MAKSIM
It made the most sense to keep Carina from this conversation about what the captured man told us. Talking about her brother wasn’t a black-and-white ordeal. The Garcias had always been allies but I couldn’t, in good conscience, think that anymore. Too much grayness crept in when I thought about how he’d let our shipment end up with the Hernandez Cartel.
I couldn’t budge on the need to eliminate a threat to our empire, but I also couldn’t willingly let my marriage crumble apart because of it.
Ifit could.
That was the sticking point that weighed me down.
How loyal would Carina stay to the memory of her brother, if at all?
Adrik and I met at one of our clubs on the Strip. We sat at a private table in the restaurant that anchored this casino and nightclub. Music was muted this time of the day. Guests weren’tcramming the place outside our VIP area. My food remained untouched on my plate while he carried on.
He wasn’t oblivious to this development with the Cartels. But he had the freedom to view the situation with neutrality. To him, this was just business. To him, the decision to kill Arturo Garcia was just another action to check off his to-do list.
Only business as usual.
No emotions applied.
Yet, he understood howIwas in a tricky position.
“How do you think she’ll take the news that you need to handle this problem?” he asked before taking another bite of his food, his appetite wholly unbothered.
He meant the problem of Arturo Garcia being alive. The problem of my brother-in-law being able to stay connected to Gregori’s network, even if it was through Yusef Antonov.
Arturo hadn’t ordered that ambush.
He hadn’t played a part in that drive-by incident, either.
Enough stood out to me, though. There was no way, in my mind, that Arturo Garcia was innocent.
“Assuming you tell her beforehand,” Adrik added.
I shrugged. “I don’t intend to hide anything from her. Not this, at least. I suspect that she’s been expecting something like this to happen. Dreading it.”
Adrik nodded. “I get that impression as well. She’s too smart not to see the big picture. She’s been acting like she’s waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
“When she talks about Arturo, it’s not favorably. She is fully aware of how gullible he is, how he doesn’t think and plan about his decisions. The best that I can sum it up is that she’s been suffering from guilt and letting the Cartel down by coming to be my wife. In her absence, she can’t protect the Cartel from his poor leadership, and she values her past.”
“She’s Miguel Garcia’s daughter,” he said. “Of course, she would. He was a fine man. A solid trade partner.”
Whereas Arturo was a massive liability. And now, our enemy.
“So, would you tell her?” he asked. “That you intend to have him eliminated?”
I looked down at my plate, as if my lunch would have a fucking answer. It didn’t. I wasn’t sure I’d find an answer anywhere I looked. Some things in life just weren’t decodable.
“You told Elena,” I reminded him.
He nodded and wiped his mouth before lowering the napkin. “Our situations were different. Elena disowned her father the day she was given to me. She had zero alliance and respect for him when he ejected her from the financial firm. There was no love lost between them.”
“But she still struggled with the fact that you were going to kill her father,” I said.
“No.” He shook his head. “Not quite. It’s taken some time to discuss this and talk about it, but she’s made herself much clearer since the day I executed John Morovov. She mourned the life that she’d lost to him. She was grieving the belated understanding that he’d robbed her of so much of her life by taking advantage of her working for him. She didn’t grievehim,but that he’d made her have a miserable life. She grieved having no one, which wasn’t a concept that applied for long. She has me, the family. She is anticipating our child soon. It…” He lifted one shoulder and let it fall. “It worked out.”
How will things work out between me and Carina, though?
I sat back in my chair and let my legs stretch out under the table, too tense in my posture. “Carina can’t deny the danger and damage Arturo is causing, both to us and the Cartel.”
