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RIDGE
It took a team effort, like most things did, but between Tryst, Press, Alex, and myself, we’d finally pieced together why William Cooley had made it his life’s mission to take down Los Caballeros.
The way Tryst told it, Alex had taken her and Maddox’s baby, Coco, to her mom’s house. While there, she’d mentioned how the DA, William Cooley, had been granted a search warrant for the wine caves. Alex warned her mother there was a chance he’d try to obtain one to search the house as well.
“That man,” she’d said, shaking her head.
“What about him, Mom?”
“First, his father. Now him.”
“Alex asked her to elaborate,and what her mother said, explains everything,” I told Sera, whose eyes were open wide.
“What happened?”
“It all began when immigration officers showed up at Alex’s family’s winery and raided the vineyards and arrested several of Alfonso’s workers. As you can imagine—well, maybe you didn’t know him—but Alex’s father had quite a temper. Rather than risk getting on the wrong side of US Immigration, he called a meeting of Los Caballeros.”
I continued the story the same way it was told to me, not leaving out any possibly incriminating details—either I trusted Sera or I didn’t.
Alfonso, my father, and Press and Beau’s father, along with the seven other then-members, started looking into why ICE believed the workers were in the country illegally. They eventually discovered the visas obtained for the workers had been filed fraudulently.
“This made Alfonso angrier since he’d helped every one of the workers arrested and deported, paying for their visas as well as sponsoring any who wanted to become US citizens.”
“Let me guess. The attorney was Cooley’s father?” said Sera.
“Yep, and it got pretty ugly. A thirty-three-count indictment was handed down by a federal grand jury. Cooley and his law partner were convicted on all the charges against them, which ended up also including money laundering.”
“How did this get buried?”
“Well, one of the recipients of the money Alfonso paid Cooley was the governor of California.”
Sera’s eyes opened wider still. “He pardoned them?”
I nodded. “And sealed the records, from the indictments to the conviction to the sentencing. Every bit of it.”
“That sonuvabitch.”
I wasn’t sure which sonuvabitch Sera was referring to, but it applied to them all.
“If Cooley’s father was pardoned, why is he carrying this vendetta? Not to mention, Alfonso Avila did nothing wrong.”
“Stanley Cooley—the DA’s father—served five years in federal prison before he was pardoned. He wasn’t permitted to practice law ever again, and the family was disgraced.”
“How old was William at the time? Do you know?”
“Eighteen.”
Sera got up and walked over to the windows. “He became an attorney to avenge what happened to his father.”
“In part, at least.”
When she turned around, her face had gone ashen.
I stood too and walked over to her. “What’s going on?”
“It’s the same thing I did,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
