever was going to again after Carmen. And now, she’s going to leave me, just like Carmen did.
Goddammit.
I hate feeling like this. I hate being in this position at all. I don’t like being… ugh… vulnerable. I did that with Carmen. I let myself go, put myself out there, allowed her to get into my blood, into my veins, into my heart. And I got completely screwed over from that. What if Maria is no different? What if she really is plotting against me, working for her dad, ready to pounce at any moment? What do I do then?
The worst part is, I don’t really have time to deal with this crap right now. I have a ton to do, dealing with the Espinoza cartel and all, and I don’t have the time nor the patience to let my emotions get involved. I need to get this done, which means I need to bury my shit and just do it. If there’s something to be figured out with Maria, it’s just going to have to wait.
But I don’t want it to wait. Like I said, I’m not a patient man. I want it all, and I want it now. I want to be done with this Espinoza crap once and for all. I want… I want to hold Maria in my arms, kiss her tenderly, have her ease my troubled mind and tell me that everything is going to be all right. I want to feel settled. I want to feel as free as she does.
As free as she does. That’s more than a little bit of irony, isn’t it? Maria is looking for her own freedom, and that’s what has me spooked to begin with. I’m afraid of what she will do with her freedom. Will she want to be around me? Will she even care at all? Probably not. She will probably want to get as far away from the Blood Ravens as she wants to get from her own family’s gang.
And I can’t say I blame her. We did kidnap her, after all. We put her in a prison in my basement, and while there might have been some good times, and while she might even have some semblance of genuine feeling for me, I’m sure the desire to be rid of all of this shit is even stronger.
But no. I have to stuff down these feelings for now. I have work to do.
I walk beside Crusher to see what Maria is doing. She’s drawing a very, very rudimentary map outlining her father’s compound. There’s a series of three houses on a cul-de-sac that Espinoza members live in, with the central one being Juan’s – and, once upon a time, Maria’s and Carmen’s.
Maria is working from memory, so there’s no way to be certain if what she’s drawing will be totally and completely accurate, but she knows her way around Juan’s house. There’s a handful of guards stationed 24/7 on either side – or, perhaps not guards, but sentries. They’re ready to take out anyone who walks through the doors.
I can’t imagine what it was like for Maria growing up in a house like that. It’s like living in a military zone, with guys with machine guns and semi-automatic weapons and the whole shebang. They’re the type of guys who have several teardrops tattooed near their eyes, the kind who thrive on action and adventure, like they’re constantly in a movie starring Denzel Washington or Bruce Willis.
Then there are the crooked cops who patrol the neighborhood. Maria estimates that they drive around maybe once an hour, checking in on the houses that keep them bankrolled and happy. It drives me absolutely nuts that pigs on the take are a thing we have to deal with now, but it doesn’t surprise me. Crooked cops come with the cartel territory. So, one way or the other, we have to deal with them, too.
Then there’s Juan himself. We’re operating under the assumption that if you cut off the head, the snake dies, and Maria does nothing to disabuse us of that notion – but there’s a catch. The catch is, Juan Espinoza has his underlings who will do anything for him, up to and including taking a bullet for him. That’s what they’re paid, and paid well, to do. So we have that to deal with as well.
All in all, it’s going to take a hell of a lot of doing to get to Juan Espinoza. Maria, I can tell, is doing her best to outline exactly where the weak spots in her father’s security net are, but even with that knowledge, it’s still not going to be easy. I speak up and say that we’re going to have to draw him out – it’s the first thing I’ve contributed for a while, and everybody turns and looks at me.
“We have to
draw him out, you know?” I say. “Look at how the security is around him. He’s got at least five guys around the house at any given time, plus people all around him, plus his own video security system, I presume – is that right, Maria?”
“Yeah,” she replies, “that’s exactly right. It’s set up with monitors in his room so he can keep an eye on everything as necessary.”
“So this motherfucker’s got his house locked up tighter than Fort Knox,” I explain further. “That means that getting in requires basically a golden ticket. You have to be welcomed in to get in. So we have to find some way of drawing him out.”
“And how do we do that?” Crusher asks, grimacing. “How the fuck do you expect us to get Juan Espinoza to come out and confront us? Do we just, what, knock on his door and ask if he wants to come out to play?”
For a moment, I don’t know what to say. Then, miraculously, it comes to me. “That,” I tell Crusher, “is exactly what we do.”
“What are you talking about?” Crusher demands.
“Think about it,” I continue. “We have something he wants, right? We have Maria. Now, we don’t have to use her as bait, not exactly. But we can use the fact that we have her to our advantage. Look, Maria already said her father knows she’s helping us, but that also means his only heir, his only legacy, is out the door. That gives us the upper hand. If he wants Maria back, he’s going to have to come out and talk to us. We won’t give her back unless he comes to negotiate with us.”
“Negotiate?!” Crusher practically explodes. “I don’t want to negotiate with that motherfucker, Blade! I want to end him!”
“Look, what do we want most of all? Do we want to destroy the Espinozas, or do we want to expand our footprint in the industry?”
“Both.”
“Okay, maybe.” I chuckle. “But we can always move on the Espinozas later. Right now, what we need is for them to back the fuck up off of our territories and to stop bugging us.”
“They owe us, though, man,” Crusher says. “They owe you for jumping you out of nowhere, don’t you think?”
“Sure I do, but the fact remains: we have to get what we can while we can get it. And if that means that we have to start by negotiating before we put Juan Espinoza down, then so be it.”
“Put him down?” Maria frowns uncertainly. “You mean you’re going to kill him?”
“Eventually, yeah,” Crusher says honestly.
“Come on, Maria,” I say to her reassuringly. “How did you think this was going to end? Your father has been encroaching on our territory. That’s one of the biggest no-nos there are. You don’t move in on another gang’s territory – ever – unless you know you can take them down. And he clearly believes he can take us down. He’s already tried to kill me, and he’s got to be gunning for Crusher now. We can’t accept that, so we have to take him out. That’s how this works.”
“I… I understand,” Maria murmurs. “I really do. I get why you have to do what you have to do. But you have to understand, too – he’s my father. I never wanted any of this. I just wanted to teach him a lesson, that’s all.”
“And if he learns his lesson, he’s going to back off, and that alone might save his life.”
“Might,” Crusher stresses.
“But we can’t be waiting around for him to make a move,” I continue. “If we’ve got a shot at him, we have to take him down. You do understand that, right? You get why this has to happen this way?”
Slowly, Maria nods. “I do. Honestly, I do. I just…”
Some tears fall down her cheeks. I realize how painful this must be for her. Even though she hates her father – even though she wants to see him stripped of his rank and taken down a peg or two – she still is her father’s daughter at heart. She doesn’t want to see him killed in cold-blood. But that’s where we are, and frankly, she’s going to have to get used to the idea.
It’s at this moment that I decide that no matter what, I believe her. She wouldn’t be crying like this if she was still on the level with her dad – if she was a plant or something like that. She wouldn’t be having these conflicting emotions. The reason she feels the way she feels has got to be because she has mixed feelings on the whole thing – feelings that could only be mixed if she really had been honest about being on our side.
“Okay then,” Crusher says, puffing up his chest, “it’s time we roll out. We’ve got some scouting to do. And then we hit the Espinoza compound tonight.”
“Tonight?” Maria asks, bewildered. “You’re going to try to… to take my dad out… tonight?”
“We’re only going to talk to him tonight,” I tell her. “That’s all we need to do – to start a dialogue. But yes, we have to start tonight. Because if we don’t, he could make a move on us to retaliate for intercepting his shipment of drugs. And that’s a chance that I don’t think any of us is willing to take.”
“But what will you do with me?” Maria practically begs.
Crusher looks at me and rolls his eyes. He knows what I want to say, and he clearly doesn’t want me to do it. But he waves his hand, giving me his implicit permission.
“You’re going to stay here, Maria,” I tell her. “Stay in my house, where it’s safe. By the time we get back, we’ll have an idea of how this is going to go down. By the end of the night, we’ll have this all sorted out, and you’ll be free to go wherever you want to go. If that means getting out of town, so be it.”
“I – I just—” she stammers. She can’t hold herself anymore.
She runs up to me and kisses me full on the mouth. I’m a little embarrassed by the public display of affection in front of the president of my motorcycle club, but I go with it. It feels good to have her in my arms.
“I’ll be back,” I tell her as I walk through the door. “I’ll see you in a little bit.”
***
After the scouting mission, I head back to my apartment. I’m kind of wary walking in, as it looks like the entire place is darkened. Maybe Maria is just taking a nap? I think. I enter through the same front door that I’d left through a few hours before, but she’s not in the living room, where I expect to find her.
I run through the house, searching the bedroom, the bathroom, and even the yard. Nothing. I can’t find her anywhere. I don’t understand why or how, but it looks like I was entirely wrong about Maria. She’s gone.
That bitch.
Chapter Sixteen
Maria
Blade leaves, and I don’t know what to do next, so I sit down in front of the TV and turn on a show. I’m barely even able to pay attention to whatever is going on. What is happening is terrifying. I don’t want my dad to die. I really don’t. No matter what kind of shit we’ve been through – no matter how much I hate him – I have never wanted that.
But I’ve been forced to choose a side in this battle, and I’ve chosen Blade, which means I’ve chosen the Blood Ravens, over the Espinoza cartel. I’ve chosen them over the gang that bears my name.
I can barely believe my dad hasn’t come for me yet. He clearly knows where I am, hence the message that his crony left on the brick that was thrown at Blade’s front door. But he also just as obviously is aware that I’ve been helping the Blood Ravens. What kind of pisses me off is that he doesn’t know if I’m providing them with information voluntarily or under duress.
I mean, for all he knows, they could be torturing me for info, beating me or raping me or mutilating me until I tell them exactly what they want to know. He has no idea what has been going on.
Which leads me to another conclusion: my father doesn’t care about me.
It’s never been clearer to me than it is now that what he loves is power, not his family. If he really cared about me, he would be moving heaven and earth to find me, trying to get me out of this hellish nightmare. I mean, he has to know that they were doing something to me. He knows they kidnapped me. Did he know they had held me naked? Did he know that if it hadn’t been for Blade, I would have been subjected to terrifying
guys like Slime? How much did he know, anyway?
I wasn’t sure, but I believed he had to know something. After all, what the Blood Ravens did to me couldn’t have been much better than the best Dad had ever treated his own prisoners. And I’ll bet Dad had treated many of his prisoners much, much worse.
That’s the thing that scares me about this whole situation. My dad knows exactly what the Blood Ravens are up to. But he provoked this war. He knew that would make me a target, but he still did it. What is wrong with him? Why is he like this? Why doesn’t he care at all about his family? It’s hard to say, but I know that deep down – if Crusher and Blade and the rest of them do end up taking him out – I’ll feel a certain sense of relief. At least I won’t have the Espinoza cartel hanging over my head anymore.
I sit here, all this running through my mind when I hear a car pull up outside the house. I presume it’s just heading somewhere else, next door or maybe across the street, so I don’t think anything of it. I just sit, kind of zoning out on a show about finding luxury condos in the Mediterranean, and I feel my eyelids get heavy.
