Now that I see the name again in connection with my mother’s signature, recognition sends an icy chill through me even colder than when Gustavo threatened me moments ago.
Papá hasn’t done business with Amador in more than twenty years. I know because I went over the accounts with a fine-toothed comb when I started in my official capacity as Flores Antiquities, Inc.’s CFO. But before their falling out, my father’s business dealings weren’t about real estate or black-market antiques and artwork. He sold guns and drugs like most of his counterparts and had close ties with Mexico. Papá was instrumental in helping Amador’s rise as the head of the richest and most dangerous cartel in Mexico. That was when they did business as Amador e Flores, Ltda., not Amador Propiedad, Ltda., a name which only exists in our records linked to these few transactions.
If my father cut ties with Amador in the early nineties, what was my mother’s name doing on checks written to him the same week she died, more than five years later?
10
Maddox
The sick feeling in my stomach persists for the rest of the week. Long enough that I can’t attribute it to the tequila. At least the ache in my balls has dissipated, thanks to several epic beat-off sessions that leave me feeling bruised emotionally because I can’t help but picture Leo and Celeste together. I can’t even insinuate myself into the fantasies because deep down I don’t believe I deserve it. I was dumb to think either of them would accept me. Celeste’s father is too deep inside her head now, and Leo . . . Well, it’s always a crapshoot, coming out to friends. There was probably a better way to handle that, but I blew it.
It’s a secret I’ve let eat at me for too long. It’s not hard to keep after returning to a city where very few people exist who know me anymore, but the people who do know me deserve the truth. Sometimes I wonder if it’s even relevant though. I’m not with anyone. It’s not like I have to explain the porn I watch, and the erotic images hanging on my wall could support the lie that I’m as straight as they come.
Hell, even my currently grease-covered hands and the two-wheeled hunk of metal in my garage are sufficient camouflage.
I crouch by my bike and stare at my distorted reflection in the chrome tailpipe. I see another face in my mind’s eye. One I miss, one who wouldn’t have let me fucking wallow in misery like this.
My CO, Sean Zagorski—Zag—took me down a few pegs before building me back up when I joined his squad with an oversized ego and an epic chip on my shoulder. Everything was so much easier with him. None of this fucking handwringing over coming out, mostly because it just wasn’t something you did in the military. My interest in him went from plain old admiration to something more after an assignment that had the pair of us trapped together in a half-collapsed mosque in Kabul.
Extraction took several days, and the area around us was too hot to risk making a run for it, so we hunkered down and resigned ourselves to a long, boring wait. It didn’t take long before we started sharing our deepest, darkest secrets. When he confessed his sexual orientation, I was sure he only shared because he was certain we were both going to die.
I’m not sure what went through my head next. Maybe it was awareness of my own mortality. Maybe it was my need to spit in the face of authority, because even after four years, I was still angry about what Celeste’s father had done. I thought I was making a point the first time I kissed him—saying I didn’t give a fuck what any higher powers thought, whether it was God or the fucking Marines. But that kiss lit a fuse neither of us was equipped to extinguish.
We returned from that mission changed in ways neither of us could have predicted. Fearing for our lives was one thing, but discovering that sexual contact could feel just as good coming from another man as from a woman was the biggest revelation of my life. That I could even connect with another man on that level blew my mind.
Zag wasn’t surprised, the fucker. But he did drill into my head that under no circumstances could we let on in public that we had anything beyond a professional, above-board friendship between a ranking sergeant and his subordinate. In private, we had a no-holds-barred, desperate affair that would put Brokeback Mountain to shame. Ours didn’t have any happier an ending either, though it lasted for the better part of five years.
I can hear his good-natured ribbing in my head, reminding me that I’ve still got a life to live, which he made me promise I would do with his last breath. A few weeks ago, I was exactly where I wanted to be, even doing a fine job of honoring that last wish. But like the idiot I am, I let myself want things I have no business wanting.
“Stare any harder at it, you’ll burn a hole right through the thing, hermano.”
I snap my head around and find my brother J.J. leaning against the opening of the garage bay, arms crossed and a smirk on his face.
“Welcome home, shitbird,” I say with a grin. I get to my feet and haul
