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I grimaced. “Probably. I did try to tell them the real story after I found out how Edmundo had screwed over Mireya’s people, but they refused to even hear it. It was obvious they’d never accept the truth after they’d spent so long blaming her for it. Seeing me back in town set them off again.”
Lou glanced at her purse, which no doubt held her phone. “Well, I can delete all that crap, and then it’s gone.”
“From your life. Not from theirs.” Uneasiness prickled through my gut. “They exposed me to you—I don’t know what they’ll try next. They might manage to cause even more problems for you with your mother because of me. If they go to her with those videos, and she gets it into her head that we’re scheming together against her…”
Dios mío, I couldn’t even picture how much more of a terror Mireya would become with that idea fanning the flames of her rage.
Lou grasped my hand and squeezed it. “We won’t let it get that far. We’ll take them on together—like we have so many problems before.”
SIXTEEN
Luciana
“Ugh.”I tried to restrain a yawn as I rubbed at my eyes, rocking with the bump of the rental car’s wheels over a pothole.
Rafael glanced over at me from the driver’s seat. “You never were good at sleeping on planes.”
“Unlike you,” I muttered. He’d drifted off in the seat beside me before we’d even left Japanese air space. I’d done my best to doze during the long flight back to the US, but I wasn’t sure I’d gotten more than a couple of hours of very restless sleep.
I had to push through my fatigue and the jetlag, though. We had bigger problems in front of us—namely, the members of Rafael’s former gang and the peace we needed to broker with them to ensure they didn’t stir up even more trouble now that it seemed like my problems with my mother might finally be under control.
Fly in, have a quick chat, fly right back to Tokyo. Simple as that.
Ha.
Anton, the guy who ran the gang these days, had grudgingly agreed to our request to meet, as long as he could pick the location. We were heading into one of the roughest sections of Austin, no doubt smack in the middle of their territory.
My skin prickled with uneasiness, but the show of good faith had been necessary. They wouldn’t have agreed to talk with us anywhere they thought we might be able to pull one over on them.
The one other time I’d met these assholes, they’d insulted me, accused Rafael of betraying them, and delivered a beatdown that’d left him in a cast and stitches. To say I wasn’t looking forward to making any kind of deal with them was the understatement of the century.
But a girl had to do what a girl had to do.
Rafael eased off the gas as the grimy parking garage where the meetup was arranged came into view up ahead. “He’s probably come with a whole horde of his goons.”
I raised my chin. “That’s fine. Whatever he needs to stay safe.” I touched my gun in my purse and then the other in my jacket pocket. Rafael was armed too.
“You could let me handle it.”
I shot him a narrow look. “It’s my family they have the real problem with. Any way we hash this out, I’ve got to be involved. They need to know any agreement we come to is definitely from me as well.”
My bodyguard sighed, but he didn’t argue. We’d already had similar debates over the course of the past day while we arranged this impromptu trip.
He pulled into the shadowy cement fortress and parked not far from the entrance. Several figures shifted into view in the dimmer area toward the back of the structure.
I swallowed thickly and hardened my resolve. I couldn’t afford to let any one of these pricks see that I was nervous. If they couldn’t bring themselves to treat me as an equal, we were screwed.
About a dozen guys lumbered up to us, testosterone wafting off their flexed muscles and cocky smirks. Anton pushed to the front of the group with the broadest smirk of all, cracking his knuckles and studying us with his dark eyes.
“So, Rafe, you had the balls to come to us for once instead of making us track you down.” He flicked his gaze toward me. “I’m surprised this one bothered to stick with you after she found out who you really are. I guess you really did win over some Cordova pussy.”
A couple of his colleagues made crude gestures with their hips, and a laugh spread through the group. Rafael clenched his fists, but I touched his arm to hold him back.
Holding my stance firm, I rolled my eyes as if I didn’t give a shit what he said about me. “I know who Rafael is now, unlike the bunch of you who seem stuck ten years in the past. After a decade, I think it’s time we put this feud to rest.”
Anton snorted. “Who are you to decide that, little puta? We still haven’t gotten any payback for the shit your mother did. She thinks she rules this city, but we aren’t going to bow down to any queen of míerda.”
“No one’s asking you to,” I said evenly. “I don’t work with her—I’m on my side, not hers.”
