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We have obligations that don’t mesh, and she deserves better.
But I’m selfish enough to greedily take all the time I have with her now, while I can.
I drop her and her car off and get my motorbike. I’ve got shit to do today.
First, I stopped on the main street to buy her coffee and croissants, and then, on the pavement, I kissed her.
She called me a peacock, and yeah, it looked like that to her. I just figured making it known she’s mine is a smart move and should keep Nadie safe.
I also got to fuckin’ kiss her like I’ve always wanted to, in front of the town so that was a bonus.
Then she did the most shocking thing. She grabbed me at the car, kissed me, and whispered, “Always wanted to do that, Fernandez.”
Now, I’m halfway through a list of names I got last night. I pause by the road near the house I’m going to visit, and I call Tizio.
“How’s your kid prisoner?”
“He wants to learn about becoming an enforcer.”
I slap my forehead. “Don’t you fuckin’ dare. Won’t only be my balls Nadia cuts off. Yours and Nicolo’s will be on that chopping board.”
“He’s gotta go to school. There are some good ones here, you know.”
I grip the handlebar of the bike and force the latent rage away. At Nadia’s fucking brother, at the fact, I can’t see a way to make this work. Any other town and maybe I’d think of walking from the only real family I know and set up with her. But Enders Ridge has too many ghosts, alive and dead.
“Not her kid.”
“He fucking talks about her like she’s his mom. If I had a heart,” Tizio says, “it’d break.”
“He has her, but she can’t just go off with him, y’know? Anyway, good that he’s doing well.”
“He’s not happy with the private tutor Avah, Mia, and Scarlett chose.”
“They know?” Those women are always figuring things out when they shouldn’t.
“They always know. Mia started this shit by tucking Avah into her pocket as someone who needed saving.” Tizio laughs. “Yeah, but the tutoring will do him good, keep him out of trouble and on his way to get an actual education. Any leads?”
“Why I’m calling.” I run through everything, which is nothing much. Sometimes nothing much can be telling, a lead in itself, but we’ll have to see.
“Not much,” he agrees. “Which is weird.”
“So, we’re missing something. And we’re no closer to finding answers with the links to Dallas.”
“If there are any.” Tizio sighs. “Fuck. It just gets all sorts of complicated.”
“Yeah, I’m chasing up some maybe leads, and some left-of-center shit. Because I think there’s an angle we’re missing.”
“I hope it’s just a coincidence about the girls, and some will come back. I hope like fuck that the shit in that town is shit belonging to the town and you get it solved because Leo’s got something brewing and we might need all hands on deck sooner rather than later.”
The phone muffles, and then Nicolo gets on. “Send us names and so on. We’ll look into it here. Do it now.”
When I hang up, I do as he ordered. Not because he ordered, that fucking ticks me off, but because it’s smart to use the bigger networks, contacts, and databases we have in Dallas to do some heavy lifting.
Then, I head up to visit the first name on my list.
He answers the door with an unfriendly grunt and speaks to me in broken Portuguese. I’m hard to place, and he’s heard my American accent. A lot of people speak Spanish around here, my father’s native tongue? Not so much.
“I’m looking for whoever’s running this town,” I say in Portuguese. “Thought you could help.”
