The Oskolkis way overreached, and now there’s a lesson to teach them. The Russian bratva here in Chicago isn’t anywhere near as strong as the Ivankov branch in New York. They’ve fucked up royally, and now they’re going to pay the price for it.
“I can’t believe Maks has stayed silent on this. I guess he doesn’t give a shit what you do on behalf ofel jefe.”
The New York bratva’spakhan—Maksim Kutsenko—hasn’t done shit even though he said he would.
The Kutsenkos aretheRussians—thebratva. The Mancinellis aretheItalians—theMafia, the O’Rourkes aretheIrish—themob. And my family,los DiazaretheColombians—theCartel.
“He’s fuming silently. We made sure of that. The Oskolkis not only overstepped by doing a secret deal with a cartel, they also overstepped doing any deal without Maks’s consent.”
Lots of people believe that since Pablo Escobar no longer runs the Colombian drug trade, our country is no longer the narco capital of Latin America. Of course, people in the States can’t look farther south than Mexico, so they assume the cartels there dominate now.
Let them.
It just means my family operates low profile outside of New York. We don’t need that many people knowing our business.TíoEnrique doesn’t live in the lap of luxury like Escobar did, but he’s more than just comfortable. He’s just discreet. I’ve never been to a house larger thanTíoEnrique’s. Granted, that’s only because I’ve never been invited inside Salvatore’s.
Tíodoes a lot for charities to remain in plenty of people’s good graces. And he, along with the rest of us, have plenty of legal business endeavors to keep us looking legit. We pay ourtaxes since we’re not going down for something as stupid as evasion.
“You know if I hear anything among the Rizzos, you’ll be the first to know. How’d Ireland go? You never did get a chance to tell me how things went over there.”
The O’Rourkes fucked around and found out—again—not to get too close to my family. Jorge’s fiancée, Anneliese, got trapped in the middle of a proxy war that’s been going on for a few months between the O’Rourkes and the Kutsenkos. All of that played out in Frankfurt where Anneliese is from, but the obvious combatants were four syndicate families in Italy.
“Pretty well. When you have a hundred-forty proof whiskey spilled all over the place, it’s easy to light a distillery on fire and watch it go boom.”
We struck back hard against the O’Rourkes for what they did. The Kutsenkos didn’t get off mildly either.
“I bet Maks isn’t just fuming about the Oskolkis. What did you do to them?”
“We robbed them blind. We cleared out their construction site on Long Island. When I say we took everything, I mean we took everything. All the equipment and all the machinery. We also blew up two of their holdings in Frankfurt.”
“I’m sure that shit went somewhere overseas, so they can’t just steal it back. That’s got to piss them off. Maybe that’s why Maks hasn’t done shit to stop the Oskolkis.”
I gaze out the window before focusing back on Julián. “They could be retaliating for our retaliation. We shipped everything to Germany to give to Anneliese’s brother-in-law. His family’s putting it all to good use.”
“Do you ever just get tired of the tit-for-tat? I mean, I know it’s the only way for us to survive, but the machismo—it’s exhausting at times. Don’t you wish someone could just get tothe top and then it could all be done with? That we could do it? That yourtíocould?”
That’s a question I’ve asked myself plenty of times, but it surprises me when Julián does.
“Do you want to retire? Do you and Liliana want to come back to New York, start a family there near yours? Would you prefer to go somewhere else?”
“Where could we go, Alejandro? Liliana does a great impersonation of a Chicago accent, and I do a great Texan one, so we don’t mind it. It’s become second nature to us, but anywhere else we move, we’d have to do the same thing all over again. Where could we go if we used our natural accents? It’ll give away that we’re New Yorkers. The tinge of Spanish in it will scream Latin American even if no one in the U.S. knows we’re Colombian instead of Mexican. So, where does that leave us? We can’t go anywhere in Latin America. Spain? You want us to learn that colonizer Spanish?”
He grins at me, and we both roll our eyes. We went all the way through twelfth grade together. Our parents insisted we take Spanish in middle school because it was Castilian, not Latin American. Even though we were fluent readers, writers, and speakers, they wanted to ensure we learned Castilian too. Just in case we should ever need to disguise our Spanish.
It was smart of our parents to do that. When cartel life is the only life you’ve known, you come into parenthood with certain wisdom most people don’t.
“Do you want somewhere quiet here in the U.S.?”
He practically snorts. “Have you met Liliana? She is not a small-town girl. I think she’ll do the burbs here, but she’s not moving to the middle-of-nowhere America.”
“Fair enough.”
“I worry about having a family when we’re all the way out here and so far from ours. But we’ve talked about it, and we’restill going to live our lives like we would if we were back home. Until yourtíoor Pablo calls us back, we’ll keep on keeping on.”
“Do you want me to put a word in with either of them?”
“No. Liliana and I don’t want kids right away, even though we’ve been together for seven years. We’re not in a rush yet.”
“Why have you waited so long? Seven years is a long time to be together before getting married.”
