But she loved Ignacio.
So she stayed with him.
I was five years old. I shouldn’t have understood their complicated dynamic, but growing up in an unsafe environment makes kids smart before their time.
I understood.
I also understood Molly’s shocked frown at my father.
He was too beautiful, too well dressed to be the owner of such a rundown house, to be the one to discharge a gun in his home with his kids outside in the yard.
This was Ignacio’s magic as a criminal.
People don’t expect beauty to be bad.
“Is Lila your daughter?” Diogo asked, completely unfazed by Ignacio.
Diogo was taller, built thick and heavy like he could wrangle a bull.
I thought maybe Ignacio should be the one to look afraid, but, of course, he didn’t.
“She done something?” Ignacio questioned, shooting me a look and a wink.
He wouldn’t mind if he had.
In his own way, he loved me. Called me his abejita, little bee, because I always had pollen dust on my nose.
If Diogo had a serious problem with me, Papá would put a bullet in his head rather than chastise me.
Family meant everything.
“No, but we were concerned when we heard a gunshot,” Diogo said calmly as he crossed his big arms over his chest. “Everything okay in there?”
Ignacio’s face tightened, features sharpening, his smile a slick spill of evil between his cheeks. “You a cop or something?”
“No, but I did call them.”
Ignacio leaned a hip against the doorframe and crossed his bulky forearms over his chest. He appraised Diogo as if he had all the time in the world and not a single care about the police coming.
I was five, but I knew better.
“You some big shot from Vancouver, think you can roll into my town and stick your nose where it don’t belong?” Ignacio mused, coiled and still like a snake before the strike.
I wanted to warn Diogo, but when I went to move closer, Jonathon held me still with a hand on my shoulder. When I looked up at him, he whispered, “You’ve got a scary dad.”
I nodded like duh.
He winked, and on his kind face it was an entirely different expression than on my father’s. “So’s mine.”
“Just a common fisherman,” Diogo replied, and I noticed he had a slight accent, the spice of a foreign land like the kind I’d always wanted to visit. “But even a common man can sense evil when it comes around. Whatever you got going on in there, think about hitting pause while your kids are around, yeah?”
Quick as a lightning strike, amicable Ignacio was gone, and the drug lord was in his place. He lurched off the doorframe before Diogo could blink and was in his face, a knife suddenly pressed to his throat.
When he spoke, spittle flew into the taller man’s beard, trapped like bugs in a web.
“Let’s get one thing straight before you and your Brady bunch get any ideas. This is my house. My territory. You want friendly neighbors, I suggest getting another postal code. And, blanquito? Next time you think to fuck with me or mine, remember that I know where you live, and I gotta helluva lot more friends in this town than you.” Abruptly, he stepped away from the Diogo with a wide, almost manic grin. He backed up into the doorframe, whistled at me with a jerk of his head to join him, then addressed the family gathered on our lawn as I made my way to him. “Welcome to the neighborhood, amigos.”
He laughed as he turned on his heel and disappeared into the dark, dank interior of our home.
I hesitated.
Truthfully, I thought the Booth family was foolish.
Even I knew you didn’t just move into a new, seedy neighborhood and insert yourself into someone’s conflict. If Ignacio had taught me anything, it was to mind your own business because no one else was going to mind it properly for you.
I couldn’t understand why they’d come over to check on me, and it was mostly curiosity that made me stick my head back out the front door before I closed it.
Jonathon and Molly had joined Diogo on our cracked concrete path. Across the street, the three other boys waited patiently in the front yard playing a game together.
They were so fascinating. I felt their strange, new beauty like an ache in my chest, an echo in a hollow place that I didn’t know back then should have been full.
Full with love and support and laughter.
Instead, I watched with empty eyes as Molly lifted a hand to me as if she wanted to reach out and touch me.
“Be safe,” she whispered, unshed tears thick in her voice.
“You come get me if you need me,” Jonathon said, voice strong, brow angled fiercely over those velvet brown eyes.
It seemed like something a father would say, yet he was only a boy.
“You need anything, you know where we live,” Diogo echoed.