She wouldn’t be best pleased with Pop for putting her husband in that position, getting him killed. None of us were pleased with him after the things we’d found out.
My Pop was in deeper with drugs than we’d imagined. And it was that depth that had created the whole rift with Juan Carlos Castillo in the first place. Many lives had been unnecessarily lost as a result of Pop moving in on Castillo’s territory. But Romero didn’t have the clout alone needed to take Pop out so at first, he participated in recruiting Earl and they tried to use Tia as a bargaining chip. Not only did Pop refuse to back off but as a result, I’d killed Castillo and worked with Castillo’s arch nemesis to wipe out the Castillo cartel. This had, of course, trickled back home with Romero getting desperate to hang onto his business but without the strength of his uncle he had started trying to expand his team, to swell his ranks, bringing in new guys, careless and / or inexperienced guys, making alliances. The whole thing had been a gaggle fuck. Stuff we’d agreed to with Castillo down south had less to do with what we thought we were working toward and more to do with Pop’s drug deals. Now Romero and most of his crew were gone. Castillo was gone. And Pop was in a hospital bed showing signs of improvement. Big moves almost always result in a trickle effect and I wanted to do some serious damage control.
Pop had plans to move to the islands, yeah, but retirement wasn’t looking like it’d factor into those plans. He had plans to have me and Dare look after business here while he expanded some seedy business to do with women, drugs, and guns into Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. Pop didn’t want to retire; he wanted more power, more control, and it was out of hand. One of his enemies was doing well in that part of the world and Pop wanted to take it all away from the guy.
Clearly it was out of hand if he had this secret life. Here it was about construction, the bookie business, loans, and that trickled down into a few other areas, like stolen goods, sex, a little weed. And yeah, some was illegal but where he’d sunk to seemed to me and to my brother to be worse than that, much worse than that. We knew sometimes we had to dabble in those areas but Pop wasn’t dabbling, he was deep sea diving in the cesspool.
What I now had to decide was, how was I getting out without making an enemy of my father? I called Dex to check on things at home and the fuckin’ guy was talking with his mouth full.
“Can’t understand what you’re saying man. What are you doing? Blowing someone? Spit or swallow man.”
“Sorry, Tommy. Your girl put dinner out for everyone. Everything’s cool here. No problems at all.”
I hung up, shaking my head. Then I got a text from Tia that instead of crashing early it looked like Tessa’s boys were being dropped off at our place for a few hours. Tessa was overwhelmed and her mother in law couldn’t watch the kids tonight. Luc was at the hospital with a bit of spotting so Sarah was with her. I shook my head. Feeding my men, babysitting my nephews? My heart swelled for her. I needed to give her a good life. I needed to keep myself in the right headspace to be good for her. And for that, I needed out of this life.
Tia
I’d gotten the call just before I fell asleep but I told Sarah I’d happily keep the boys overnight if she wanted me to. But she said Tessa didn’t want that. They knew Tommy’s house was extra secured so they wanted them here but it was just for a few hours. She had Bianca’s Aunt Joanne dropped them off on her way to work (she was a nurse at a hospital on the nightshift) and was going to have Sarah pick them up in a bit. I put movies on and built Lego structures with them. I let Antonio, the older of the two, play on Tommy’s laptop on a kids’ game website and Lucas was content in my lap with a pop-up book. The time went by quickly and I gave them a bubble bath and put them in their PJs and around 11:00. Sarah got there to pick them up. They were quiet and subdued, not like the typical active baby and toddler. They must’ve sensed something was amiss. They didn’t really know me and it was probably way past their usual bedtimes, too.
Apparently Tom had woken up and Lisa was by his side. Luc was being put on bed rest. As I was helping Sarah put the boys into their car seats in her van, I saw Tommy’s car pull in and Dario’s car behind him.
When Dario got out of the car, he pointed at me accusingly, “You! Follow me. We need to have a conversation.”
My brows shot up in surprise. I glanced at Tommy. He narrowed his eyes at me. He motioned tow
ard his brother with a hard expression on his face so I said bye to Sarah and followed.
Dario marched downstairs and directly to the games room and the Ms. Pacman machine. He was giving me an incredulous look and pointing at the high score list and my #2 spot.
I started to laugh, feeling immense relief. Mr. Angry Intense brother was back but this time, it was funny. I stepped up beside him. I was only a few hundred points shy of his high score. I’d beat out everyone else, taking the previous spot #2, which had said Marco. Spot #3 had said Polo. And now those were spots 3 and 4.
Tommy was behind me, “Dex ratted you out.”
Dex was coming down the stairs.
“See if I feed you dinner again!” I harrumphed.
Dario waved his index finger accusingly at me while Dex laughed and pouted at me simultaneously.
“I’m hot on your heels, boy!” I teased Dario and took off up the stairs behind Tommy as he called out, “Tia, c’mere here baby.” I saw Dex challenge Dario to foosball and I followed Tommy the rest of the way upstairs.
He pulled me close once we got to the kitchen, “How are you?” he whispered in my ear.
“I’m okay. How ‘bout you?”
“I’m good. I just want to tell you a few things, then I’ll order us some dinner. Chinese okay?”
“I ate already but I saved you some food.”
“Dare wants Chinese. We have to work late and sort some shit out. You gonna be okay?”
“Yeah,”
“What’d you make me for dinner?”
“I made one of Sarah’s lasagnas. You can eat it for lunch tomorrow, maybe?”
“Sounds good, babe, even if your lasagna’s better. You gonna cook me dinner every night?” He was nibbling on my earlobe and sending shivers up and down my spine.