Nero eyed me warily. “You memorized it?”
I scoffed and rolled my own eyes. “It’s not vague. It’s very clear. I don’t think I’ve read anything clearer.”
Nero went back to his phone and the message I knew was from Mia. “But I don’t get it,” he said at long last. “What does she mean, she knows what that means?”
“Our rules,” I mumbled. “She thinks…” I broke off to scrub a hand over my face. “She thinks we’re still following the fucking things. She thinks we’ll shut her down.”
“She could have at least given us a chance!” Nero snapped. “She could have talked to us. How could she not know?”
I shrugged, my fury dissolving into my gut, burning like acid upon contact. “Because we never told her.”
When Nero didn’t argue my logic, I knew I was right. This was on us. Mia was running because we never made it clear we wanted her to stay. We let doubt make a home inside her and drive a wedge between us. Her leaving was our fault. We lost her because we were idiots.
No.
We hadn’t.
Not yet.
I pushed harder on the gas.
My Mustang, the only actual gift my father had ever given me roared. Its outrage and fierce determination rippled up my spine through the leather. I gripped the wheel hard in our race to Mia’s house. I parked right outside, ignoring the, no parking near the house rule. Not giving a fuck who saw us now when I kicked my door open and marched up the cracked sidewalk to the front door.
Luis opened after the second fist I planted into the wood. He seemed unsurprised to find us there, which confirmed my theory that he was the reason Mia was torn away from us.
“She’s not here,” he said before either of us could say a word.
“Where is she?” Nero demanded.
Luis braced his stance, a motion I recognized. He was a man guarding his home. He was prepared to fight us if necessary to keep us from getting past him. I understood — and almost respected — the sentiment.
“Gone,” he answered simply, arms folding over his thin chest. “Somewhere you won’t find her.”
I hated him.
I never cared one way or another about him in the past, but I hated him now. I hated that he was keeping Mia away from us. I hated that I understood why. I hated that I knew I would have done the same thing if I were in his shoes.
“We just want to talk to her,” Nero reasoned.
“Why?” Luis glowered from him to me, and back. “What do you want with my daughter that you can’t get from someone else?”
I expected Nero to hesitate, to falter over his response, but he met the other man’s cold stare with a brutally honest one of his own. “We care about her.”
Luis scoffed. “You care about her, yet you want to put her in danger.”
“We would never put Mia in danger,” I snapped.
The other man’s bushy eyebrows quirked. “Who do you work for? Everyone knows what happens when Eduardo is angered, what he does to people. I will not allow that to be my daughter.”
“We wouldn’t allow it either,” Nero argued.
Luis shook his head. “And her reputation? How will you protect that? You know as I do what people call women who … fool around with your kind. Maybe you’re okay with her being labeled, but I am not. My daughter isn’t one of those girls. She’s a good girl who deserves a man who doesn’t prey on the weak. You are monsters. What could you ever give my daughter but a life of fear, misery, and death?”
“Everything,” Nero countered without missing a beat. “I don’t think there’s anything we wouldn’t give her if she let us. We may not be heroes or even good men, but we love her and will do everything in our power to keep her safe. We’re only asking that you give us a chance to prove it.”
The other man barely even let Nero finish before he was shaking his head.
“No.” Luis reached for his back pocket. The fact that Nero didn’t go immediately for his gun had me hesitating next to him, wondering if we were about to get shot. An envelope appeared and was forcibly smacked into Nero’s chest. “That is the rest of what we owe Eduardo. Now, take your money and get away from our house.”
Nero passed the envelope to me. I slipped it into my back pocket without checking it.
“This won’t change anything,” Nero warned him. “We will find her.”
Luis bristled. “And what? What are you offering? From where I stand, Mia is the one bringing everything to the table. She has family. She has a community who adores her. She is warm and beautiful. What do you have? You said it yourself, you are bad men. You work for a man who has run our neighborhood into the ground with your help. You have stolen from Mia’s people. You destroy lives. My daughter deserves someone who knows her people, who helps build her community and makes the world a safe place for her. There are two of you and not one of you deserves her.”
With that, he shut the door, leaving us on the porch, listening to the echoes of his words.
“He’s not wrong,” I muttered.
Nero turned and started down the steps. I jogged after him. At the car, Nero spun to face me, his set in a hard line of determination.
“If he’s not going to take our word for it, then we will prove to him that we’re worthy of her.”
Chapter Fifteen — Nero
Two Months Later…
“Come home. Please.”
The cursor blinked in rapid succession, beckoning me to keep going, to finally finish the words I’d been trying to type for the better part of two months.
My thumb hovered inches over the send button. It was much closer than it had been the day before, or the day before that. It was only a matter of time before I wouldn’t hesitate. I would send her the plea and pray she replied.
I hit delete and put the phone face down on the table.
Again.
The smooth, black case stared back at me, a mockery of my cowardice. It made me wonder if I actually deserved Mia when I couldn’t send one lousy text. I’d been trying every day since she left, stabbing out the same three words with my heart in my throat. And, every day, I watched the cursor devour them all over again.
It was an addiction, a new way to torture myself. It was a reminder that I was weak; what kind of man would hesitate? What kind of mob boss feared rejection? I knew that was what it was. I was terrified she would tell me to stop messaging her. I was terrified she wouldn’t answer at all. Sending so much as a hello into the void and getting nothing in return was a different kind of rejection, one I wasn’t prepared for. The other part was pride. Reaching out to her when I hadn’t accomplished everything I promised I would felt like a failure and I didn’t want her to see that.
I glared at the skyline outside my new apartment windows. The fall colors seemed to light up the city below with vibrant life and promise. I had never much cared for autumn. I never particularly cared for any season, but it brought to mind that fateful Halloween night when Mia had drop kicked my world just by walking into that blasted party. I’d had no idea little Mia Martinez could look the way she had, but it was the days and weeks after that really had me noticing her. It was the way she was so close to her family. The way she always stood a little too close to her mother, braced as if prepared to catch the other woman if necessary. It was the way she walked into a space and everyone immediately broke into a smile and wave; Luis had been right when he’d said she had a community, people who loved her. Maybe a part of me wanted what she had, wanted that kind of love and family. A much larger part of me wanted it with her and Davien. But I continued to be the thing she should stay away from. Her absence hadn’t made me a better man. I hadn’t cleaned up my act. I was still Nero Diaz.