“I don’t see the point in you coming along for this,” Chris replied, shrugging his broad shoulders under his own suit. He was thinking his choice of attire would be a mistake once they stepped off the temperature-controlled jet into the dry, Mexican heat. Not that it mattered. Guzzis were who they were, suits and class included, even when the weather called for board shorts and a dip in the ocean. “All I’m saying, is I can do this all without you needing to come along, Dad.”
Gian nodded and turned to stare out the port window as the plane slowed. Soon, it would taxi into the private gate at the international airport. According to their contact, guards would greet them although they arrived at a public airport.
It showed how far the cartel reached, and Chris refused to allow that thought very far from his mind. When people forgot who they were dealing with, they underestimated them at the same time.
He wouldn’t be doing that.
Not here.
They couldn’t afford to.
“It is a show of faith for me to be here for this first meeting,” Gian said, never turning back to give Chris his full attention as he spoke, “and you know that. In this life, this business, it is better when bosses sit down for a proper face to face, and then we go from there. It extends a friendly hand, and people are less likely to question our intentions. That is what we need here, isn’t it?”
Gian made all good points.
He wasn’t wrong.
Still, Chris watched his father from the side, and all he thought about was his mother back home in Canada. They were all at a rather comfortable place with la famiglia, and the family business. It had been a good while since the mafia touched their family violently, and Chris didn’t want this cartel job for The League to be the first thing in a while to remind their family—but especially not his mother—that this was dangerous.
They knew.
All of them did.
It didn’t change the fact that, sometimes, people became relaxed in their positions, and believed nothing would touch them in their lives.
Cartels were notoriously vicious, and risky, when doing business with them. A true statement whether someone learned it firsthand, or not. That, more than anything else, was what kept Chris on edge since they were using business as a front to get their in to the goddamn cartel here. Not only was he looking for a woman he wasn’t sure wanted to leave Mexico, but he also had to consider his father’s safety.
Like fuck would he leave here needing to tell his mother that her husband wouldn’t be coming home to her alive. That just would not happen. Not if Chris had any say.
Chris could have done this job alone without his father, but yes, it would be easier with his presence here to defer to until the leaders of the cartel trusted him. But as soon as that fucking happened, Gian was gone.
No questions asked.
“Did you call Ma?” Chris asked.
Gian’s lips lifted with a small smile. “I will call her once we’re off the plane, Chris.”
“You should call her now.”
“Stop worrying. You sound like her.”
Right.
Chris forced himself to shut up and let his annoying thoughts stay tucked away in his mind. There were a lot of reasons he could think of for why he shouldn’t have taken this job, but it was too late to back out now.
The phone in Chris’s pocket buzzed, and he took it out to check the text rolling across the screen. A simple message from his twin, but it calmed his overacting nerves. Corrado’s text only read, Call me if you need anything.
Chris would keep that in mind.
He might need it.
The private jet took a good twenty minutes to taxi to the correct gate where they could finally unbuckle and grab their bags from the cupboards at the front. Chris grabbed his own, a larger bag, than his father’s overnight travel duffle. If all went right, the overnight bag was all his father would need here, because Gian wouldn’t be staying more than a day or two.
They had to play their cards right.
“Merci,” Gian thanked the pilot at the front in French.
It was a toss-up with his father, and even his twin, or their oldest sibling, Marcus, which language they might use to talk. Chris was handy with English and Italian, but he had never picked up on French, for whatever reason.
Chris exited the plane after his father, giving the pilot a nod as he passed. He didn’t know where the flight attendant had disappeared to, but he didn’t care, either. At the bottom of the stairs, assault rifles in hand, stood three men dressed in matching outfits of denim jeans, and black shirts.
“Ah, good,” Gian muttered under his breath, “the cartel followed through.”
Chris swallowed the discomfort in his throat. “Good.”
It was unnerving when someone realized just how much control the cartels in Mexico— there were two major organizations that had long been in battle against one another—had in the country. From the government, to small businesses in the towns they used to make or smuggle their drugs through, it didn’t matter.
Blackmail.
Bribery.
Violence.
Cartels were not a game.
And here the Guzzis were, ready to play one with them.
Fun.
“Gian Guzzi?” the man standing ahead of the other two asked, his accent heavy.
“That would be me,” Chris’s father returned.
The man nodded. “We’ll walk you through customs, sir, and take you to the drop.”
The drop.
Huh.
They weren’t even calling it a meeting today.
Good to know.
• • •
“This is not the compound.”
Chris’s declaration to his father was quiet and said before the guards who had already stepped out of the vehicle opened the back door for them to exit the car. He had to say it while he had the chance because he wasn’t sure what to expect here. Sure, the Lòpez cartel had not offered many details about where or how they would do business, but that didn’t mean he was comfortable going in blind, either.
“Let’s get the pleasantries out of the way first,” Gian said quickly, “and then we’ll worry about what is going on here, oui?”
Chris sighed. “All right.”
He only knew the yellow brick mansion with the terracotta roof, surrounded by a large stone fence where armed guards stood staring down at their vehicle, wasn’t the Lòpezs’ infamous compound because of The League. The aerial views The League had provided of the cartel’s home base was neither in the middle of a busy city, nor were there any mansions on the property. Small homes, stables, barns, and a few other buildings out in the middle of nowhere, but not this.
“Step out,” one of the guard’s said when he came to open the rear passenger door for Gian and Chris. “And they will open the gate for you to enter the grounds.”
Chris had a million and one questions to ask, but he stayed silent because this wasn’t his show. His father was the one who had come here as the front man, so to speak. He was the boss, the one wanting to make a deal with the cartel, and Chris was nothing more than muscle at his father’s side.
For now.
He needed to keep the act up.
The guard hadn’t lied.
Chris stared up at the almost white-blue sky, the sun so bright, it still hurt his eyes behind the dark sunglasses he wore. His distraction only lasted as long as it took for the creak of metal to bring his attention back to what was important.