“No. I have a day off.” I sipped some of my coffee and continued, “I know you’re going to speak to Diego.”
Palo froze and glanced over at me. “How do you know that?” He blindly reached for the coffee pot.
“I heard you. Don’t do it, Palo. He’s not doing anything sinister. I told you that. You’re literally trying to ruin things for me.”
Palo poured his coffee into the cup. “This has nothing to do with that. Besides, if you’re dating the guy, I’m going to need to see him at some stage. He has a new chapter operation. I need to check the temperature. If he’s feeling a certain kind of way then we may need to rectify that. Plus the guy had you in tears.”
“Stay out of it, Palo. It wasn’t what I thought it was.” I opened the refrigerator, looking for the juice.
“I could say the same to you. This is about the chapter. You didn’t want to be involved, remember? Why couldn’t you just date someone in your league? Like a med school student or a normal guy that works a day job from the suburbs or something?” He flipped his hand up at me.
“Do I tell you to stop dating strippers? How about that? Don’t you work for a computer company? Please, Palo. Save me the judgment from you of all people.” I turned and walked back to my room, slamming the door. I fell back on my bed and stared at the ceiling. How did I get to this place? Once Palo made up his mind to do something, then that was what he did. My brother might have appeared calm, but that didn’t mean anything with him.
FIFTEEN
DIEGO
Two weeks passed and the men in black hanging around the front of the warehouse were nowhere to be seen. Still left me triple-checking the warehouse locks and resetting the alarm code several times.
It was mid-morning in the office and my legs were up on the counter. I had the phone in my hand talking to Ryder.
“Hey, Ryder, you good down there?”
Ryder’s barreling tone came through the line like a freight train. “Diego. We are good down here. Business as usual. What about you at that end? You moved on from that Las Balas situation, right?”
“You’ve got nothing to worry about. Things are running right here.” I broke out into a sweat on the back of my neck. I rubbed it with my free hand to ease the tension. “Listen, I called because we have two new potential members. Derek and Rick.”
“Oh yeah? Tell me about them, what's their MO?”
“Rick mainly, Derek seems a little shaky, but I think he might join up once Rick does. Not that I’m trying to rush the numbers. We want quality over quantity, right?”
“Right. Keep going.”
“Rick would be handy to us. He has a background in security.”
Ryder grunted. “Huh. We could use him. Give him my number and let me talk to him. Set something up. You got another vest up there?”
“Yeah. I think I do.”
“Has it got all the patches on it already or we gotta sew them on?”
“Nope. All the patches are already on it.”
“Okay. Keep an eye out for this Palo guy. I want you to be vigilant up there. Let us know how we can help you, all right?”
“Done deal.”
“Oh, and Diego. Don’t think we won’t hesitate to hit Las Balas if we think we need to.”
“I know.” I set the phone down and ran a hand through my hair. There were a few tangles at the bottom so I pulled them out. I slammed my fist on the table out of frustration. I was kicking myself for telling Ryder about Misty at all.
I flashed my old life through my eyes, sleeping with a gun on my bedside table and Crystal coming home from the strip club at two in the morning smelling like the whole liquor cabinet.
“Why you gotta drink so much?” I’d ask. She would stumble and her hair would be a complete mess. Her legs would cross and she would trip over her own feet while clutching the bedsheets to stop her from falling.
“Oh, you don’t love me anymore, do you?” she would slur and start to cry.
I would lie to her. “Yes, I do. I just wish you would stop killing yourself with the drinking. If you don’t like the strip club, stop working there.”
