“Now what the fuck was so goddamn important you left?”
“I got a call from an informant who said he had a lead on Vincent’s identity.”
At least he’d perked up my senses. “Then who the fuck is he?”
He continued rubbing his neck while eying me warily, likely worried I would lash out again once he offered the news.
Sighing, I placed my hands on my hips and took a step away. Now I needed to provide assurances that I wasn’t going to fly off the handle unexpectedly again. “Just tell me.”I won’t get angry.Even if I’d reassured him with the words, he wouldn’t have believed me.
Not now.
“His name is Vincent Santos.”
“Was.”
“Huh?”
“He’s dead. Remember?” Unless there was something else Enzo needed to confess.
“Yeah, very dead. Which could be a problem. You don’t recognize the name?”
All I needed to do was to take a single step forward to put the fear of God into the man. “We work in a part of the country where such names are a fucking dime a dozen. Clients. Drug runners. Hell, every single supplier. It means nothing to me, Enzo. Talk to me or get out of my space.”
“Then let me refresh your memory. Las Riveras. And I’m not talking about the bikers who own the gun shop at that strip mall. Those dudes are like a franchise of the mother ship and she’s sporting nuclear weapons.”
I winced. I was growing weary of the game. “Go on.”
“You really don’t know. Vincent is… I mean was Dejandro Santos’ son. His firstborn son. The heir apparent.”
It took me a few seconds to put the pieces together. Exhaling, I fisted my hand. “Well, fuck.”
“Yeah, exactly. Fuck. Don’t feel bad. I didn’t recognize him either. I did a quick study on him. Dejandro is making inroads through Texas into other parts of the country with drugs cut with some seriously dangerous shit. My guess is that he’s made a fortune. Low key. Even the real estate that I managed to discover is owned by Santos is a telling statement on his cutthroat business practices.”
“Meaning?”
Enzo rubbed his throat. “He took over an abandoned prison. That’s his kingdom.”
This time I laughed in earnest. “Why didn’t we know who the hell he was?” Turning my head, I quickly brought everything I knew about Dejandro into my mind. He was a brutal dictator who ran the Las Riveras like a gang on steroids. There was nothing sophisticated about them. They slept with machine guns under their pillows. Enzo’s description of them, while colorful and dramatic, was accurate.
Up until now, they’d seemed like a lowlife, unorganized cartel wannabe. They’d just announced their intentions of expanding. That wasn’t going to happen.
They had followers and chapters all over the world and in Mexico, but heavily centered in and around the southern part of the US, Texas their headquarters. While the chapter in New Orleans was dangerous, they were crude. Blunt force and nothing more.
“You got to remember, most people don’t know anything about the Santos family. Dejandro has almost never been photographed and even then, it was a grainy photo from a distance. The reason they are so successful is because of their anonymity. They stay under the radar, but word on the street is that Santos is responsible for hijacking several ships out of Colombia. They’re like pirates, ravaging everything of use and leaving no survivors.”
True savages.
“What else did this informant tell you?” Santos had been testing the waters by stealing the single crate of product.
“He didn’t know shit other than that Vincent was in town to handle something for his father, but he thought whatever it was would rock the city.”
“Stealing from the Prince family would indeed have that reaction.”
Nodding, I could tell the entire situation unnerved him.
I glanced down at the fist he’d made. Maybe I was more of a dictator than I’d cared to admit to myself. “Keep your ear to the streets. I need to know how many of his soldiers came into town. We need to remain on high alert.”
“What about the guy from the coffee shop? Do you think he was one of them?”
