I began to see the club and its activities as a way to better our lives. As just part of the world around me. I intentionally avoided any knowledge of the uglier side of my father’s business, like whether it was drugs or guns or both that he bought and sold. I knew enough not to ask questions and told myself that my limited role in the club wasn’t hurting anyone.
In a short amount of time, my skill with numbers allowed me to show my dad more ways he could filter money through the restaurant even more securely than before. His eyes lit up when I explained my ideas, and I yearned for that approval.
On my nineteenth birthday, after I’d been working with him for almost a year, my dad took me out to celebrate. We had dinner on the Riverwalk, just the two of us, and after, he took me to a tattoo parlor.
“What’s this about? Tell me we’re not getting father-daughter tattoos,” I teased.
“Nah, this is way more important than that. You can’t be a sworn-in member as a woman, but you’re a part of Los Zares as much as any of us. It’s time we let people know. By giving you our mark, no one will ever fuck with you. You’ll officially be under our protection.” My father wanted me to be a part of his club. A part of his life. It was so much more than any of the token outings or birthday gifts I’d received before. It felt like the first time he was truly proud of me. Proud to call me his daughter.
My heart swelled and blossomed as tears pricked at the back of my eyes. “Thanks, Dad. This means a lot to me.”
He grinned, pulling me into a hug and patting me on the back. “Hey, Cinco,” he called out to the tattoo artist working on a customer behind a curtain. “I have my baby girl in here, and she’s ready for her mark.”
“Fuck yeah,” the man hollered back. “I’ll be done in ten, and we’ll get her inked.”
It was one of the best and worst nights of my life, although I wouldn’t know just how bad it was until I experienced the absolute worst night. That didn’t come until five years later.
***
If I’d told Miguel once, I’d told him a dozen times to make sure the napkin stock was full and a backup package was ordered before the supply got too low. But no, he continued to forget, and this was the second damn time in the past six months we were stuck without napkins. It was Friday night with a restaurant full of customers. I was going to wring his fucking neck.
“Miguel, where the hell are the napkins?” I hissed, not wanting customers to hear me chewing out my day manager in the back.
“Whoa, easy, Em. I don’t know where they are. I ordered napkins two weeks ago—I swear.”
“If you ordered them, where are they?”
“I don’t know, but I swear I’m telling the truth. You need me to run to Costco and grab some?”
I let out an exasperated breath. “Let me pull up our order history first and see what’s going on.” I spun around and power walked to the tiny office.
Originally, my father purchased supplies through a restaurant supply company, but I’d figured out a couple of years ago that it was cheaper and easier to simply go through Amazon Prime. I pulled up our account on my laptop and searched the past orders. When I clicked on the napkin order made two weeks prior, I realized what had happened. The napkins had been sent to our warehouse address downtown instead of the restaurant. We had a handful of addresses registered on our account since we used it for business and personal purchases. Miguel hadn’t noticed the wrong address had been selected.
Rather than buy more napkins we didn’t need, I decided to make the ten-minute drive to the warehouse. I asked Miguel to hang around the restaurant while I ran my errand, then hurried out to my car. My dad had bought the warehouse years ago to house the Mustang he was fixing up and for other club business that I had no desire to know about. The few times I’d been there, I noticed crates and boxes stashed on one end of the building, but they were none of my business.
He’d given me a key for emergencies, and in my eyes, this qualified. I wasn’t going over to butt into his business. I just wanted to get our freaking napkins and get back to the restaurant.
The building was in the worst part of town, but the locals knew it was Los Zares property, so no one touched it. Normally, I would feel safe walking from my car to the front door, but this time, unease pricked at my skin. I had no clue what my problem was. There were no other cars out front, and no one in sight. The door was only fifty feet away, with a set of floodlights illuminating the entry. I scolded myself for being ridiculous and forced myself from the car.
I quickly flipped the deadbolt to the metal door, flinging it open and taking a confident step inside before I froze. The warehouse was one large open space with Dad’s car back by the bay garage doors. Normally, the center of the room was empty, but today, a white van was parked next to the Mustang. The back doors were open wide, and a dozen women huddled inside as far as they could get from the doors. One woman was bent over the van bumper, hands tied behind her back, with a man raping her from behind. Three other men stood around watching, one of which was my father.
I took in the scene in a terrified heartbeat. The only sound was a heart-wrenching whimper from the woman being violated and the thrum of my pounding heart, pulsing in my ears.
I’d made a horrible mistake, and there was no undoing it.
Before I could say a word, one of the men had a gun pointed at my head. These weren’t club members—none of them were familiar. I would have remembered. They were the seediest, most terrifying men I’d ever seen in my life. I couldn’t even fathom what those women had felt being captured by such soulless creatures.
“That’s my daughter,” my father growled at the man. “Put the fucking gun down.”
His words broke the tense standoff, sending the room catapulting into action.
The poor woman began to openly weep as her assailant resumed his rutting, laughing at her humiliation. The other women huddled even tighter into the front of the van and began to cry at various volumes. One of the men lit a cigarette and watched the scene like it was primetime TV. My father hurried over to where I still stood in shock and slammed the door shut behind me, grabbing my arm and exposing my wrist to the man.
“See, she’s one of us.”
The man lowered his gun and strolled over to us, his black eyes narrowed with the need for violence. His face was a graveyard of old acne scars. That didn’t necessarily say anything about him as a person, but it still made him look that much more terrifying.
“You say that, but I don’t like the look on her face.” His voice was guttural—the sound of cigarettes and alcohol and pure evil.
“She was just caught off guard is all. Let me get her out of here, and we can finish our business.”
The whole time they spoke, the man stared at me, his black eyes slicing into me and poisoning my insides. “I think maybe she needs a reminder about minding her own business.” In two seconds flat, he clamped his hand around my neck, slamming my back against the wall and pointing his gun at my father.
His eyes never once left mine.
“You see that pretty girl on the van going for a ride?”
His stale breath infiltrated my nostrils, making my already rancid stomach revolt further. I had to swallow it down, past his hand and my crippling fear.