“Just because he’s of Mexican heritage doesn’t mean he’s involved in the drug trade. He’s a legitimate businessman. The mayor of Los Angeles himself has given him honors. He’s sat at the table of the governor numerous times. He’s attended White House dinners with multiple presidents.”
“Well, if politicians trust him, then he must have clean hands.”
I scowl at him, feeling my fingers curl into claws that I’d love to rake across his face.
“Do you think I’m stupid? Of course, the thought has crossed my mind. But I asked him, point-blank. He assured me, promised me that he had nothing to do with the drug trade. In fact, these men are probably after me because he refuses to do their bidding.”
The smirk disappears from his face, which transitions into a look of pity. That somehow makes it even worse. “Don’t worry, you aren’t the first child to be disillusioned by their father.”
“I have no reason to be disillusioned by my father. Even though he doesn’t tell me everything, I trust that what he does tell me is the truth.”
My father is overprotective to the point of being tyrannical, but he’s never lied to me. If there is something he doesn’t want me to know, he simply doesn’t tell me. Period. Which makes his word worth something.
“At the very least, yours has never wanted you dead.” Even though Enrique stares at me as he says it, it’s muttered so low that I assume he’s talking to himself.
But it’s enough to pique my curiosity. “What?”
A tiny cynical smirk hitches up one side of his mouth. “I suppose that means it’s my turn to air my family’s dirty laundry.”
Chapter Twenty-One Enrique
Leira settles into the couch with a look of intense curiosity on her face, awaiting to hear my story.
“Unlike you, I’ve known from an early age that my father was a criminal. I was five when I first saw him kill a man. When I told my mother, that was the final straw, after years of abuse, that got her to try and leave. That’s how we first ended up at the island I found you on. She went back; I assume to confront him. Instead, he killed her. Or had her killed.”
She gasps and sits up straighter in surprise.
“He would have had me killed as well, if not for the nuns at Santa María Convent, who had me adopted out to a Spanish family to protect me. I was five when I found the same lagoon you discovered,” I say with a wry smirk.
“So…he’s still after you because of what you witnessed?” She asks, wrinkling her brow.
My smirk broadens. “Not exactly.”
When I don’t expand on that she gives me an exasperated look.
I concentrate on her, wondering just how much to reveal. “On paper, he’s a financier. In reality, he’s still in the money laundering business, just in case you’re wondering how I can sniff out someone in the drug dealing industry. Surprisingly, they aren’t even his number one clientele. He’s worked with quite a few legitimate businessmen who have also had many a government official to dinner.”
She twists her lips and glares at me with contempt.
I laugh and shake my head. “Don’t get too upset. Above a certain net worth, there are very few clean hands.”
“You haven’t answered why he’s still after you. If you were adopted, does he know you’re still alive?”
“No, he doesn’t.” I pause before continuing. “But he does know that someone has been targeting his clients.”
“You kill them?” She asks, her eyes wide with surprise. I’m intrigued to see a tiny hint of excitement there as well.
“No,” I say with a laugh, before going somber and giving her a direct look. “There’s only one man I’m intent on killing. My father.”
Her hand comes to her throat, which bobs as she swallows hard.
“For now, I’m...like a shark, playing with his food.” I feel a cynical smirk come to my face at the reference.
Magnus Reinhardt, the son of the man my father killed, is well known throughout the business world as The Shark.
Initially, he was intent on killing my father as part of his similar plan of revenge. I was able to convince him that I should be the one to deal with him instead. Perhaps he appreciated the poetic irony of it. Either way, he ended up giving me an ultimatum: one year.
I have only a few months left to complete the mission.
By the end of the summer, Richard Coleman will be a dead man.
But it seems like my timeline has suddenly been cut short.
As if to beg the question, Leira asks it.
“So who is it that’s after us? And why?”
I feel my mouth tighten, and I look off to the side in thought.
“I don’t know.”
“How is it exactly that you get back at your father?” She presses.
“I steal from them.”
“Steal?”
“Just enough so they know it’s tied to the amount they launder through my father.”
She hiccups a laugh. “And you wonder how they found you?”
“Who says it’s me they’re after?” I challenge.
“No one even knows I’m here…except for your little friend, Wolfgang.” A thought seems to come to her. “Wait, is he a part of this with you? Is Wolfgang even his real name?”
“His real name is irrelevant.”
“Well, that answers both questions for me. But it doesn’t answer the question of what he may or may not have told someone else.”
“He would never betray me like that,” I say in a dangerously low voice, mostly to mask the fact that I’ve had the same troubling thought. He knows that I usually at least spend the night in Ibiza before taking my boat back somewhere in Spain—he doesn’t know which city I live in—early the next day.
“No honor among thieves,” she retorts sarcastically.
My eyes snap to her, remembering that the same quote ran through my head earlier.
“It wouldn’t make sense,” I
