by K. A. Ware
I stepped forward until we were inches apart. Because of our height difference, I had to crane my neck to look him in the eye, but I didn't care. We didn't need to be the same size for me to get my point across. "I don't know what kind of family you come from or who royally fucked you up, but Luis has always had my back. Always. I am not going to stand by and allow you to accuse my flesh and blood."
"Did he have your back when someone was shooting at you? Did he have your back when you were searching for Javi? And what about Uncle Edgar? Does he have your back? Because I'll tell you right now, when the cartel comes knocking, neither of them are going to be standing beside you. They've proven that."
My heart seized. "Cartel? What the fuck are you talking about?"
"The overdoses are from the heroin being laced with synthetic Fentanyl. When the lab did a chemical breakdown of the sample, they found an almost identical match with a batch that was seized and linked back to the Salcedo cartel."
A chill ran up my spine at the name. I knew that name, better than I'd ever want to admit. I narrowed my eyes at his shirtless abs and boxer briefs, no phone in sight, and he'd been by my side for nearly two full days. "How long have you been sitting on this information?"
Antonio's eyes darkened to a flat black. "It doesn't matter, what matters is that I'm sharing it with you now. What I'm telling you is that the threat very well may be bigger than any of us had thought, and you need to think hard about who in your life deserves your trust."
"And am I supposed to assume that you're one of those people who deserve my trust? After you just withheld pertinent information from me for God knows how long?"
"I couldn't trust—"
He reached out to touch my face, and I batted his hand away. "You couldn't trust me?"
I watched the muscle in his jaw tick with irritation. "That's not what I was going say."
"I don't give a shit. Get out," I growled low in my throat.
"Victoria, if you'd just fucking listen." Antonio implored.
My world had started to crack all around me, and it was just a matter of time before everything came crashing down.
"I said get out!" I screamed, turning to snatch the full coffee pot up and hurled it across the room. The glass container shattered and coffee splattered and streaked down the once yellow wall.
Antonio, who'd ducked at the flying projectile, stood up to his full height and gripped my shoulders, giving me a hard shake. "Jesus fucking Christ are you insane?"
My chest was heaving with my labored breaths as I shoved at him. All I could think about was getting him as far away from me as I could. "I said get the fuck out of my house!"
In my thrashing, he lost his grip on my right arm, and I reared back and landed a sharp smack across his cheek. We both froze in shock.
"Fine, I'll go." He paused at the doorway and looked back at me. "I'm telling you now, I'm going to find out whoever has been behind all this, and when I do, I'm going to kill them."
No, you won't.
I'd allowed myself five minutes to break down, throw shit, and scream through the empty house with tears streaming down my face. Everything I'd worked for, the entire past twenty years of my life, circling the drain. When I was finished, I dried my tears and picked my way calmly through the blanket of broken glass and up the stairs to get dressed.
With Antonio out of the way and safe, I needed to prepare for the fight of my life, because I finally knew who was after me.
My fucking father.
Chapter Eighteen
Antonio
I ground my teeth together as I sped down the highway. Digging into my pocket, I pulled out my cell, only to find that it was dead.
Of course.
With one hand on the wheel, I dug around in the center console for a power cord. Nothing.
"FUUUUUCK!" I screamed, chucking my phone across the car.
There was no way I could've left things worse with Victoria than I had. I decided I'd give her the day to cool off and come back later that night to smooth things over. She was just upset that I'd withheld information, she'd get over it when she gave me a chance to explain.
I used my keycard to enter the hotel through the side entrance as not to call attention to my shirtless early morning arrival. Victoria had been wearing my shirt when I'd left, and I didn't think it would've been prudent to ask for it back at the time.
Thankfully, I was able to get into my hotel room without being stopped by security. I plugged in my phone and headed for a shower. I needed to clear my head and prepare myself for what I was going to do if Victoria refused to listen to reason.
Steam billowed out around me as I stepped out of the bathroom, feeling slightly better than I had before. The hotel phone suddenly rang on the bedside table. Thinking it was housekeeping, I ignored it and continued to gather my clothes so I could get dressed. I had a pair of jeans half on when my cell rang.
What the fuck?
Striding over, I picked up my phone to see Frankie's name on the screen. Hopefully, she had some information for me. I settled onto the bed and swiped to answer.
"You got something for me?"
I had to pull the phone away from my ear as Frankie's screaming voice nearly deafened me. "I've got a fucking boot to shove up your ass! What in the ever-loving fuck have you been doing? I've been trying to call you since two in the fucking morning, you piece of shit!"
"Whoa, Frankie, calm the hell down. What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about the fact that your cell has been going straight to voicemail for the past five fucking hours and my husband, your brother, and cousin are in a car, hauling ass down I-5 towards you."
Ears still ringing, I wasn't sure I'd heard her right. "Enzo, Angelo, and Carlo are coming to Portland? Why? What happened?"
"You stupid fucking brute! Have you not been listening? We couldn't find you. Mia was about to murder me for teaching you how to disable the fucking GPS on your phone. And up until twenty minutes ago, your car hadn't moved in ten hours!"
Were they looking for me? Tracking me? What the hell for?
"Was that you calling the hotel?"
"Yes! Jesus Christ!" Frankie's voice sounded far away when she spoke next. "Here, you fucking talk to him, I can't even with his stupid ass. I need a fucking RedBull."
"Antonio?" Mia's voice came through the line.
My anxiety lowered immediately, hearing her calm voice. Frankie had a tendency to get overly excited. "Mia, can you explain what the fuck Frankie is going on about?"
She sighed, and I could practically hear her rubbing her forehead. "Frankie started digging into Edgar like you'd asked. It took a while, but she found out that he had a connection to the Salcedo Cartel. One of his known associates was Jesus Perez, a lieutenant for the Salcedo's."
I suspected there was a connection. Something about Edgar just hadn't sat right with me. There was just one thing I couldn't figure out. "But what would they want with Vic?"
"That was our question, too. So, Frankie did what Frankie does, and found something else." Her ominous tone made me stand up and begin pacing. I had a feeling I wasn't going to want to hear what she had to say.
"What is it?"
Mia sighed. "She found Victoria's birth certificate. The name of the father listed is Ignacio Ramirez Garcia. Francisco Salcedo's right-hand man."
Silence. Complete and utter silence filled the line, I wasn't even sure I was still breathing. Ignacio was notoriously vicious, second only to his boss.
There had to be some explanation. "That doesn't make any sense; she never knew her father. She was raised by her aunt and uncle."
"He never signed the birth certificate, so there's no way to tell whether he knows about her and her brother, or not."
It was a breadcrumb of hope, and I clung to it like a life raft. Desperate for what she was telling me to be a terrible mistake. "If he didn't sign it, it could just be a name, doesn't mean there's necessarily a connection."
"There's no such
thing as coincidence in our world, and you know it. Her mother, Alma, listed his date and place of birth on the paperwork, all of which checks out with the Ignacio we know."
I wouldn't, couldn't accept it. "Regardless, Victoria doesn't have anything to do with him."
"How do you know that?"
"Because she fucking told me she doesn't know who her father is!" I pulled at my hair, unable to believe what she was telling me.
"She lied. At least about not knowing who her father was."
"You can't prove that."
"Yes, I can. When she turned eighteen, she legally changed her name from Victoria Ramirez Ortiz to reflect her mother's surnames, Ortiz Mendoza. She knew, and she didn't tell you."
I kicked out, sending the desk chair slamming into the wall on the other side of the room. "Fuck!"
"Antonio!" Mia barked. "Calm the hell down. I know this is a lot to take in, and I realize that you're upset, but do not go off the fucking rails."
"You're telling me not to go off the rails?" I asked in disbelief. Mia was the last person on earth that should be telling anyone not to jump off. She was as impulsive as they came.
"Basta! Enough! Shut up and fucking listen. There could be a million different reasons why she didn't tell you. Regardless of the why you need to find out how much she knows about her father. This isn't just about her anymore, it's about all of us, and we need to get ahead of this before we're stuck in the middle of a fucking cartel war, do you understand?"
"Yeah, how far are Carlo and the guys out?"
I heard her cover the phone and muffled voices in the background. "Frankie says they're about twenty minutes from your hotel. She let them know you're expecting them."
"Okay, is that all?"
"One more thing. Remember that people lie for different reasons, find out what hers was first before you write her off."
"How'd you—"
"Your car has GPS. It's been parked at her house overnight for the past two days. Not to mention your reaction just now. Just do yourself a favor and don't close doors before you figure out what's inside. We'll keep you updated if we find anything new." She'd clicked off before I could respond.
Mia was right; there had to be a reason she'd kept this from me. I couldn't believe that she'd led me on a wild goose chase for weeks. I scrolled through my contacts, finding her profile, I hit the call button and waited. I prayed that she'd had enough time to cool down, but it went straight to voicemail.
I closed my eyes as her husky voice told me to leave a message.
"Victoria, it's me. I need to talk to you. I have some new information. Just call me, please?"
"How the hell did this get overlooked?" I asked more to myself than anybody else. Carlo, Enzo, and Angelo had shown up a few minutes before, and we were sitting in my hotel room trying to figure out our next step.
Carlo was the one that spoke up. "We took on Santiago right around the time that I took over for my father." We shared a dark look across the room, and I remembered the chaos that had followed Vincenzo's death. It would've been easy to miss a number of things during that transition. "At the time, it was a small deal. When Santiago died, Vic didn't skip a beat, and we've maintained a relationship with them at a steady growth for the past ten years. They were never late on a payment or to pick up a shipment, not once. There was no reason for us to dig deeper. And even if we had, Ignacio wasn't on our radar then."
"Have you tried calling Vic?" Enzo asked.
"Yeah, but she's not answering." At the questioning looks from the men in the room I sighed. "We got into a fight this morning; she threw a coffee pot at my head."
None of them looked surprised. Instead, they just nodded their heads as if it was perfectly normal. Even Angelo, who I'd never even seen with the same woman twice, didn't bat an eye.
Enzo cocked his head to the side, considering my discomfort. "What did you fight about?"
I scrubbed a hand down my face, wishing I didn't have to relive the disastrous morning. "I was trying to convince her to take a closer look at her cousin and uncle. My gut was telling me that he was somehow involved, and it turns out I was right. The only thing we need to figure out is what part Ignacio is playing in this. He wouldn't be able to pull this off without people on the ground, which is where I think Edgar comes into play. What we don't know is why Ignacio would even want to bother with Victoria.
Carlo steepled his fingers in a thoughtful expression. "It could be as simple as gaining territory. If Edgar had approached him with a plan to take over the territory and bring the Salcedo supply into Portland, that just might've been tempting enough to get them to go with it."
“What I don't understand is that if Edgar wanted to ally himself with the Salcedo cartel, why he didn't just approach Vic to make the change from her supplier?” Angelo asked.
I was shaking my head before he was even done asking his question. “It's more than that, Edgar doesn't think that Victoria should be in charge.”
Carlo leaned back in his chair and regarded me. “How do you know that if she’s so sure that her uncle had nothing to do with any of this?”
“Because he has much as said it himself. He doesn't think it's a woman's place.”
Enzo snorted at that and I cracked a smile, “Yeah, I know.”
Angelo swung his legs over the side of the bed and leaned his elbows on his knees. “So, Edgar’s play is for control of the territory, and the way he's going to do that is by getting Salcedo to back him as his supplier?”
“Yeah, I think so. At least, it’s what makes the most sense.”
“So we move on Edgar,” Carlo said, rolling up the sleeves of his pristine white button down. If I knew my cousin, by the end of the day, it would be covered in blood.
“Frankie should be able to get us the info on Edgar’s place,” Enzo said, pulling out his phone. He pressed a few buttons before turning on the speaker and holding it out so we could hear.
"Hey husband," Frankie's unusually husky voice sending warning bells off in my head.
"Hey, I—" he started, but she cut him off.
"Did you get that Snap I sent you? I'm gonna ride your—"
"You're on speaker!" Enzo hurriedly interrupted what was sure to be an incredibly embarrassing statement.
"Oh, shit. Hey guys." We all grumbled or grunted our acknowledgment.
Enzo chuckled and shook his head at his wife. "Do you have an address for Edgar?"
"Is that a serious question?"
Angelo snickered, and Enzo shot him a murderous look. "Can you send us his address and see if you can get a floorplan of the house?"
The sound of rapid clicking could be heard over the speaker as Frankie worked. "Got it!" she announced triumphantly. "Sending it to your phones now. Anything else?"
"No, babe, that's it."
"Okay, love you, bye!" Like Mia, she disconnected the call before Enzo even had a chance to say goodbye.
All at once our phones pinged with the information from Frankie. Carlo was the first to stand. "Looks like we have a house call to make."
Chapter Nineteen
VIC
I was dressed and out the door within a half hour. I didn't know what role my father was playing in this, but I knew my uncle Edgar had to be at the center of it. I'd texted Luis to meet me there, but had yet to get a response.
As soon as Antonio had mentioned the Salcedo cartel the pieces of the puzzle had clicked together. I'd never met my father in person; he wouldn't even claim me and my brother as his. He had a family in Mexico, and my mom had just been one of his whores. He'd had his fun with her, gotten her hooked on drugs and knocked up and then split. I hadn't even known his name until I was eighteen.
My uncle had always been a small-time dealer. Never smart enough to expand his reach and too eager to spend his money as soon as he made it. When he got locked up, his immediate supplier, Jesus, was with him and got pinched at the same time. Which left Santi, Luis, and I broke with no real-life skills and no contacts to co
ntinue doing what we knew how to do.
Santi had gone to visit my uncle in prison shortly after he was sentenced and he'd told him about our father. A member of the Salcedo cartel who had been slowly and deliberately moving his way up the ranks. When my uncle had known him, he was little more than a runner, but as the years passed he'd made strategic moves to advance his place in the syndicate. Neither my brother nor I cared about finding our father, but we needed product.
My uncle had been supplied, indirectly, by Salcedo. So, we figured we'd give it a shot and see if we could get someone to listen. Getting to Ignacio was impossible, but we managed to get in touch with another affiliate of the organization, Ricardo Nunez. As soon as we mentioned who we were and our father's name, he came to us.
We thought it was our big break. We had an in that would help us build our business and take us farther than our lazy uncle could've even dreamed. But we were wrong.
So fucking wrong.
"Get the fucking door, cabrón!" I hissed from my place on the couch. The thing was God awful, hell, the entire two-bedroom apartment the three of us shared was a shithole. But not for long.
I shifted again, adjusting my position for what felt like the hundredth time, trying to express the right amount of badass. My heart was pounding like a fucking drum against my ribs.
This was it, our in. We were finally going to have a supplier and start making baller money. It was all I could do to keep my leg from bouncing up and down like a fucking jackhammer.
My excited eyes darted from Luis to Santi, all of us on edge. Luis sauntered to the door, checking the peephole and nodding to us before turning the deadbolt. As soon as he'd cracked the door, it came bursting open. His skinny body flew backward, and he crashed into the plywood coffee table.
Santi and I locked eyes for a split second, and I knew at that moment that if we lived through what was about to happen, that the terror on his face would haunt me for the rest of my life. He wasn't scared for himself; he'd never been afraid of anything that could happen to him, he was worried about me. I both loved and hated him for it.
