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He brought my hand up to his mouth and kissed it, leaving a dirty smudge across his chin that I reached up to wipe away but only managed to make worse. “He can’t get away with what he did to you,” he said.
“And I’m not saying that he should…but you need to be safe.
“He’s a sick old man,mi esposa,” he reassured me. “Omar and I could have taken him down years ago, but we didn’t out of respect.”
“And that’s pretty much gone,” Omar chimed in from the front seat.
“Agreed,” Angel said.
That part of myself that I didn’t like —the one that could overlook Angel’s ruthlessness —reared her ugly head.His father won’t ever get to hurt us again, she said.Good riddance. I didn’t want anyone’s death on my head…but I couldn’t say that I would be sad if the man ended up in the swamp next to his lackey.
CHAPTER30
Angel
“My father has to pay for what he did,” I said as Omar parked the car in the driveway. “You don’t have to watch. Go take your hot shower and climb into bed.”
Emma shook her head. “No, I think I do need to be there,” she said and touched her belly. “I have to know why he would do that to his own grandchild.”
“I have to know why he did it toyou,” I said. I brushed a matted piece of hair behind her ear and brought my mouth to hers again. She still tasted like grit and earth, but it didn’t matter. Her lips were the best things that I’d ever felt against my own.
She held out her hand. “Let’s go,” she said, and how could I say no to that?
We walked into the house hand-in-hand with Omar at our backs —the triumphant returning to our castle. In the dining room, Lili was sitting in a chair with my gun still trained on our father, who had finished his dinner, apparently. “It’s about time you got back,” Lili grumbled and handed the gun back to me. “My arm was going numb.” When her eyes fell on Emma, however, she softened. “I’m so glad you’re okay,” she said and tried to pull Emma in for a hug.
Emma sidestepped her. “So am I,” she said flatly, refusing to look at her square in the face. Lili’s expression fell, and had it not been for the man in front me, I would have said something…but dealing with Gustavo came first. I would help Lili afterward.
“Before I kill you,” I said, focusing on my father, “I want to know why.”
He stared at me. “Why what,mijo?”
I stared, mouth drawn into a hard line, for a moment, and then I swung hard and smashed the butt of the gun into his jaw. Lili flinched back, eyes wide; even Omar appeared shocked. None of us had ever dared to strike back. “Why did you send the Rojas after my wife?” I demanded.
Gustavo gripped his jaw. The thin skin had split, and blood poured down his neck and stained his shirt. “Luis Rojas offered you peace, and you spit in his face. I had to do something before he declared all-out war.”
“Hedeclared war when he attacked us at Eliseo,” I said. “Why should I take his offer of peace after he tried to have me killed?”
“He offered you a piece of his business; I approved it, and you refused.”
That was the real issue then. Gustavo wanted the trafficking business, and he was mad that I had refused it, despite all of the other opportunities that I had opened to us. Despite it being unnecessarily risky for everyone involved. Despite it probably being a trap so that the Rojas could either try and take us all out or turn us in to the feds. Whatever Gustavo wanted, he got, and he wasn’t willing to compromise on any of it.
“You already punished me for that,” I said. “If that wasn’t enough, you could have sent someone after me and handed the family over to Omar. Why go after Emma?”
My father looked at Emma with contempt written all over his face. I contemplated hitting him again, but if I did, I’d likely break his jaw, and then this all would have been a waste of time. “I gave her to you because you fucked up and ended up with a life debt to awoman.” He said the word as if it were a curse. “You weren’t supposed to enjoy it.”
“You thought marriage was a punishment?” Emma asked. While her voice was flat, she didn’t sound angry; it was more that she was confused. Then, something must have clicked in her head because her mouth twisted into a sneer. “You thought I would hate him, right? Like your wife hated you?” she asked, voice growing harder and meaner with every word. “You wanted me to make him miserable because that’s what it was like for you?”
Gustavo’s eyes were black flint. If he could have gone anywhere near, he would have strangled her; I could see it clearly in his face. I put my arm out and slid her behind me. “Your function was to give him children and get out of the way, like my wife. She lived up to her duties beautifully.”
“Did you think I was going to kill myself too?” Emma asked. “When I was done being a broodmare?”
“Anyone can be convinced to do anything given the right incentive,mija.”
Gustavo throwing a grenade in our faces wouldn’t have hit as hard. “Padre,” Lili said, voice wavering. “What are you saying? Did you…did you do something to Mami?”
He shot her a look so full of venom that she jerked as if she’d been hit. “She fulfilled her purpose,” he said again, completely deadpan. “I didn’t need her anymore; Miriam understood that.”
Gustavo didn’t have to say it explicitly for all of us to understand what he meant: he either had my mother killed and framed it as a suicide, or he ordered her to do it herself, and she complied. “I am going to enjoy sending you to Hell,” I said.
