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I clicked my tongue against my teeth. "You're too soft on him.”
“He needs some time out of Apá’s shadow,” Omar said.
“Stay out of this,” Luis snarled at him.Mierda. This was turning into a mess. I nudged Luis as subtly as possible, trying to get him back on track. Luis took a deep breath and then said, "We can't give you our territory in the club district, and I think you know that.”
The arrogant smirk on Omar’s face didn’t fade for a second. If anything, he lookedpleasedwith Luis’s answer. “Then you know what will happen to Lyse.”
“What else do you want?”
His smirk grew into a sneer. “I want revenge for what you did. I would love nothing more than to put a bullet between your eyes, and then do the same to your weakling of a son…but I’ll settle for ruining your businesses one by one.”
Luis turned white with rage. “Your father—”
“Is dead.” Omar scoffed. “Tell me something, Luis. What sort of a man would so blindly follow the dictates of his rival? What price would possibly be high enough to sacrifice your dignity?” He looked down his nose at Luis, and instead of acting the leader that he certainly pretended to be, the man seemed to cower in his seat.
Cabrón, I thought. Luis was becoming an insufferable liability. “Have you touched Lyse?” I asked flatly.
Omar’s gaze snapped to me. “She’s alive and well,” he said. “For now.”
He wanted his words to sound like a threat, but I knew what he meant. Omar had fucked Lyse, which meant she was absolutely useless to me. If she allowed herself to bedefiledby this asshole, she wasn’t worth touching.
Luis, however, was turning a sickly green. “I won’t discuss territory trades withyou. Not when Angel is awake.”
I cleared my throat. “I don’t think we need to be discussing territory at all, Luis.” He was just as surprised as Omar. “Lyse isn’t polling as well as I’d like her to be,” I said.
“What the fuck does that mean?”
I looked at Omar. “I’m running for office, Señor Castillo,” I explained. “Single men of my age do not fare well in the polls. If I want to continue to move up in my political career, I need a wife who will look good on my arm and who the people connect with. Happy wife, happy life, after all…but I miscalculated our ages. A man of my age with a woman of her age didn’t poll favorably; I fell by ten points after the announcement of our engagement.”
I had let the notion of having a pretty little virgin all to myself overshadow my common sense. It was an oversight that I couldn’t afford.
“You had to have known that she didn’t ‘poll’ well for a while. Why bother with everything that you did to clear my name if you didn’t care about getting her back?”
I watched Omar’s face, looking for anything that might key me in to what he was thinking. And there it was. That slight clenching of his jaw. He was getting worried.Good, I thought.Let him.
“Of course he cares,” Luis interrupted. “He’s known her for years.”
Omar stared at me for a long moment and then shook his head. “Rojas, if you think he’s that altruistic, you’re an even bigger fool than my father thought.”
I should have fucked Lyse when I had the chance, I lamented and put a hand on Luis’s chair. “I think we’re finished here, don’t you agree, Luis?”
The older man swallowed hard. “Of course,” he said. “Tell my daughter—” He stopped and glanced at me. I saw his jaw clench, and I raised my eyebrow at him, challenging him.Say one word, Luis, I thought.See what happens. “Go while you have the chance, Castillo. There won’t be another one.”
“¿Sabes qué? Eres una mierda,” Omar spat. We watched him saunter out of the room, and for a moment, I wished I had allowed Luis to bring his gun to the office. He could have buried a bullet in the behemoth's back and ended all this here and now.
“Youknow what to do, Luis,” I said, eyes still on the spot where Omar had stood. “I want your mess cleaned up.”
“Sí,jefe.”
CHAPTER20
Omar
I’d fucked up. Well and truly. I had gone into the meeting with Luis and Felixcertainthat I knew how it would go, but I hadn’t counted on Luis being so far up Felix Suarez’s ass that he’d turned over operations of the Rojas cartel to that man. When did that happen? Why would Luis give up power like that?
Angel is going to kill me. I tried to negotiate for territory in his stead,andI’d lost what little leverage I had over Luis Rojas. But I couldn’t deal with that right now. The most pressing matter was Lyse and her safety.
I pulled out my phone, happy to have it back instead of a damn burner, and logged into the security system on the island. I checked all the cameras and found Lyse in the attic, painting. The tightness in my chest loosened. For whatever reason, both Lyse’s father and fiancé gave her up for dead, and that could only mean that bad was coming our way. Again.
