Page 39 of Dark Reunion

“You left my baby girl at a random fire station? Hijo de la chingada! Debería meterte un plomazo aquí mismo.” Alvarez yelled and pulled his gun, pointing it at Dean.

“Would you rather I left her there? She’d either be dead or ten kids deep courtesy of my father. Is that what you wanted?”

Alvarez’s hand shook and finally he lowered the gun. “But you just left her.” Alvarez got up into Dean’s personal space, shadows crawling across his scarred face.

“I was a stupid eighteen-year-old kid. I’m sorry. I regret not making better choices, but I hadn’t planned on her coming with me initially, and…” He sighed. “I’m sorry, but she is alive and she is in real danger now.”

“Where is she?”

Dean shrugged. “I don’t know…not exactly. She was staying with a friend of mine, a leader of a motorcycle club. She was safe with them, but she was spotted in Cali, and one of Carlos’s men somehow framed her for murder.”

“No mames…asesinato?” He closed his eyes and tapped the gun off his forehead. For a long beat, the only sound was the drip of water from a leaky pipe. “Is she in some prison?”

Dean shook his head. “I managed to get a message out to some friends that helped her escape, but Carlos has the might of a secret organization, the same one that hit your warehouse months ago. They are highly trained and think they are working for the United States government. They are ghosts. Take their orders from special phones and no one knows who is in charge. Carlos is sending these men after her. I have no way to leave, to stop the men, or to help her.”

“So, he wants her alive?”

“Yes.” Dean’s mask cracked. “I know what it’s like to be at the mercy of my father. And I’ll kill him before I let him do to her what he did to me, but it would be best if she never reached the compound.”

Something shifted in Alvarez’s expression. Not trust, not forgiveness, but there was the faintest flicker of understanding.

Still, his tone was steel. “What do you need from me?”

“I understand you have friends in high places in the United States government.” Alvarez’s eyes narrowed. “It doesn’t matter how I know that, just that I do. There is a man in the Marshals that is an old friend of mine and can track anyone. Send him after her, get the Marshals to bring her in, and you can pick her up from them.”

“What do you get out of this?”

“I need manpower when the time comes to take down my father. I want a promise right now that in exchange for the information I gave you, you will help me.”

He scoffed. “It is a suicide mission to attack your father’s compound.”

“It is right now, but I’m working on something to solve that issue.”

Alvarez studied Dean, the silence heavy. Then, slowly, he nodded once. “For her. Not for you. Don’t mistake that, but yes…I would like to wipe him off the map. Will you take over?”

Dean shook his head.

“Consider it your bonus for when you’ve finished helping me. The area will be yours. I want nothing to do with this life, but you must promise you will not execute the innocent, or those that have helped me. They get folded into your organization or given their freedom.”

“You’re not what I expected, Mercurio.” Alvarez held out his hand for Dean to shake. Dean clasped hands with him, and they’d just gone from natural enemies to a bridged but fragile truce.

“What is your friend’s name that I need to have sent after Isabella?”

“He goes by Wolf.”

“You walk a tightrope, I pray you don’t fall before you keep your promise to bring Carlos down.”

Dean’s mouth curved in a humorless smirk. “I never fall. I fucking leap off the ledge.”

“What happened in there?” Ricco asked when he saw Dean was still in one piece. Matteo and him both looked skeptical that Dean was going to walk out of the meeting alive.

“Not here.” Dean waited until they were back in the safety of the Hummer. “He’s agreed to help when the time comes.”

“Can you trust him?” Matteo asked.

“We want the same thing, for Carlos and the empire he’s built to be destroyed. He will help,” Dean affirmed, wheeling the Hummer out of its hiding spot and heading back on the same route they took to get here.

When they got close Carlos’s compound, they navigated back to the hanger the same way they had left. They encountered no questions about their comings and goings.