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She shook her head once; she seemed too tired to move more.
“I… I work here,” she rasped as I brushed her black hair back from her damp brow. “Then he say he let my father go.”
The back of my neck prickled. I’d known something hadn’t felt right here.
“Who? Who made you work here,chula?”
“My father and I coming home, two years ago. They took him,” she said, though her eyes had begun to lose focus.
“Who took him?”
She pressed her lips together. Even at death’s door, she was too frightened to tell me.
“Where’s home?” I asked instead, focusing on her face and not the pool of blood spreading out beneath her.
“La Ceiba,” she sighed like the word was a prayer, and the pained little line between her brows eased just a little. “Honduras.”
“Tell me about La Ceiba,” I said, brushing away the tears that leaked from her eyes.
“It beautiful,” she whispered as more tears spilled over. “It…home.”
The light in her eyes began to fade and her chest stopped moving. No more inhale. No more exhale.
No more light.
She was gone.
Chapter Two
Brute Hastings
“What the hell are we doing here?” Leo asked, staring down at the slow-moving water of Cayuga Lake beneath our feet.
“We’re fishing,” I said, nodding to the fishing pole in his hand. Seemed pretty obvious to me.
“You sure about that?” He looked pointedly at the empty bucket behind us. “You do realize we’ve been sitting here for two hours?”
“Patience, my young friend,” I said, clapping a hand on his back. Young people these days; they were always in such a hurry.
He eyed me for a moment, then looked back down at the water, at the fish who just weren’t biting today. Smart little fuckers.
Leo shrugged. “Whatever you say,amico.”
The truth was, I hadn’t been fishing since I was a kid. Wasn’t having any more luck now than I had then.
Time to show these little fuckers who was boss.
I stood up, grabbed my gun, and fired a round into the water.
“There. Fish,” I said as two scaly, albeit bloody, bodies rose to the surface. “Yellow perch? Or maybe rock bass? Damned if I know.”
Leo laughed and yanked his line out of the water. “All right, so what is this really about, Brute? If you were looking for help from the Lucas, you would have just gone to Dom.”
It was true; Leo’s brother Dominic was heir to the Luca empire.
I shrugged. “Maybe I just like you better.”
“Well, that’s a given… But driving four hours out to shoot at fish?”
