Untamed Hearts 1: The Viper (23 page)

Chuito would call him soft for it.

But Chuito wasn’t trying to get in good with God on the slim hope he’d be hanging out with Juan and his mother instead of all the thugs he’d killed avenging them.

Marcos used to like the smell of the warehouse. The stench of burned metal mixing with stale beer and bud. This time when it slapped him in the face, Marcos thought of Katie, of what she would think of the sparks flying and the billow of marijuana from the couches in the corners.

The laughing teenagers too young to be smoking, let alone packing heat.

Angel really was a bastard for recruiting them. They seemed so young to Marcos now. They didn’t have records or a reason to fight. What if one of their houses was the next one to be targeted? What if one of them had a Juan at home like Marcos and Chuito had?

They all surely had mothers who didn’t want them there.

Marcos couldn’t change the system. He was too ingrained and bitter to even begin to attempt that, but he could make a stand. The sparks stopped flying when he put his glasses up on the brim of his hat and walked over to Angel sitting on a couch in the corner.

“Marc,” Luis called, and there was fear in his voice because he’d been in on Marcos’s chat with the OGs. He knew Marcos wasn’t pleased with Angel. “Don’t be stupid!”

Marcos had told them he was laying low, and they all had understood.

He hadn’t mentioned he was coming back to end this.

If he had, one of them would have told Chuito.

They really were blindly loyal to him.

Marcos ignored his friend. He ignored the way half the warehouse stopped working and the other half remained blissfully ignorant to the invisible line that had just been drawn in the room. Old gangsters who had seen too much and remembered a time when this gang had been about more than blood and cash, versus the young and naive who still thought Angel was their key to glory.

These people used to be his family.

Half of them still were, and it was for them more than himself that Marcos yanked Angel off the couch where he was sitting, smoking bud with some stupid teenager too young to grow a beard let alone wear ink on his arm.

“¡Ay carajo!” Angel shouted and shoved at his chest. “What the fuck?”

The kid next to him shot up, but Marcos just reached out and shoved him back down to the couch. “Sixteen and blitzed, you think you can take me, cabrón? For him? Are you really stupid enough to try it? Let him fight his own battles for once.”

“Marc—” Angel touched his shoulder, but Marcos knocked his hand off. His dark eyes narrowed, but he kept his voice even as he said, “Come on, let’s talk in my office.”

Marcos got in Angel’s face and said simply, “I’m out.”

“There is no out.” Angel laughed in disbelief and then showed his cards, blatantly, in front of everyone. “Especially for you.”

Yeah, this had all been a game. Some ego trip because the power had gone to Angel’s head. Fuck that. This just proved he’d never really known Marcos. He’d never been his friend. Not really. Either that, or the dumbass had just forgotten what Marcos was capable of when pushed against the wall.

“Yes, there is,” Marcos assured him. “This is it. I’m out, motherfucker.”

Angel’s eyes narrowed, and then he leaned into him and switched to Spanish as he whispered in his ear, “Don’t do this. I don’t want to do what you know I’ll have to do if you’re serious about this.”

“Do it.” Marcos held up his hands as he switched to Spanish too. He looked to the kid on the couch and then turned back to Angel. “Show him what happens if he decides he’s tired of it one day.” The warehouse was dead silent now. Marcos turned around, seeing Luis, Miguel, and Neto standing behind him. Their eyes were wide, but they were there. They had his back even if he didn’t want them to. He turned to Angel and said simply, “Show them all.”

For one brief moment, Angel seemed to pause as if weighing his options. The odds were clearly in his favor. There were many more young people in this room. They had already buried so many of their old crew.

Angel grabbed his .38 from the back of his pants, faster than Marcos expected, considering how bloodshot his eyes were. It wasn’t the first gun Marcos had shoved under his chin, and, like the other times, he couldn’t help but wince at the thought of taking a bullet like that.

So much for being buried like a baller.

“You want me to do it?” Angel growled. “Is this what you want, you stupid asshole? You want to take a bullet because you’re too fucking prideful to help out your family?”

“Yup.” Marcos didn’t even close his eyes. “Go for it.
I dare you
.”

“Don’t do it.” Luis’s voice shook. “Angel, you know you can’t do it. Chuito—” Angel clicked the safety when he said it, and Luis cursed. “¡Coño! Angel, no!”

“Fuck that!” Marcos argued. “Let him do it! Smoke me, motherfucker! You think you’re so bad, do it!” He grabbed Angel’s hand and slipped his thumb over Angel’s finger on the trigger. “Do it, or I will. I’ll eat my own bullet before I let you use me against my cousin. If this is the only way out, let’s do it together. Let’s show these kids how you treat your family.”

“You are fucking crazy, Marcos!” Angel shouted at him. “
You’re crazy
!”

“Chuito will rip you apart,” Neto warned, his voice much more even than Luis’s. “And we never swore loyalty to you, Angel. Not really. We swore it to Chu first.”

“You pull that trigger, and you’re gonna start a war,” Miguel assured him. “We’re not the only OGs who are loyal to Marcos. You think you can take all of us? There’s a lot of gangsters who’ll come out of retirement for this.”

Angel was breathing heavily, much more so than Marcos as the two of them stood there, their hands on a single gun that could end all the pain this world had inflicted on Marcos.

“Move your hand,” Angel whispered and then leaned in closer and said low enough for only Marcos to hear, “Do you really want me to take out all of them?”

Actually, Marcos hadn’t expected quite this level of commitment from his friends. He wasn’t sure what would happen after Angel pulled the trigger, but he didn’t want to risk having company at the graveyard.

He moved his hand, and Angel lowered his gun. He flipped the safety back and slipped the .38 back into his jeans. “Get out of my warehouse, Marcos.”

Marcos studied him for a long moment. His eyes were narrowed in challenge, and there was a tic in his jaw that told him this wasn’t over. Rather than back down, Marcos just glared and said, “Fine, but you better know I might not be this fucking spiritual the next time you pull a gun on me. I got a lot more ink on my arm than you. Remember that.”

“Get the fuck out!” Angel pointed to the door. “Now!”

Luis and Miguel physically grabbed Marcos and pulled him away before he could say anything else. “Just shut up!” Miguel growled in his ear. “Before you kill all of us.”

Once they were outside and out of earshot, Luis cursed, “¡Me cago en ná! What have you done?”

Neto kicked Marcos. “You scared the shit out of us.”

Marcos shoved him back, forcing him into the dirt. “Don’t fucking touch me!”

“He’s gonna try to smoke you! Now he has to!” Neto shouted as he looked up at Marcos from his spot on the ground. “Mierda.” He buried his face in his hands and whispered, “I got kids, Marc. What the fuck? You almost got us all killed.”

“I never asked you to do that!” Marcos yelled at him. “I never asked any of you to do that!”

“You think we can just stand there and watch Angel kill you?” Miguel asked. “Would you stand there? We know you’d be the first one in his face if he tried that with one of us.”

“I don’t have kids! What the hell can that motherfucker take from me?” Marcos gestured to himself. “Get out of this warehouse. The loyalty isn’t worth it anymore! There’s a whole world out there that never has to deal with any of this shit! Why do you think Chuito stays gone? You think he’s so fucking smart, then follow his example. He helped the others. He’ll help you too. Go home. Stay home. Take care of your kids. Angel’s coming after me. Not you. This is all some stupid game he’s playing with my cousin. He’s trying to own me to get back at him, but I’m not playing anymore!”

“Are you going to Sofia’s?” Neto asked, his voice shaking as if the nerves finally caught up with him. “We can all hang out there and—”

“No, this is my issue.” Marcos shook his head. “I’m not bringing the war to that street. He wants to take me out, let him come find me.”

“You’re laying low?” Luis asked, sounding relieved.

“Sure, if that’s what you want to believe,” Marcos said as he walked back to his truck and left his friends standing there shaking. “Don’t go back in. Leave now.”

“Angel is right, you know,” Miguel shouted after him. “You’re fucking crazy!”

“We’re telling Chu!” Luis added.

Marcos slammed the door to his truck rather than respond.

He peeled out of the parking lot and drove about three miles before his hands started shaking. He pulled into a grocery store parking lot and sat there for a long time, trying to catch his breath.

Then he grabbed his phone and looked at it, knowing he had to text his cousin before his friends did, but there was someone else he wanted to text first, because he didn’t doubt Angel would try to take him out.

Chapter Seventeen

Garnet County

Chuito sat in the corner booth at Hal’s, trying to figure out this woman who had managed to get Marcos to love her when the others hadn’t. Marcos had always been wild. Like Chuito’s mother, there was something in the eyes, so like the ocean, soft and beautiful on good days, dangerous and unpredictable on the bad ones.

It was a recessive gene in their family. It would pop up from time to time. His Aunt Camila told him once that when his grandmother saw Marcos’s light eyes the day after he was born, she had warned his aunt that she was in for it.

His grandmother would know. She’d had the misfortune of raising Hurricane Sofia. Hell, Chuito could barely deal with his mother, and she had mellowed with age. There was a reason why Marcos had always gotten along with Chuito’s mother better than he did.

The two of them understood each other.

They didn’t like things that pinned them down.

For a lot of years, Chuito thought Marcos was completely untamable. Like his mother, his cousin would simply spend his days jumping from one bed to the other, one adventure to the next, living in the moment, never worrying about the end and leaving a path of broken hearts in his wake.

But somehow, this one had gotten to him. Maybe it would’ve lasted if he stayed. Maybe it wouldn’t. Katie had still gotten to him, and that made her very unique.

Chuito had to admit, he knew a lot of people in this town, pretty much all of them after five years of living here, and he hadn’t met one like Katie. There was this strange, open curiosity to her. A boldness that likely appealed to Marcos. She also had a natural acceptance of things most people didn’t understand.

It was easy to let the walls down in front of her. Chuito found himself doing it too, which wasn’t like him. He had admitted things to Katie that he had told very few people in this town.

Maybe he just trusted her because Marcos did.

It was built into his genetics. If Marcos said she was okay, Chuito believed it. He and Marcos had been a team since birth; only four months apart they’d come into this world to have each other’s backs, and one arm didn’t question the other when they were both part of the same body.

Chuito tried to break away. He really did, but it didn’t work out, and like he told Katie, that wasn’t Marcos’s fault. It was just how it was. If one of them was in trouble, they both were.

Chuito knew his cousin. He could see the signs. Trouble was brewing. Hurricane Marcos was about to sweep ashore and do something that pulled apart the fragile web of lies Chuito had weaved for himself. The ones that told him there was even a remote chance of settling down with someone like Alaine.

But they’d been just that…lies.

Katie was the only gringa in this town who would let him jack her car and sit there eating grilled chicken completely unfazed by it. Alaine knew a lot about him, more than she should, but she firmly believed it was in the past. Chuito had made sure she believed it because a part of him had believed it too.

“How come you left Miami?”

Chuito looked up from his dinner and studied Katie, with her eyes still swollen and puffy from crying over his cousin. He shrugged and gave her the vanilla version of the story. “It was a weird time in my life. Marcos was in prison. My mother was driving me crazy. I thought it’d only be for a year or so. I’d get away, learn a few tricks from Clay, and then come back when Marc got paroled.”

“Then why did you stay?” Katie asked, and there was an accusation there, as if she was seeing too much and was challenging him for abandoning his family.

“I got the UFC contract. Marc and my mother told me they wanted me to stay.” Chuito took a bite of his steak and then said, “I believed them. I think they did want me to do well, and once I started making money, I could help them. Legitimately. I have friends here now. They’re my family too. It’s hard being in two places, especially when the places are so different.”

“I can imagine,” Katie said, and then her phone chimed with a text on the table next to her.

She picked it up and looked at it. Her face physically paled over whatever she was reading.

“Who is it?” he asked in concern, thinking it was her ex-husband.

“It’s Marcos,” she whispered as she slid her finger across the screen. “I didn’t know he was in my phone. He must have programmed his number in.”

She was deathly silently for a long time, and then tears welled up in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. It was such an intimate moment to witness, the way those golden-brown orbs made her look so broken and vulnerable.

What the hell had his cousin said to her?

Chuito would have asked if his phone hadn’t chimed next. He picked it up, seeing a text from Marcos.

4:25 p.m.

No fucking suit. In my shades and Miami Heat hat. Like a baller.