He doesn’t have as much ink as I’d expect for a tattoo artist—only a pair of plain black bands around each muscled forearm. Nothing to indicate how talented he is. Even his very first design, the one on my own back, was a masterpiece.
Like the rest of the Santos men, Sam hasn’t gone to college. It wasn’t in the cards for any of us. Instead, partly thanks to the tattoo on my back, he landed a sweet gig as an apprentice to a celebrity tattoo artist in San Diego named Toni Valentine.
It is literally his dream job, but I wonder if he knows his boss’ real name. Thanks to the intel on the tiny drive in my pocket, I’ve learned that Toni Valentine was born Antonia Valentina Quiñones, and that her mother Elena, Arturo Flores’ housekeeper, had an affair with her boss thirty years ago. That the man she believed was her father was hand-picked by Arturo to raise his own daughter. After Elena married Hector Quiñones, she had the twins, Benedito and Baltasar—Benny and Baz, Arturo’s sidekicks.
Does my brother have a clue that leaving Los Angeles to work for her didn’t exactly gain him any distance from the tangled web between our family and Arturo’s?
He worries at his hair some more, makes a face, then turns and strides straight toward me. I blink and hold my breath, fading back into the shadows as quietly as I can. I lose sight of all but a tiny sliver of the room beyond, hoping like hell he doesn’t sense me somehow. Leaning the tiniest bit, I see him paw through the cabinet over the toilet and come away with a hair tie, which he proceeds to use to pull his hair back into a short, tight half-ponytail.
It’s hard not to laugh because all he needs is a beard and my baby brother will have gone full hipster. I hope I know him better than that.
Frustrated footsteps approach and Elle whisper-yells, “What the hell, Sam? I don’t want to be here when he wakes up, but I’ll be damned if I let this place go to hell while Mom’s away. A little help, please?”
“He’s not waking up,” Sam says dismissively at full volume. “But I’m good to go, let’s get this done.”
They disappear again, but not before I get a glimpse of Elle’s reflection in the mirror, and my heart stops because she’s the spitting image of Mom when she was young. It’s surreal how little she resembles the tiny spitfire whose image will be fixed in my head forever when I think of my baby sister. She’s tall and slim, her straight black hair coiled up in a messy bun at the back of her head. She’s filled out too, and I remember how not much more than three years ago, Maddox and I worried that she was getting a little too close to the Quiñones twins and we might have to knock some sense into those two to keep their distance. But she lives in San Diego full-time now, with Sam not far away. They’ve always been close, so I’ll have to have faith that he has her back.
She looks sad, her hazel eyes shadowed and her brow creased with worry. I’d give anything to be able step out and comfort her, but I can’t. So I just lean against the wall and wait, listening to the sounds they make as they clean.
They aren’t particularly talkative, but we always kept quiet when Dad was home and drunk. Old habits die hard. Eventually I hear the back door open and the sound of the trash hitting the big bin in the alley outside. A few minutes later, two sets of footsteps head back through the house. The front door opens and shuts, and I finally have the opening I need to sneak out.
The back door’s deadbolt is locked, so I open it and slip out, then fish under the flower pot next to the door for a key to lock up behind me. I ease around the side of the house and peek past the corner to the street. Sam and Elle are sitting in a beat-up Honda Accord with the engine running and Elle at the wheel. I can’t hear them, but Elle’s stricken look and Sam’s frown are enough for me to guess what’s on their minds.
Elle wipes her eyes and shakes her head. When Sam speaks, she nods, then steps out of the car. He gets out too, and they meet at the front, where he envelops her in his arms and holds her through a wave of sobs.
My throat closes up at the sound, the words audible now that she’s not inside the car. “What if she doesn’t wake up? What if…”
“Shh. Don’t think like that, okay?” Sam says. “Remember what Dr. Nicolo said. It’s still early. She’s improving a little every day. We’ll get her back. I have to believe we’ll get her back.” His voice cracks, and he stops talking and they just stand there, holding each other.
My nostrils flare and the tightness in my throat turns hot when fresh rage bubbles up inside me. I’m tempted to go back inside and finish doing the deed I came here to do in the first place. Seeing the pair of them falling apart is too much.
But what good would it do them to come back to a crime scene on top of having to deal with Mom in the hospital? None. There’s a better alternative, and I know just who can help.
7 Mason
Pulling through the gate of the Flores estate is like entering an alternate reality. I’ve been here before, just once after I recovered from my so-called “death” and had completed a few months of training with Arturo’s fixer. I stayed for a single night and spent most of it up talking with Maddox before I left for Mexico City.
The comfortable, understated opulence
