Rafael knew he was thinking about Warren Sedgewick. “Geez, Damian. You should allow yourself a breather. Even movies have intermissions.”
“Really? And where would your ass be if I’d taken off for popcorn and candy?”
“True. That’s twice you’ve saved my life,” said Rafael. “So what now?”
“Now we lay low and wait for the dust to settle. Think of it as an intermission.”
“For how long?”
“As long as it takes to put together the next plan, Rafael. As long as it takes.”
“WE’VE COME A LONG WAY from Caboras,” said Rafael, clinking his beer with Damian’s.
Damian surveyed the tiki-torch lit patio overlooking Mission Bay, the exotic, tropical fish swimming in the ceiling-high aquarium and the pristine table setting before them.
“It’s taken a long time to get here,” he said.
“Eleven fucking years.” Rafael scanned the menu. “What are you having?”
“A burger,” replied Damian, without opening his menu. He fidgeted with his cuff links. “Was this really necessary?” he asked.
“You want to blend into fancy circles, you’ve got to look the part. How do you like the shoes? I had my guy custom make them.”
“I get that they’re standard issue for a hotshot financial advisor like you, but fuck it, Rafael, there’s nothing like a pair of shoes broken in by hard labor and sweat.”
“Screw hard labor and sweat. You deserve this. When are you going to start enjoying some of your hard-earned cash? If you don’t start relaxing, Damian, your face is going to set into a permanent scowl and you’ll scare the girls away. Permanently.”
Damian waved his hand dismissively. At twenty-seven, he was completely oblivious to the polarized reactions of the women around him. When Damian walked into a room, he went for the shadows and dark corners. He never fit in and he never attempted to. But the very attention he sought to avoid always found him, because it was like dragging in a caged animal. The women flocked around him, afraid to touch him, afraid to talk to him, but at the same time, completely fascinated.
“The money means nothing,” he said. “It’s a means to an end.”
“I know that, but take some credit for what you’ve achieved. After El Charro, we had nothing but the money you’d stashed away. And you managed to turn that around. From one boat to two, to five, to ten. From a small fishing company to a motherfucking shipping conglomerate. You put me through college while you worked your ass off. Everything I am, I owe to you. And now here you are. On the brink of toppling Warren Sedgewick over.”
Damian thought back to those early years after El Charro’s death. He had kept his ear to the ground about Warren. El Charro was a stranger who had sought to eliminate a threat, but Warren . . . WarrenknewMaMaLu. She had looked after his daughter for nine years—ninefucking years—six of which she’d tried to fill the void his wife had left. She had loved Skye as dearly as she loved her own son, going so far as to put Damian second when it came to her time and affection. And how had Warren rewarded her? By betraying her to save his own skin. He was a coward who needed to atone for his sins, not by dying, but byliving.Damian wanted him to feel pain his whole fucking life. He was going to strip Warren of his extravagant mansion in La Jolla, his fleet of chauffeur-driven cars, his line of immaculate, luxury resorts, scattered across the most idyllic spots in the world. One by one, Damian was going to take it all away—his fame, his fortune, his prestige—the very foundation his world was built on. And to get there, to battle Warren in his ivory tower, Damian had to amass his own weapons, build his own fortune, a fortune fueled by something far more powerful than anything Warren had in his arsenal: a rusty box of cigarettes and the memory of MaMaLu’s incomplete tombstone.
Wherever Damian went, theLucky Striketin went with him. It was there when he scouted remote islands and atolls, looking for a place he and Rafael could lay low. It was there when the dust settled over the deaths of El Charro and Emilio Zamora, and everyone had forgotten two insignificant boys who had been there that day. It was there when they relocated to a fishing port, where Damian bought his first trawler, El Caballero, a name he took on as part of his new identity. It was there when he saw Rafael off to a prestigious boarding school, and again when he attended Rafael’s graduation from college. It was there when Damian was big enough and wealthy enough to apply for a U.S. green card as an investor, and then years later, his citizenship. And it was there now, in his inner coat pocket, as he had dinner with Rafael, in Warren’s Polynesian themed flagship resort: The Sedgewick, San Diego.
When Warren had started out, he was still under the cartel’s thumb. He had managed to get out of Mexico, but only because it suited their purposes. They needed ways to turn the dirty cash from drug sales and other illegal activities into clean, usable currency, and Warren was one of the cogs in their money-laundering machine. Damian understood his role well. Warren would buy a prime piece of U.S. real estate. He would build a five star resort, fill it with the finest linen, cutlery, china, the best furniture. From there, he would report his hotel at maximum occupancy, except it was never completely full. Every day, a security van would roll up and collect all the cash taken in from the rooms, nightclubs, casinos, bars and restaurants—dirty cash mixed in with legitimate income. Warren got a cut of the action. The rest made its way to offshore accounts that belonged to El Charro, who then dispersed it to his top men.
El Charro’s death freed Warren from the clutches of the cartel. The direct link had been severed. That arm of the Sinaloa cartel no longer existed. Warren wrapped up his illegal dealings and continued to expand his chain of hotels with his own money. After a couple of years, he went public. Sedgewick Hotels became a hot commodity, traded on the stock exchange. Warren thought he was in the clear. He never, for one second, conceived of what was coming for him,whowas coming for him.
When Warren walked into the restaurant that night, Rafael turned to Damian. “There he is, just like clockwork. Every Tuesday night, eight o’clock sharp.”
Damian felt his hackles rise. He ignored the urge to turn around and bit into his burger. He had been buying Sedgewick stock for years via shell companies that Rafael set up for him. Warren didn’t know it, but Damian Caballero now held enough shares to control the future of Sedgwick Hotels and here, on the eve of a reckoning that had taken him over a decade to stage, Damian wanted to have one last look at the man responsible for destroying MaMaLu. Tomorrow, he would be a different man, a broken man.
“Everything is set?” he asked Rafael.
“Say the word and it’s done.”
Damian pushed his plate away. “I need a drink. I’m heading to the bar.” From where he could watch Warren, and savor the last bittersweet dregs of the venom that had fueled him for so long.
Rafael nodded. He knew Damian well enough to understand when he needed time alone. “Take your time. I’ll be right here.”
Damian sat at the far end of the sleek, reflective counter, away from the crowd, where the lights were dim and the music was muted. He took a tall sip of beer before his eyes sought Warren out. He was sitting in a private booth. The wait staff obviously knew who he was and what he liked. They brought him a drink without asking, and some kind of appetizer on a long rectangular plate.
Damian had seen pictures of Warren, but nothing had prepared him for seeing him in the flesh fifteen years later—fifteen years after he had chased Warren’s silver Peugeot down a dusty road. Warren looked smaller, shorter, not as all-pervading as he was in Damian’s head. He was in his fifties now, but looked older, with a chunky mustache that was almost all silver. How could he sit there, eating and drinking, so pleasant and alive, when MaMaLu was cold bones and desiccated earth? How couldanyonego on so indifferent, so unaffected, knowing they had destroyed worlds and dreams and lullabies? Warren was El Charro, except worse. Whereas El Charro had made no pretense about being a monster, Warren had built himself a facade of decency.
If Damian had left then, at that precise moment, he would have stuck to his original plan—to take over Warren’s company, strip it, devalue it, dismantle it and rob him of the power and prestige he had traded his humanity in for. But just as he was finishing the last of his beer, Damian stopped mid-swig. A young lady slid into the booth with Warren. She didn’t sit across from him; she sat next to him and engulfed him in the biggest, tightest hug. Damian couldn’t see her face, but it was clear Warren had been expecting her. His whole face transformed. Heglowedwith something indefinable, something true but intangible, something Damian had only seen before in MaMaLu’s eyes—when he picked flowers for her hair, when he made her a seashell necklace, when he was sick, when he was hurt, when he made her laugh and sometimes, when he made her cry. That look, thatlookwhich Damian would have given anything for, was the way Warren was looking at his dinner companion—with the whole Goddamned world in his eyes.
