Page 32 of In the Dark

“And now we’re left again with the repercussions of that stupid ego of his.” I sighed. “I’d kill him myself if he was still alive.”

My aunt huffed, and Monte nodded in agreement.

“Are you sure you’re good?” Monte asked.

“Of course,” I said.

“I’ll lock up,” Monte told me, and I waved them all out. After everyone left, I let my lungs expand for the first time in hours.

The house felt different without their presence, but mostly it felt different because Paolo wasn’t in it bellowing about something. The man had been rude, belligerent, loud, and violent most of the time. More than once, he’d smacked me in his office for not explaining accounting well enough to him. More than twice, he’d told me I was useless before he used me for something else. And more than thrice, he’d cursed my father in this very home, saying he left him with nothing.

Never once did he consider he was living in the home my parents tried to raise me in.

I sighed. “What a damn mess,” I grumbled before I decided to start in the kitchen, washing dishes and staring out the backyard window. I put together and rearranged the flowers that had been sent.

I worked through putting food away and rearranging the furniture back to how it once was and then went through some of the cards.

The condolences were canned and fake. Most of them made my skin crawl from how empty they all were. How could we lose someone and not miss them at all?

Yet, I’d known my uncle.

Still, I came across the Knights’ card and narrowed my eyes.

We don’t share sympathies or pay our condolences. But a partnership will suffice.

Sincerely,

The Knight Family

Freaking jackasses. I took a deep breath and walked back to the study to sit down and pour myself a tumbler of his best tequila.

The expensive stuff he said was only for victories, which made me laugh because what victories did we have left?

I lifted the glass in a mock salute to the framed picture on the desk of him and Lex. Both smiling like they hadn’t just detonated our entire legacy.

“Didn’t think you’d leave before me,” I muttered. “You two really fucked it up … and left us with nothing but problems.”

I turned toward his laptop and opened it to log in. I scanned his accounts, his folders, everything again just to be sure. Bank accounts were dismal. Offshore accounts not much better. Emergency funds would have to be tapped into soon if we were going to continue to pay the men running drugs for Paolo.

I didn’t agree with that part of the business, but there wasn’t much Paolo would allow me to say about it. We’d had the conversations. I knew the firearms business was more lucrative for us, but Paolo wouldn’t hear of it.

“When you build a man up and let him sit on a pedestal your whole life just for them to topple over and knock you down with them,” I whispered to no one, “seems he doesn’t just land on you … he buries you.”

I leaned back in his chair and pinched the bridge of my nose.

Paolo hadn’t ever been good with money, but he’d managed to hold onto our territories’ trust because my father had once ruled them and paid men well enough for their loyalty for a time. They’d done right by many for a long time, but loyalty only took us so far.

I’d been the one who’d tried to help my uncle clean it up. I pushed and pushed to expand Fuerte Firearms, and so far it had worked. “We could get out of drug trafficking and trade for good,” I’d told him.

“You don’t make those decisions, mija. I do. So shut the fuck up, and do what you’re told.”

God, how he loved that I did what I was told most of the time. From the time I was barely old enough to understand I did what he told me to, I’d been sitting beside him learning how to move money without leaving fingerprints. I’d be around learning to throw a knife to save his ass, I’d let men court me just to get a good deal going.

While Maribel and Annarose played, I sat and researched and learned and honed, all for Paolo.

All for the family.

Now I knew how to launder money, how to protect myself, and how to run illegal and legal businesses.