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“I think everyone has walked out on you,” said Tony. “The barrio is gone. The gang is gone. You have no contacts in Mexico or anywhere else. And these men who are hunting you will find you. You will have nowhere to go.”
Walking past Cisco, he reached for the doorknob, then felt the sting of the knife in his side.
“No!” yelled Berto. Cisco turned the bloody knife toward him, frowning.
“You want to join him? He’s a fucking traitor, and he’ll be treated as one.” Tony turned at the door, staring at the man, shaking his head.
“I’m no traitor. I’m a man with a mind of his own. A mind that knows what you’re doing is ungodly. It’s beyond inhumane. You’re an animal. A sick, perverse, twisted animal. I don’t care what your father did to you. This is wrong.”
Cisco stared at him, shaking his head. He looked back to Berto, who had the common sense to look away.
“You know nothing of my father. He was a great man!” said Cisco.
“He was a pedophile who touched you and raped you your whole life. I always wondered why, when you’d finally become a grown man, you didn’t kill him. Why didn’t you walk away? Now I know. You’d grown to want it, to need it. So, your anger was taken out on everyone around you,” he said, shaking his head at the man. His fingers were covered in his own blood as he pressed harder against his side.
“My father was a good man!”
“Was he? I walked in on you, Cisco. You think I could wipe that out of my mind? You weren’t a child. You were a twenty-two-year-old man lying with your naked father touching one another.”
“Shut up!” he screamed.
“Alright, I’ll shut up, but you won’t win this. You were never going to win this.” He looked at the other man in the room. “Berto? You can come with me.”
He appeared frozen in place, unable to move from the side of his long-time boss and tormentor.
“Good luck, Cisco. You’ll need it.” Tony stumbled from the room, growing weaker by the moment from the blood loss. He hailed a taxi, begging him to take him to any emergency room. By the time they’d arrived, Tony Castillo had bled out.
But he’d died a free man.
“I know you guys don’t want to hear this, but Cisco and one other man have been seen outside Crescent City Kickboxing in the warehouse district. Tony Castillo isn’t with him, but a John Doe arrived at Charity ER three hours ago. Dead on arrival from a stab wound. The description fits him.”
The men all stared at one another, then turned to see Londyn staring at them.
“You need me to do this. If he sees me going into the club, he’ll want to try and take me when I leave.”
“I can’t let you go in alone,” said Bone.
“I won’t be alone,” smiled Londyn. Hazel, Addie, Kate, Piper, Lucia, and Tori waved at the men in the auditorium. “I’ll have an entire badass girl squad behind me. You didn’t tell me we had a girl squad, Ty.”
“Well, I didn’t think of it,” he frowned.
“Mmhmm. Anyway, I’ll go into the club with Lucia since she’s the smallest. The others will follow, then I’ll walk out with them behind me. We all know that Cisco will approach me, and we’ll take him down. Easy.”
“Take him down? Easy?” said Bone with a shocked expression. “When did you suddenly become part of the fighting fifty-first? You will not take anyone down.”
“Oh, you know what I meant,” she said, waving her hand. “I want him gone. We want him gone, and the only way to do this is to lure him out with me. Crescent City Kickboxing is in an old warehouse. There is nothing around it.”
Bone shoved his hand through his hair, pacing back and forth in front of the team. He looked up, ready to speak, then looked back down. The others knew this had to be his decision. They couldn’t force him to allow this, but they also knew that it was probably going to be their best bet.
Stopping in front of Londyn, he held her hands, leaning his forehead against hers. In barely a whisper, he spoke to her.
“I can’t lose you.”
“What did you tell me?” she smiled. “You won’t lose me. I’ll be fine, and you’ll watch out for me.”
He didn’t want to admit it, but it was probably the best way to draw out Cisco without endangering civilian lives. He hated it. In fact, he despised it, but he knew she was right.
“Alright,” he nodded. “Let’s get him to follow the lead.”
