“What is this really about, Consuela?”
“Nevada’s not here because you gave him a condom.” She walked over to the bar and poured herself a glass of wine. She lifted another glass, offering me some, but I declined. “You’re his father. You’re supposed to give him condoms. That’s why I sent him to you, so you could teach him how to be a man.”
“Then what the hell is the problem?” I couldn’t help raising my voice. I was confused as hell and getting pissed.
“The problem? The problem is . . .” She sat on the sofa, staring up at me, and sipped her wine. “The problem is your whore.”
Oh, Lord. Here we go!
“Are you serious? What does Marie have to do with this?”
“She has everything to do with this. Do you think I want my son at a house where a whore and her working girls are welcome? What kind of mother would I be?”
I could see this leading to an argument, which was the last thing I wanted, but I couldn’t let Consuela distort the truth. “She’s not a—”
“No? Then what is she? What do she and those girls do for a living? ’Cause they sure as hell aren’t candy stripers.”
There was nothing I could say that would be right. I wanted to call Marie a madam, but I realized that wouldn’t have been any better, so I just stared at Consuela in silence.
“I don’t want my son influenced by a prostitute, Vegas, and neither should you,” she said. “The life we lead is hard enough.”
“What do you want from me, Consuela?” I asked in frustration.
“Same thing I’ve always wanted since the day I found out about that whore,” she snapped back.
“You want me to keep Nevada away from Marie?” I asked, and she nodded. “You are so wrong for this.”
“Call it what you will, but that’s what I want.”
“Fine,” I hastily agreed. At this point, I was willing to say whatever I had to so I could take my son home.
“That’s not all,” Consuela announced. “I want you to stay away from her as well.”
“What?” My voice was an octave higher than usual. I knew Consuela could be unreasonable, but this was over the top. “I’m not doing that! She’s my fiancée.”
“And you deserve someone better.”
“Someone better like who?”
“I can think of somebody in this room that would be perfect.”
The conversation was becoming more confusing by the minute. I didn’t know what kind of scheme Consuela was planning, but I had too much going on in my life and with my family to deal with it.
“You?” I shook my head emphatically. “No way.”
“Why not me? Don’t stand there and pretend that at one time you didn’t have feelings for me; that we didn’t have feelings for one another. And who can forget our chemistry?” She started winding her hips.
“Do you know how long ago that was, Consuela?”
“And?” she shot back.
“Where the hell is all of this coming from?”
“I’ve been thinking about it for a while, and even more since I found out about the whore,” Consuela replied. “Listen to me, Vegas. You are smart and successful. You need a woman by your side who can match the kind of man that you are. One who can help you plan and execute. You can’t be a power couple with a woman with no power. They’ll laugh at you.”
“Whatever we had between us died when you chose to go back to your husband—and then hide my child.”
“Our child. I hid our son to protect him. Alejandro would have killed all of us, including Nevada. I didn’t want anything to happen to you or to him, so I did what I had to. I saved us. And now, Alejandro is dead, and we are alive. Don’t you want us to be a family?” She sounded like she fully expected me to understand and agree with her. I suppose there was some logic to the argument in her mind, but if there had ever been a chance of us becoming a family, this was a conversation we should have had a long time ago.
“He has a family. We don’t have to be together to be his parents,” I replied. “He not a baby anymore. I just want my son home, Consuela.”
Our eyes locked, neither one of us willing to bend to the other.
“Okay. Have it your way. But understand this: if Nevada comes back to your home, he won’t be coming alone. I’ll be coming with him, or else he’ll be on a flight back to California. Either way, our son will be living with me. Now, it’s up to you where he’ll be staying.”
“We’ll see about that.” I was two seconds away from putting my hands around her neck, so I turned and walked out before I hurt her. She might have thought she had me backed into a corner, but I would never let her keep me there. Consuela would soon find out she couldn’t win this fight.
KD
7
The temperature when I got back home to El Paso was damn near 110 degrees, and I was sweating my balls off. Even with the air conditioner in the truck on full blast, sweat dripped down the sides of my face. It was almost five o’clock in the evening, but the heat and humidity were still suffocating as hell. Patrick, my gorilla-sized nephew and driver, pulled off the main road and onto the long dirt roadway that led to the seventy-five acres of land bordering Mexico that we called the ranch. For ten miles or so, the only thing you could see was produce being farmed by migrants, and cows and horses, but eventually a large farmhouse and barn would appear, along with six out-of-place steel warehouse buildings a little farther in the distance. Alongside the buildings were about twenty cars, some farm equipment, and six or seven tractor trailers.
“Boss,” Patrick said, gesturing to the front of the barn, where three Texas Highway Patrol cars were
