Page 4 of Married with Blood
“What?” Arturo looked twice his age with this moustache and beard, but I supposed he did that on purpose. Still holding on to too much of a baby face, he likely had to rely on his facial hair to look distinguished and older than he actually was. I knew better.
I furrowed my brow at him checking his phone instead of facing me. Lines bracketed his eyes and formed a V over his nose. His left foot tapped quickly, sending up a series of little dust balls from the disturbance of his boot.
He was distracted.
Or peeved.
Both were often, but I could read this man like a book.
“What’s bothering you?”
He snapped his testy gaze up to me. “Right now,you.”
Used to him putting me down, I let his attitude roll off my back. I’d spent my whole life fighting with him, a curse I was subjected to as his younger sister.
“No. Something else.”
“What, am I supposed to take my concerns to you before sorting shit out on my own?” He rolled his eyes and shoved his phone into his back pocket.
“Considering how poorly you ever sort out anything on your own, I guess so.” I crossed my arms. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Nothing’s fucking wrong,” he retorted, too terse for it to be remotely true. Something clearly was getting him on edge. And if something was going down, I’d be the one to inevitably advise him on how to clean it up.
“That’s not true.”
He narrowed his eyes on me. “You calling me—your boss—a liar?”
I didn’t react to him puffing his chest out. “Yes. I’m calling mybrothera liar. Something is wrong.” I pointed in the direction of the other vehicles. “These aren’t ready to go yet.”
“The fuck they aren’t,” he argued, sneering as he scanned the trucks and vans.
“They don’t have the new trackers installed on them yet.”
He shrugged. “Yeah.”
“Yeah?” I mocked, trying not to let my temper get the best of me. Once he saw how pissed I was, he’d see it as a victory. Keeping my cool with this idiot was my lifelong war to fight. “They’re supposed to be installed before they go on the road. You know this.”
“In theory, we should be tracking them.”
I growled and closed my eyes. “No. There’s notheoryabout it.”
“In theory, if they were going on the usual route, they would be fitted with the trackers.”
I frowned, watching him closely. “What? What do you mean? Theyaregoing on the usual route to deliver to the Vegas clients.”
“No, they’re not,” he replied as if it were a horrible pain and cost on his patience to point out that difference to me.
“Since when?” I asked, following him as he walked toward another vehicle where runners were loading crates of weapons. “Sincewhen, Arturo?”
“Since I said so.”
Another growl burned up my throat. I kept it locked in, bottling my annoyance at his attitude. At his power-tripping mentality. Since the day our father bled out at the border, Arturo had taken it upon himself to think he was a god or something immortal and unstoppable.
“How about for once in your life, you mind your own fucking business, Carina?”
I smirked, not letting him walk away from me yet. “If I minded my own business and didn’t help you after you fuck up, this Cartel would’ve been ended years ago.”
He never missed a chance to remind me that he was the leader, not me. He never passed up on the opportunity to rub it in my face that he was the one who should determine everything, not me.
