“What?!”
Dillan holds up his hands and takes a step back. “This isn’t us. We won’t defend the O’Sheehans. They know that. Whoever went after your woman wasn’t connected to my family.”
I narrow my eyes at him, but I see his cousins on their phones. I watch Sean in particular. He’s their family’s intel chief. The man can find a country’s nuclear secrets if he wanted. I hate admitting anyone from another family is better than mine. But his grad degree in national security trained him to find shit buried as far back as when his family were probably Druids.
“Pablo, I’ll do what I can. I swear, but I can’t make any promises. Whatever the feck goes on between us has nothing to do with our women.” Sean knew I was watching him.
Joaquin is nearly as good. Sergei and Anton claim they are sinceeveryoneknows they went to an Ivy—UPenn isn’t even the best one. It takes two of them, but chiefly Sergei. Lorenzo and Carmine are the guys in the Mancinelli family. Carmine’s always been a nosy little shit, and Lorenzo dabbles in computer science. Since Flora went to Rutgers, I won’t be able to insult Lorenzo about that anymore.
“We need to go.”
I spin around and nudge my chin toward the door. I don’t give a shit about this meeting anymore. If Dillan’s lying, then I’ll annihilate his family. I’ll leave the women to grieve, but the men are dead to me already.
“Yonkers.” Joaquin keeps his voice low as we walk outside.
“What the hell is there?” Alejandro wonders the same thing I do.
“I don’t know what’s there now, but it’ll be us soon enough. Are they already there?”
Joaquin’s enlarging something on his phone as he speaks. “No, that’s my best guess for right now. Assuming Florencia’s tracker transmitted to us the moment it went off, they’ll be in Yonkers in ten minutes.”
I glance at my phone’s clock. It’s already been ten minutes since the alert went off. Without too much traffic, it’s about twenty minutes from Manhattan to Yonkers. We’re in Queens right now. It’ll take us at least thirty minutes to get there.
We came in two SUVs with bodyguards in each of them. I hold out my hand, and my regular driver, Arturo, tosses me the keys. I jerk my head toward the second SUV. The guards will go in that one. My cousins and I will go in the lead vehicle. We rarely all ride together, but I want any conversation we have to be for my family’s ears only. I hand the keys to Jorge. My youngest cousin drives like every trip is the Indy 500.
Joaquin and Javier climb in the back. Alejandro’s in the front passenger seat. I sit in the middle as I prep Jorge’s and Alejandro’s gear. They’ll need it once we arrive. My other cousins and I slip off our suit coats before putting on our bulletproof vests and strapping on thigh holsters. We fasten belts around our waists that carry extra ammunition and at least one knife. It’s not ideal that we’re in suits rather than tactical clothes, but we’ve done this before. We have Kevlar helmets if we need them. Javier passes rifles forward to me. I hand two to Alejandro. He keeps one by his left knee for Jorge. He holds the other.
My right knee bounces. It surprises me when I feel my body shaking, so I take a moment to realize it’s my leg doing it. I never allow my nervousness to show. Just the opposite. I’m always the most stoic one.
You won’t do Flora any good if you don’t get yourself under control.
I can’t let the woman I love be the one who ruins me. If I do, then I’ll risk her life. She needs me to be the monster I hide from her. She needs me to be so much worse than the hint I gave her.
You love her.
I love her.
That realization’s been nipping at me the last few days. I knew it was coming. It’s why I abandoned the idea of a twenty-four seven D/s relationship. I need her by my side. If she were here, I’d ask her what she would do in my position. I’ve never wanted to rely on someone outside my family before—let alone actually do so. It’s disconcerting as fuck, but it makes me even more committed to bringing her home.
“Jorge, why are you driving like avieja abuelita?” An old granny.
“Do you want to die on the way to rescuing your woman? Unless I plow through these cars, there’s nothing I can do. This vehicle isn’t exactly known for its agility.”
That’s not entirely true. These SUVs are surprisingly light on their feet—tires. They handle extremely well and take some tight-ass corners. We weave through traffic when we need to, but never excessively. We don’t need someone calling the police on us.
I inhale so deeply my chest expands. It pushes my shoulders back, and I force myself to relax them. I’m so tense I’m a rubber band about to snap.
“I just finished textingTíoEnrique. He’s tracking me and sendinglos toroto meet us.”
The bulls—official soldiers in a Colombian cartel who’re overseen by amatador.
“Thanks, Alejandro.”
I watched his fingers moving on his phone and figured he was messaging ourtío, but I couldn’t be sure. Since neither of my cousins said anything about their mothers, I’m assuming they’re fine but had no news. We’d be going in separate directions ifTíaLuciana orTíaCatalina were targets too. I don’t think Alejandro could take anything else happening to his mother after her abduction whileTíoEnrique andTíaElle were dating.
I force myself to look out the window rather than watching the vehicle’s GPS. We keep our location services off on our phones. After all, we have the trackers if anyone really needs to find us. We always turn our phones off entirely when we’re at least five miles from the Long Island bodega because protecting that place’s secrecy is paramount to carrying out our most unsavory duties. But we keep our vehicle GPS on because we don’t know every nook and cranny of the tri-state area. We can turn it off if we need to.
Since we aren’t headed to the bodega—yet—our phones remain on.
