by Rebel Hart
“Have you lost your fucking mind?” I barked. “You think I turned on our family? What about me would ever suggest that I’d do that. This family is all I fucking have!”
He looked up at me. “They said—”
“I don’t give a fuck what they said. They’re our enemy. They lied.” I was acutely aware of the fact that I needed to be taking my own advice, but I ignored that for the time being. “That’s all it takes. Someone you don’t know or trust tells you I’m up to no good, and you’re pulling your gun on me? Just like that?”
Baylor got to his feet, dazed a little, but standing nonetheless. “They knew how the tech worked that I install on the machines. They didn’t guess.”
That was a hell of a point, so I calmed a little in my anger as well. “I… may have told Mari that.”
He just continued to glare at me. “So you can see how I’d be a little confused about your loyalties.”
“Mom knows I’m taking an honest route with her. I installed the tech on her phone so we can listen in. I had to say whatever it took to convince her she had the upper hand.”
“Uh-huh, and what have you learned?” he asked. “What pearls of wisdom have you gleaned from all this?”
It was rare that I felt embarrassed, but now I was feeling both. Mari had played me so her brothers could make a move while we weren’t looking, and her timing leaving my apartment was a little strange as well. It could have been a full-blown setup and the brothers were meant to kill us for all I know. I let the chemistry between us distract me from what I was supposed to be doing. If I’d just killed Mari like I was supposed to, my mother could have already secured the MasCat deal and all of this would be moot anyway.
No matter how I sliced it, this was my fault.
“You’re right. I’ve gained nothing.”
That seemed to deflate Baylor, who was gearing up for a fight. “What the hell is going on? I thought you would have run into that casino firing first and asking questions later. You wanted to leave? Why?”
Because I didn’t want to get into a fight with Mari’s younger brothers. “I don’t know. I thought de-escalating may have been better. I’m trying not to end up all over the news again.”
“Is that all?” His gaze was knowing.
“Yes. That’s all.”
“If they’re gaining ground, we can’t waste anymore time on MasCat. We need to get the nail in that coffin now before they have too much control over additional casinos on the strip.”
“I know,” I said.
“Do you?” Baylor barked back. “Or were you really holed up in here for hours with Mariana Westun like you two are just a couple of crazy kids at the beginning of a new relationship.”
Honestly, for a little while there, that was what it felt like. Clearly, based on the way Mari jumped up and ran out, I was the only one. “I was, but I won’t make that mistake again.”
“I have a responsibility to protect our family, Bryce,” Baylor said in a stone serious voice. “Maybe Ma knows you’re being honest, but I’m certain she doesn’t know you’re giving the Westuns a play-by-play on how our tech works.”
“I didn’t give her a play-by-play. I gave her a layman’s explanation and told her I don’t really know how it works.”
“Maybe you need to just admit that you can’t handle this. You get cocky and start making mistakes. That’s not new for you.” He closed in on me. “I don’t want to have to bury you because you screwed all of this up again. You need to do something to seal the MasCat deal, immediately, or I’m going to Mom and having you leashed again. You’re much less of a risk to us and yourself if you’re just… some rich guy who likes to party.”
As angry as hearing that made me, after the mistakes I’d made, I couldn’t argue.
“If I pull off MasCat, will you back off?”
“Yeah,” he said. “But then we’re gonna need to discuss if you should keep going, or just admit that this line of work isn’t for you.”
16
Mari
Walking into my house, I had half-planned to just go straight to my bedroom and sleep off my frustration, but when I walked past the dining room I noticed both my parents and both my brothers sitting around the table. They all had serious, grim expressions on their faces and the moment I appeared, they all turned to look at me as if I had a bomb strapped to my chest.
“Is it something in my teeth?” I asked.
“Come in,” my father said simply, then motioned to, not my normal chair, but the seat at the end of the table. “Sit down.” My eyes flicked down to the chair, then back up to him, and I walked into the dining room. Instead of sitting down at that chair, I tried to walk to my normal seat next to my mother, but my father immediately started to click his teeth. “No, no. Mariana. I’d prefer to have a good look at you.”
He nodded again to the seat at the end of the table, and I knew in that moment that something bad must have happened. This chair sat directly under one of the dining room’s light bulbs, making it an uncomfortably hot spot to sit in. My father only made people sit there if he needed to, as he so eloquently put it, ‘get a good look at them.’
I was being asked to sit in the literal hot seat.
“Okay.”
My brothers, who normally had my back on at least some level, were both also looking at me like I was some sort of family traitor. Everything I’d done with my life—absolutely everything—had been to my family’s benefit, so the source of the random treatment, I wasn’t sure.
I cleared my throat as I sat down in the seat and looked out at my family nervously. Part of me wanted to start the conversation, but I decided it was in my best interest to just wait quietly. Anything I said, large or small, could be misconstrued without me fully knowing what it was I’d done to put my family in such a place. I folded my hands on top of the table and took turns locking eyes with each family member, trying to discern what the problem was, but getting very little from any of them.
Finally, my father took a sip of the wine he was drinking and then looked across the table. “How are you, Mariana?”
I nodded, swallowing hard. “I’m okay.”
“What have you been up to these past couple days?” he asked.
It felt like a trap, but I hadn’t been getting into anything that my family didn’t know about. “I spent some time with Bryce Misterro yesterday.”
“Just yesterday?” he asked.
Was all of this just because my dad found out I had sex? I figured it was something he realized long before this moment. “Um… no. I actually left his place not too long ago.”
“You stayed the night?”
I was nibbling the inside of my cheek out of pure nervousness. “I did… It wasn’t my intention, but I fell asleep.”
My father lifted his eyebrows briefly as he took another gulp of his wine. “I don’t think I’ve ever spent the night with anyone I wasn’t fully comfortable with.” Then he looked at me again. “I assume you didn’t sleep on the couch?”
My eyes shifted to my mom, hoping for some aid, but she had her gaze narrowed in my direction. “Um. I mean… are you just looking for gory details, Pop, or what?”
“I just asked you a simple question.”
“No, okay? No, I didn’t sleep on the couch. I fell asleep in his bed. He was also there. We woke up there as well. Is there…” I let out an awkward laugh. “Is there a point to this very uncomfortable line of questioning or are you just trying to embarrass me?”
“We had a run-in with the Misterros not too long ago,” TJ said. “Bryce came running in after Baylor had been there for quite some time, and pulled his gun immediately.”
“Okay, well that’s not all that weird for him. He’s a fucking tornado. We’ve been over this.”
“It wasn’t the fact that he pulled his gun that was strange,” Marcos said. “It was the fact that, when we told them to back off…” He looked at me. “He tried to convince Baylor to leave without an issue.”
I re
coiled at that. “Wait… really? He… He tried to leave peacefully?”
“Was willing to respect the turf lines and everything,” TJ said. “Strange that… for someone like Bryce Misterro who's been stomping all over everyone’s territories since his family first got here. Even his brother seemed bewildered by his sudden pacifism.”
I hated that the tiniest bit of me was happy about that. What other reason would he have to do it besides not wanting to make trouble with TJ and Marcos because they’re my brothers. “Well I don’t know anything about it. Maybe he had a change of heart. He’s being more careful since Colorado. It’s not like…” Then it hit me. The way everyone was looking at me settled on my shoulders like bricks. “Wait. You think I had something to do with it?” I shook my head. “That doesn’t make any sense. Why would I send them to cause trouble and then tell Bryce to back off? If I was involved I wouldn’t have sent them at all.”
“That’s not what we think,” my dad said. “We think you’ve turned on us altogether. He must think your relationship is pretty serious for him to change his entire philosophy. When it came to the Pucketts and a little drink, all four of them ended up dead in the desert. Why is it different with your brothers, I wonder? If anything, I would think it would be more of a reason to want to start some trouble with them.”
“Dad, I am not turning on the family for Bryce. I just jumped up and left his apartment when he started getting all coupley. I swear, I am only doing this for the way it benefits the family. I wouldn’t turn on you.”
“There’s no risk of losing the MasCat deal?” my mom asked.
“It didn’t even come up at this month’s meeting,” I said. “I threatened Delano Asmu and he backed off exactly as he said he would. Gina Misterro is trusting Bryce to take care of it, and he’s busy playing boyfriend to me—he hasn’t done anything productive.” For some reason, speaking about Bryce in such a poor way was bothering me, but my parents were looking at me like they wanted to kill me. I had to say whatever I had to in order to keep myself alive. “I’ve kept him from applying any pressure up to now.”
“Well, I’m certain you will understand why we are a little concerned. Bryce Misterro backing down from a fight—he’d have to have a pretty good reason for wanting to do that. I’m not saying I don’t trust you, I’m just saying, I need to have a little security to make sure that he isn’t using you in a way that you aren’t expecting.”
I sat back in my chair a little bit. “What do you mean?”
“There’s really only one option, isn’t there?” my mom said. “If we’re afraid we can’t quite… define the relationship between you and Bryce Misterro—”
I cut in, “There is no relationship between me and Bryce Misterro.”
“Then we merely need to get rid of the parties involved who give us concern.”
“Get… rid of.” I looked over at my brothers, who were now both no longer looking at me. “You’re going to kill me?”
“Obviously we don’t want to,” my father said. “You’re family, and we don’t like having to turn our back on family. Which is precisely why I’m giving you a chance to prove to us that it isn’t necessary. If Bryce isn’t in the picture, then we don’t have to be worried about you giving us up to the Misterro family.”
I would think my undying loyalty to my family would have been proof enough of that, but I guess not. “Okay… So you’re going to kill him?” My stomach knotted in a weird way as I said it. Killing him was the easy solution. Why didn’t I like it?
“Not me,” my father said. “You.”
My eyes widened. “Wait… what? Me? You want me to kill Bryce Misterro? You do realize he’s twice my size in every way, right? And while he’s been working on fighting and killing people, you’ve been stuffing me in offices since I was sixteen? Even if I wanted to kill him, I don’t think I can.”
“If you can’t, then we’ll just kill you,” my father said simply, like he wasn’t talking to his daughter, first-born, and technical heir to his throne. “The choice is yours.”
“We’ll kill him anyway,” TJ tacked on. “So if you think that excuse will protect him, you’re wrong.” He was looking at me now, but there wasn’t ire in his eyes, but rather desperation. He was begging me to take the deal so that I didn’t have to die. “You’re not helpless. I’m sure you can figure it out.”
I exchanged looks between my mom and dad, but they both had the same, lifeless expression on their faces. After all the work I’d put in. All the time I’d spent dedicated to this family. One little thing was enough for them to just toss me to the wolves? They were already planning to kill Bryce, so telling me to do it was a win-win for them. Either I lose the fight with him and die, or I win and they can pretend it was their plan all along.
My family had already thrown me away.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll call him right now. He’ll be dead by sundown.”
“I sure hope so,” my father said. “Or he won’t be the only one.”
17
Bryce
“You should let me come with you,” Baylor said. “It’s obviously a setup.”
I shoved my gun into my waistband and dropped my jacket over it before throwing Baylor a glare. “Don’t do me any favors now. You were ready to kill me a couple of hours ago.”
“I was pissed off, okay? Bryce!”
But I wasn’t responding to him.
I was too busy getting ready to go. Not long after our altercation with the Westuns, I got a call from Mari asking me to meet her well outside the city. It was obvious it was retaliation, and after it became clear that she sold them out to me already, it was almost certainly a trap, where the Westun brothers would be waiting to pounce as soon as I showed myself. Even knowing that, I refused to bring Baylor along with me. My mistakes and lapses in judgement had cost my family too much already. If there was a trap waiting, I would be the only one walking into it, so that I would be the only one dying from it.
If it wasn’t a trap, and it really was just Mari, then I was going to do exactly what I’d told Baylor I was going to do—exactly what I promised my mom nearly a month ago that I was going to do—I was going to kill her. I couldn’t blame her for lying to me and giving any information I gave her right to her family. I was essentially doing the same thing, but the key difference was that she got caught and I didn’t. Now that I knew the truth, there was no reason for me to spare her.
As much as it settled like sludge in my stomach.
“Bryce,” Baylor called out again, trying to step in front of me to stop me from ignoring him, but I just walked around him. “Bryce.” He reached out and grabbed my arm and pulled me to his attention. “Hey.”
“What?” I snapped. “I’ve gotta go.”
“I’m… I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have accused you of turning on us and I shouldn’t have pointed my gun at you.”
“Save it for the eulogy.”
He frowned. “That’s not funny.”
“I’m not joking.”
“Hey!” He squeezed my arm a little tighter. “Bryce.” There was an intense look seated in his eyes and it plucked at my heartstrings. His face was bruised from where I hit it, one of the few times his model features had ever worn any mark or blemish. “I’m sorry.”
“I know,” I said. “I don’t blame you. I… I lost myself for a while there. You brought me back. Thank you.”
“So let me come with you,” he said. “You don’t need to prove anything. Not to me or anyone else.”
“That’s not true,” I said, pulling my arm from his hold. “If not to you, or to Mom, I need to prove something to myself.” I set a hand on his shoulder. “I promise, this is not the reckless, thoughtless guy that got us kicked out of Boulder. I’ve never been thinking more clearly. I’m going to rid our lives of this little problem I’ve dragged into it. I’ll be fine.”
“You’re not gonna let up, are you?”
“Nope.” I gave his back a little tap before grabbing my phone, w
allet, and keys and walking towards the elevator. “Wait here for me. If things go the way I want them to, I’ll need your help with something when I get back.”
He nodded. “Of course. I’ll be right here waiting. Don’t keep me waiting forever.”
I stepped onto the elevator after the doors opened, then turned around and nodded at him. “Don’t worry.”
The address Mari sent me was all the way on the far end of the lake, clear in the desert where not much could be seen or heard other than the natural wildlife and afternoon wind blowing. There was a house sitting right on the edge of the lake, and though I couldn’t see any cars or anything, I was certain there were multiple people inside with my name on their bullet. Best case scenario, it was just TJ and Marcos; worst case, it was a small Westun army.
Before preparing myself to leave, Baylor and I had attempted to listen in on my bug on Mari’s phone, but all I got was radio silence. Either she left her phone at home or she’d figured out that I had her tapped and just got rid of it. Regardless, I didn’t have anything to prepare me for what was waiting inside that house. I just had to hope whatever was inside, I could handle it alone.
“Mari?” I called out as I pounded on the door.
Walking up, I knew that she wasn’t likely to answer, but there was still a very tiny part of me that wanted to believe this wasn’t a trap or a setup. That Mari was going to answer, invite me in, and then we’d just go on pretending that we were doing our family’s work, when really it was just an excuse to continue seeing each other.
After about three minutes of waiting, it was obvious that was not the case.
Whoever was inside, they weren’t answering the door, so I pulled my gun out and twisted the handle, knowing for sure it was a trap when it gave way.
