“Nero.” Dav put a hand on my arm, pulling me back the step I’d unconsciously taken forward.
I ignored him, my rage a new force crawling up my spine. “You don’t want Mia associated with dangerous men, yet you’re the one who—”
“I will pay him!” Luis hissed.
“How?” I shot back, matching the volume of his voice. “Do you have twenty large sitting around somewhere, Luis? What are you going to do when he comes back tomorrow?”
Genuine fear glistened in his eyes, but it was forced behind a false bravado I wasn’t buying. “I’ll find a way. I always do.”
I shook my head. “You will let us deal with this. For Mia!” I snapped when he opened his mouth. “And Marie. This isn’t for you. At this moment, if you weren’t Mia’s father and if she didn’t love you, I would let you get your ass handed to you by that guy. But Mia would never forgive us if we didn’t get you out of this mess. So…” I looked to Dav who nodded. “We will take care of him. In return, you will tell us where Mia is and we will get your blessing. Consider this an olive branch”
“I don’t need your help.”
“Don’t think so?” I hissed. “Tell me what the plan is. How are you going to fix your mess?”
Luis hesitated. “I’ll…”
“Do you know why Mia came to us?” I interjected. “Do you know how this all started?” I didn’t wait for him to answer. “She came to ask if we could take her to Eduardo.” I let that sink in a moment, watched the color leave his face with no small amount of satisfaction. “She wanted to beg him to give you more time to come up with the money. We wouldn’t let her because we knew what he would want in exchange. We wouldn’t let her because we love her and would rather die than let anything happen to her. Now, what do you think she’ll do if she finds out about this? We both know Mia isn’t the kind of person to let it go. She would put her life in danger to protect you and I’m not going to let that happen. So, we will take care of this, but if you ever do anything this stupid again, I will break your kneecaps myself.” I pivoted on my heels and started in the direction of the Mustang but stopped after two steps to face him again. “No one is coming around to collect. Use it to pay your bills, Luis. Marie and Mia don’t need you to drop dead from a heart attack.”
Neither Davien nor I said a word the rest of the way. We were silent until we were both strapped in the car and pulling away from Mia’s house.
“Do you think he’s going to accept?”
I watched Luis amble up the path to the front porch as we drove past. “Guess we’ll see.”
Chapter Sixteen — Mia
The sun was trying to kill me. It broke through the greenhouse glass in spears of vengeance. A bead of sweat edged down my slick brow. It hovered tauntingly over my left eyebrow, shivering as if in anticipation before plummeting and hitting its mark with dagger sharp accuracy causing momentary blindness on top of the burning pain. The tray of begonias cradled in my arms tipped dangerously to one side and nearly upended all over the nursery floor. Somehow, I caught it with one hand while squishing the other into my injured eye. Once I was able to pry my lids apart without whimpering, I gripped the planters harder and hurried my way to the sales table outside the tent flaps.
I loved gardening. Mom and I spent hours in our square of dirt in the backyard whenever we had a free day together. Getting dirt under my nails and staining my jeans was a comforting reminder of those days. It was one of the passions we shared back before her Avascular Necrosis got really bad. We still puttered in the yard, but she mostly supervised me and occasionally handed me things. By no means did I actually have any real talent for it.
Things hadn’t been terrible with Aunt Victoria. Liana was there and I loved spending time with her. But it wasn’t home. I missed my bed and my things. I missed my parents. But I deeply missed Nero and Davien. Two months without them had proven to be quite possibly the hardest thing I’d ever had to do. More than once, I caught myself reaching for my phone only to remember too late that it was swimming with the fishes, metaphorically speaking; Aunt Victoria had accidentally dropped it into a sink full of soapy water and hadn’t found it until the dishes were all done. I wasn’t sure how much of that I believed, but by then, the damage had been done and the thing was ruined, and I didn’t have a spare five hundred dollars lying around to replace it.
It would have to wait until I got home and found Eddy. He was our local dealer, the guy who could get his hands on anything and sold it for cheap. I got my last phone from him for twenty bucks. The thing hadn’t been fancy, but it had all my contacts. Without that, I had no one’s number memorized, except my parent’s. It crossed my mind to ask them for Nero and Davien’s numbers, but I had a feeling they wouldn’t. I just hoped the boys had gotten my text and weren’t worried about me. Part of me also prayed — vehemently — that they hadn’t forgotten about me. Staying away for two months hadn’t seemed like such a daunting task originally, but it was proving to be a new and brutal kind of punishment.
At least I had Liana. She had become my salvation and the voice of reason whenever I felt my resolve crumbling. She helped remind me why I needed this and why it was important I saw the whole month through, even if it was slowly killing me.
“Mia?” Claudette, the supervisor of Hart & Saul Nurseries appeared around the corner, blonde curls a frizzy halo around her sun kissed face. Parts were beginning to peel, leaving jagged pieces of skin around her nose and cheeks. It was joined by a smear of dirt that ran up the side to her temple. “There you are.” She blew out a breath as if she’d run eight blocks to find me. Her green eyes dropped to the tray of flowers in my arms. “Are you still moving the sale items?”
It was hard not to take offense to the tone, especially since she kept stopping me every few minutes to do another task. There were nine other people working there, yet I was apparently the only one capable of doing anything.
“I only have a few more trays to bring out,” I said instead, grating the words carefully through clenched teeth.
Claudette sighed and scrubbed at her forehead with the heel of a filthy hand, smearing a mixture of green and brown across her skin. “We are swamped, Mia. I really need you to pick up the pace, okay?”
We were not swamped. We’d barely seen five people all day. With summer nearly at an end, no one was gardening anymore. At most, people were coming in to grab burlap squares to shelter their bushes.
“Sure,” I said, offering her my best waitress smile.
When Liana had volunteered me for the job, she may have exaggerated a lot of my qualities, especially my knowledge of plants. I knew the basics, but not enough to tell anyone how to successfully maintain a garden. Claudette may have realized that a month into my employment but hadn’t fired me. If anything, she was doing everything in her power to get me to quit. Not a bad idea, but the nursery was closing for the season in a few days. I just needed to stick it out until then because the end of the month was my last day there, not just the job, but Aunt Victoria’s. I was going home. I didn’t care anymore if that pissed my dad off or painted me the town whore. I needed my boys. I missed them.