“How?”
“I don’t know ... I—”
“You better figure it out!”
“Sorry, sorry,” the man rushed to say, stumbling over his Spanish yet again when he added, “T-the one, boss, they left him alive. The Canadian.”
“Christopher?”
“Yes, him. That one. He asked for a hospital, they told me. After the police arrived, and had called for an ambulance, he asked—”
“Which hospital?”
Valeria’s heart thundered in her chest. Her fingernails bit into the palms of her hands when she squeezed her fists into tight balls. All that relief she had over Jorge leaving fled in an instant. Instead, a fear replaced it—a fear like never before.
Chris, her heart whispered.
Chris, Chris ... Chris.
It had become a mantra.
Repeating with the beats of her heart.
God.
What happened?
She didn’t dare ask.
Really, she shouldn’t be standing there at all. The second Jorge realized she was still there listening to his conversation, he would snap at her to leave. Until then, however, she planned to stay right where she fucking was because she couldn’t move.
Her feet had become cemented to the floor with panic.
“Which hospital?” Jorge demanded again.
“Hospital de Jesús Nazareno,” the man said, “but I sent a man over, and they checked him out.”
“Where the fuck is he?”
“I’m not sure.”
“You’re not sure?”
Jorge’s voice slithered across the room to Valeria’s spot in the doorway. Deathly calm, and a little too quiet. That tone meant violence was about to happen.
“Someone attacked the Canadian on the way to the airport, with my men inside the car, and now he is missing, but you don’t know where he is?”
“It was the Garcías, boss. They did it.”
Jorge stiffened behind his large desk. “Why—”
“The deal with the Canadians, I heard. Word is going around. They’re letting it be known they are aware you planned to use that deal to ruin the merger.”
“Fuck. Who let that information out?”
“I don’t—”
“I don’t care what you don’t know!”
Another day, and the sound of Jorge’s growing rage would have sent Valeria running. A part of her wasn’t as scared of it as she had used to be. Oh, she needed to be careful, and to watch her step when he was in a mood, but it didn’t leave her paralyzed with fear anymore.
“You best find out where the Canadian is, because if that man dies before we can get him the fuck out of Mexico, his father will never go through with the deal. As for the fucking Garcías, fuck the bastards. The deal is done, we don’t need the merger now. Let them have their tantrums.”
“It’s more than that ... they said something else, boss. The officials at the scene—one of them is on our payroll, and he said the Canadian told him the war with the Garcías is on. They’re coming for us. We have to get ready.”
Jorge noticed Valeria in the doorway, or rather, that she was still standing there. His glowering scowl landed on her before he snapped, “What are you still there for? Don’t you have a child to take care of? Get the fuck out of my face!”
She didn’t want to move.
She wanted to ask about Chris.
Jorge cocked an eyebrow at her, his stupid mouth already opening to bark at her again like she was a dog who couldn’t be trained. Valeria didn’t bother to give him that satisfaction before she turned on her heels and headed down the hallway. And even still, his rage continued to flow out of the office, chasing her even after she sat with Maria in the living room again to play.
Her daughter looked to her for an explanation to the man’s rage. Valeria said nothing. She couldn’t; her heart was still breaking.
She didn’t have answers, either.
• • •
Jorge said they would handle the Garcías.
He could not.
That had never been more apparent to Valeria as she watched the chaos between brothers unfurl in a mess of shoves and shouts between Jorge and Samuel.
“I told you—I fucking told you!” Samuel pointed a finger in his brother’s face, for once refusing to back down when he had always been willing to do it for Jorge before. “We lost two storage facilities the night after they attacked the Canadian on the way to the airport, and—”
“They attacked our father’s home,” Abril whispered, coming to stand beside Valeria on the porch. She tried to follow along with the newest fight between Jorge, and Samuel, but her curiosity peaked about what Abril had just told her. At her raised brow, the woman nodded. “This morning—he’s in bad shape, unlikely to come out of it.”
“No one told me.”
“Jorge doesn’t care,” Abril murmured, “that’s what he planned to do when all this was said and done, anyway. Kill our father and take over. Samuel tried to go along with other parts of the plan, but it didn’t work out.”
She sounded so cold.
So ... unbothered.
As though Abril expected this to happen.
It had only been a couple of days, but already, the García cartel was hitting them in every single place where it would hurt the most. Valeria had woken up the night before only to hear Jorge raging down the hall about the fact police raided one of the Lòpez businesses they used as a front to smuggle, but also to launder dirty money. According to what she understood, those weren’t things the Garcías should be aware of without someone on the inside helping them.
So, who was it?
And what did it mean for her?
Or for Maria?
“Mamá?”
Valeria turned to find her daughter stood on the threshold of the front door. Her wide, tearful eyes stared up at her mother. She rushed to soothe her girl, not wanting her to see the mess happening outside.
Not that it mattered.
Maria was not stupid.
Something was happening. Things weren’t right. Jorge didn’t care who listened to his fits, or his phone calls.
“It’s all right,” Valeria told her daughter, kneeling to open her arms so she could bring her child in for a hug. Once Maria was in her arms, she felt like she might hide her from the rest of the word, and the unknowns. It was a wish, though, and not at all real. “It’ll be okay. Aren’t you supposed to be in bed?”
It was a little early for bedtime, but it kept Maria out of trouble.
Her daughter shrugged. “I heard yelling.”
Valeria plastered on a smile. “They’re just having a disagreement, that’s all. Nothing to worry—”
“Open the gates! Open the fucking gates!”
At Jorge’s shouts, Valeria was quick to scoop her daughter up from the porch when she stood. Turning fast, she watched the whole group of gathered men head for the dirt road. Except Jorge, and his brother.
Abril, however, stayed on the porch.
“What’s happening?” she asked.
Her sister-in-law smiled. “Good things.”
“What?”
Abril glanced sideways, anticipation lighting up her gaze. “I said, good things are happening, Val.”