As we left the car, the cell pushed in my back pocket, I reminded myself that staying off the water and with Smoke was the game plan. No matter what Alejandro wanted, I wouldn’t do what his message demanded.
Alone time with the gringo is over.
Now come home to your husband.
17
Maggie
The shack was small, with worn apple green lap siding around the surface. Some of the pieces had rotted or were completely missing in certain areas while the small, eight-foot-deep front porch was shy the left side-railing.
Dimitri walked in front of me, his gun in the waistband of his jeans and another one strapped to his ankle. If Alejandro had been watching before we left, he’d know where Dimitri had kept his protection. But a sweep of his office had come up empty, unlike the restaurant and my apartment. We were banking on my ex not being ballsy enough to infiltrate all of Dimitri’s security measures.
“Keep behind me,” he warned, reaching his hand back for me as we came to the porch.
“He’s not gonna like you touching me,” I tried, earning a slow look over his shoulder for my effort.
“Easy, mami,” I heard as we came to the porch, spotting the open front door shielded only by an old screen door. “Nice and slow.” Alejandro’s voice was lower now than it had been on the phone, calmer somehow. But it didn’t fill me with anything resembling ease. “Open the door, gringo. Let my wife in first.”
“That’s not gonna happen,” he said, stepping forward, then Dimitri paused, tensing when the sound of a gun clicking seemed to echo.
“I have no problem shooting you where you stand. But I’d rather not upset my son or my wife.” Alejandro moved, coming to the door. His body was shaded by the darkness in the small cottage, but I could make out the thin silhouette of his body and the glint from his gun as he held it up.
When neither of us moved and Dimitri kept everything but the glare he threw at Alejandro still, the man seemed to give in, just a little bit.
“I’m not going to hurt her. That’s a promise.”
“You took our son,” he said. “You invaded our lives with your cameras. Your word means dick to me.”
“Our. Son,” Alejandro corrected through gritted teeth. “Besides, you can’t stalk someone who belongs to you,” he said, his voice low, each word releasing with a sharp bite. “She’s my wife—”
“Not anymore. She divorced your ass and as long as I’m here, she’s standing behind me.” He inhaled, moving his head to the side, squinting like he tried to get the make of Alejandro, see how far he could push him. “Back up and we’ll come inside.”
“Fine, gringo,” he answered, moving back into the dark cottage. “Watch yourself.”
Dimitri nodded, shifting his gaze to me, not meeting my face directly. He squeezed my hand before he reached for the screen door and opened it.
I moved behind him, my fingers against his back, my heart thudding in my ears. I took slow, even breaths before we moved across the threshold. Then, my gaze was everywhere, at everything, looking at the small table to the right, at the monitors that lit up one corner of the front room and the images on them—Vi in our apartment with Mr. Kempt and one of his daughters, then Mr. and Mrs. C. with Dante and Toni at the bar in the restaurant, drinking small cups of espresso, their expressions worried.
Dimitri glanced toward them, and he flexed his jaw and pressed his lips together like it took effort not to charge at Alejandro and beat him senseless for invading his family’s life the way he had.
“Slow,” my ex said when we came to the center of the room. He walked forward, coming into the light from the darkness that surrounded us.
My breath caught in my chest at how gaunt, how unhealthy he looked. My ex-husband had been so beautiful when we met. All the girls in our Freshman Econ class fought over who got to sit next to him that first week. He hadn’t been interested in any of them. He’d moved each class, avoiding them, sitting in the back, then the front, then, by the third week, in the middle, for each lecture, right next to me. It took Alejandro a solid month to ask me out and me, two more weeks to realize that was what he was doing.
He’d been so smart and stunning, really. His light brown skin clear. His black eyes round, deep set and haunting. His full, lush lips pink, delectable. I couldn’t resist him. I’d been helpless.
But the man who stood in front of us was not the boy I’d fallen in love with ten years ago. This man was rail thin and ghostly. His skin was pockmarked and scarred. There were blemishes and sores on the sides of his face and along his forehead. He’d grown so thin that the high set cheekbones that had always made him look like he should be walking runways, now made him appear sick. His collarbone protruded and his once thick, curly hair had become thin and matted.
“I thought you said he was motivated,” Dimitri said, staring at Alejandro with his face twisted in disgust. I could see the pity beneath all the rage that cornered in his eyes.
“I…don’t know…” Despite Dimitri’s warning, I moved forward, taken over by dread and fear. This is what had become of the man I’d once loved so fiercely. Mi corazón, I’d called him. But he wasn’t my heart anymore. He’d been replaced. “Where?” I said, not hiding the anger in my voice. When he only stared at me, that anger intensified. “Where is my son?”
He didn’t speak. His gaze locked on me, moving over my face as his hands shook, his mouth wide, opening and closing like there was so much he wanted to say and couldn’t. He licked his lips, swallowing so thickly I could hear his throat working before he took a breath, like he geared up to speak but couldn’t decide what to say first.
“She asked you a question!” Dimitri’s loud voice jerked Alejandro’s attention away from me.
“My… my son is fine. Sleeping.” The glare he gave Dimitri was fierce, but there wasn’t enough of him to back up the challenge in his eyes.
This didn’t make sense to me. None of it. His behavior, his anger. The tech I understood. That had Alejandro’s name all over it. But how thin and sick he looked, how caught he seemed by watching me, how jealous he was, didn’t make any sense to me.
He’d been confident on the phone, teasing us. Now he jerked when Dimitri called him out. Now he looked as though he could barely hold up his gun.
“What is this mierda?” I asked, walking closer. Dimitri touched my arm but didn’t pull me back. I was betting on that response and the one I got from my ex-husband.
Alejandro had always been possessive, aside from that time he offered me up to Reynolds, so I knew he’d hate seeing Dimitri touch me. And when he did, the thin man in front of me moved his top lip up, a wide bend curling it. He narrowed his eyes and the irises seemed to darken as he moved his gaze to the spot where Dimitri held my arm, then to his face like he dared the bigger man to challenge him. But Alejandro wasn’t stupid. He was weaker, smaller than Dimitri. I think he knew that and resented the idea that I did too.
“There’s no mierda.” Alejandro scrubbed his fingers over his face with his free hand and gestured with his gun as he spoke with the other. “I wanted you here…I…I got you here.” But he didn’t look at me when he said that. In fact, he didn’t look at either of us. He moved back, his limbs shaking like the onslaught of a fit was beginning and he tried to play it off. “I want the gringo gone so you…you can…”