Chapter One
Alejandro
The things we do for friends.
Especially the ones we’ve known since we were three and making mud pies together in preschool. This just isn’t my jam. Those four women in dental floss bikinis dancing in front of us are undeniably attractive. Hell, one’s the most gorgeous woman I’ve ever seen, and she’s definitely got my dick’s attention. But strippers don’t interest me. They never really have.
“Is she your type?” My friend Julián’s voice is so low, I barely hear him over the music and the other guys cheering the women on.
“Somewhere—anywhere—else, maybe.”
Maybe it’s because my family owns several strip clubs, and I associate them with work. Maybe it’s because I just don’t like that much glitter. The one who keeps catching my attention seems different from the other three.
I’m in Chicago attending Julián’s bachelor party. Everyone in Chicago believes it’ll be a quiet destination wedding for him and his bride. That’s because they don’t know how deep undercover he is. It’ll be a large Colombian Cartel one in Queens.
“Come on, baby, shake those tits around. Yeah, right here in my face. I got a hundred dollars right here if you let me motorboat those big old titties.”
I look over to the guy on my left. What a total douche caboose. He looks like he’s ready to jack off right here in front of all of us. Nobody needs to see hispequeña polla—little dick—trying to stand at attention.
I shift my gaze back to the woman in front of me. She doesn’t have to try to get my attention. She certainly has it—even if I can think of a million other places I’d rather be. The three women working with her look like your typical Midwestern all-American girls. This woman is different. Mediterranean—Spanish, Greek, but most likely Italian. Like real Italian, straight from the motherland. There’s nothing about her that screams affiliated—like Chicago Mafia Italian—either.
That’s who I’m here with. Julián—these guys know him as Vinny—may be a second-generation American by way of Colombia, but he’s definitely not Italian—though these fuckers don’t know that. They believe he’s one of them—Mafia. He comes from a long line of members from various cartels, but the guy does impersonations like nobody else I know. He can adopt any accent out there. So, he’s been the perfect plant in Chicago for a couple of years.
His fiancée’s a New Yorker too. Her family’s Cartel—as inthe Cartel—the Diaz Cartel—my family’s Cartel—just like Julián is now. She plays the part as well as he does, having ingratiated themselves into the Rizzo Mafia—the ChicagoCosa Nostrabranch.
“What does a good old Southern boy like you want tonight?” The brunette leans forward to line my gaze up with her magnificent tits.
“I don’t know, baby, whatcha got to offer?”
I’ve disguised my New York Spanish accent with one from the South. I only allow a little of the Spanish part to flavor my words. The guys on this private yacht with us think I’m from Texas, where Julián supposedly grew up. They think I’m Mexican, which I sure as shit am not. I’m Colombian through and through—as in, my parents were fresh off the plane when they had me here in the States.
These fucknuts look like they just left the Jersey Shore, even though they’re from Chicago. A couple used some colorful terms for Mexicans they thought I couldn’t hear. One of them cracked a joke about me being in a Mexican cartel. Pride made me want to respond, but years of training taught me to suppress those reactions to insults. They definitely were misplaced. There’s an unofficial social hierarchy in Latin America. And I can promise you, Colombians are above most other countries, including the U.S.’s neighbor to the south.
“I can offer you a whole lot. Just tell me what you want, and I’ll tell you how much it is.”
And there’s why I’m just not into strippers. I’m just not into paying for my pleasures like that. Sure, I’ll pay my membership to my BDSM club, but I’m not paying a woman directly to gyrate on my lap.
“Give me a little preview, and I’ll tell you what I want,Mamí.”
She keeps running her hands up and down her body. The longer I watch her, the more my intuition screams something’s wrong. I’ve learned to listen to it. It’s kept me alive into my mid-thirties. I’ve had way too many close calls where the hair rising on the back of my neck is the only warning I get before a bullet sails past me, sometimes even into me. I don’t know what it is about this woman, but it’s off.
“Mmm. Let me see what I cancomeup with.”
Even if I want to fuck her, I don’t want to pay for that or a lap dance. And something about her makes me think she’s herefor more than just tips. Her tits sway in my face as she runs her hands up my thighs, then tries to step around them to give me a lap dance.
I know she’s seen my dick’s reaction to her. There’s no way she couldn’t in my suit trousers, even if my boxer briefs are snug. I’m not worried that she knows she got me hard. I’d be more worried how she’d respond if she hadn’t. I’ll play along for now, even though I know something’s not quite right.
“Come here,Mamí. Sit onPapí’slap. You wanna go for a ride on this crotch rocket?”
I can barely take myself seriously, and I’m certain Julián just chuckled. He was even less thrilled to see strippers aboard the private yacht than I was. He knows if he goes home with another woman’s perfume on him, his fiancée’ll castrate him. He made it very clear when the women appeared and the music started that his friends—including me—could enjoy. However, he wouldn’t take part. He’s barely looked in the women’s direction, preferring to watch the skyline as we sail on Lake Michigan.
“I hope that crotch rocket doesn’t go too fast,Papí.”
When Julián and I realized his friends got these women on board without Julián or my knowing, we both wondered what else they might’ve smuggled aboard. If you can even call them friends. I suppose colleagues would be a better term, since they have no idea who Julián really is and never will. We’d exchanged a look I’m sure no one else noticed.
It’s the same one we’ve shared since we were five and got in trouble together for the first time. It was the “I’ll cover for you no matter what, and how can we blame this on somebody else while we’re at it” look.
Conspiratorial is what my mother has always called it. I don’t know too many other five-year-olds who knew what that word meant, but Julián and I soon learned it. Right around the same time we learned how to weed a garden. I’m not like my cousinJorge who enjoys gardening. My mother knew making me work outside but not allowing me on our swing set was the worst form of torture.
