“No, yeah. Everything’s fine. It was, well…I wasn’t around when the whole family moved. I wasn’t aware of why you all moved, at least not the real reason. And Jae told me about it. Told me about what your mom had shared, about your…”
I trailed off when I noticed Sebastian’s jaw tick.
“Theories,” he supplied. I winced and he shook his head. “Don’t worry about it. No one else believed me then either.”
I wished I could tell him the truth, relieve him of the guilt and endless wonder. Again, my mind drifted to Shiloh and how much I wanted to be with her right now. How I missed her already even though she’d only just left this morning.
“I know I would have believed you,” I muttered, fidgeting with the can.
“Thanks,” he said with a sad smile. “I wish a lot of things, but I wish I’d had known about it all sooner. Wish I hadn’t been so naïve.”
“Me too,” I nodded in agreement.
“What do you mean? You believe me? You think she was in the gang?”
I sighed, mentally debating what exactly to share. “Let’s just say that if you were right, it would explain a hell of a lot.”
Sebastian nodded, chewing his bottom lip in thought.
“Can I ask…you don’t have any contact with any of those family members that were in the gang, do you?”
Sebastian looked a little offended but shook his head, nonetheless. “No. And I wouldn’t want to. I hope they’re all dead, if I’m being honest here. Especially my uncle.”
“Your uncle?”
Sebastian sighed, pausing a moment to take a sip of his iced tea. “Yeah,” he muttered softly, eyeing the living room. “Fucker deserves to die. Painfully.”
I grimaced.
“Sorry,” Sebastian winced. “Pedro, uh, wasn’t a good person. Tried to do you-know-what to me a handful of times when I was a kid. Thankfully my mom intervened, and he got bored when he realized that he couldn’t manipulate me.”
I shuddered, my lip curling with disgust. “I’m sorry. That’s awful.”
Sebastian waved his hand in dismissal.
“Do you know much about what happened when the mayor was arrested?”
“No. Honestly, I wouldn’t have thought anything of it in the first place, you know? There wasn’t anything even in the news either. When my mom told me about everything, I was completely shocked, didn’t really believe her at first. But looking back, it makes sense. Explains how the charges against my dad were able to disappear. I guess it’s really a testament to how much my mom was able to protect my innocence as a child that I didn’t realize what was happening under our own roof.”
“Charges? He was arrested with the mayor?”
“No, no. This was when I was a kid, like nine. He was abusive to me and my mom. I finally got the courage to go to the police about it. I guess the gang swept it under the rug, because they never came to the house or arrested my dad. He gave me the beating of a lifetime when he found out, and I learned my lesson never to involve the police again. My mom managed to get us out six years later with the help of some fearless social workers in Dallas. They got us a restraining order against my dad, and I guess whoever he knew in the gang never bothered to help my dad get us back, so we got to move on with our lives. My mom, she had overheard my uncle and dad talking. Found out that my dad was taking a job with my uncle working on some farm or something. She knew that once we moved onto that property we’d never leave, so we left in the middle of the night and never looked back.”
“Damn…so he was a member too?”
“Yeah. I think my dad had just been a socio up until that point, but my uncle had been a Ghost for as long as my mom knew him.”
“A socio?”
He rocked his head from side to side. “Yeah, just a term for someone who was involved but not a full member.”
I raised a brow, and he chuckled. “Do you really want all these details?”
“Yeah,” I shrugged. “If you don’t mind.”
Better I hear it from him than from Shiloh. She didn’t need to relive any of her past just to satisfy my curiosity.
“Alright. Well, it’s like this,” he explained putting up one hand, “you’ve got the socios,” and then the other, “and you’ve got the Ghosts. Now, a socio was anyone who did something for the gang whether that be turned a blind eye to something or accepted a bribe, you get me?” I nodded. “And a Ghost was the term for a member of the family, the gang, Los Siete. Now,within the gang you had a hierarchy system, like a boss, or a jefe in Spanish,” he said, speaking with his hands.
