Page 14 of Cartel Devil

“Mamá!”

“What? Serafina’s talented. It’s not like I don’t get things from her shops anyway.”

“You do?”

“Yes. Just not on days when you or your brothers will stop by. I wouldn’t get a crumb if I did.”

“We aren’t that bad.”

“Oh, yes, you are. You three come in like a hurricane, whip through the kitchen, eat everything in sight, then kiss me goodbye.”

I’m duly insulted.

“We do the dishes.”

“Small consolation, mijo.”

Luciana Diaz is the most loving woman you could ever meet, but she’s also the mother of three adult sons. She has no shits left to give.

“Mamá, it just wasn’t meant to be.”

“You talked to her for nearly three hours at the reception, and you didn’t think to get her number?”

I hadn’t realized how long Tre and I spent talking and dancing until the next morning. The time whizzed past me, and it shocked me to realize it was three hours. I mean, I knew it was most of the night since other guests were leaving when we did. But it just didn’t feel like that much time passed. I was having too much fun, which is something I generally don’t have when I’m at public events. Not even ones my family hosts.

“I enjoyed hanging out with her. I didn’t know that the night would progress the way it did. I didn’t think that far ahead. I suppose I assumed there’d be time before we parted ways.”

“She really just offered you cupcakes?”

Now my ears are burning too.

“Yes. And it wasn’t a suggestion that I come and get them to see her again, or that if she dropped them off, we’d hang out. It wouldn’t have surprised me if she sent a delivery person if I’d agreed.”

“I’m sorry, mijo. I can tell you really liked her.”

“I did, Mamá, and I feel like such an idiot for it.”

“Don’t. That solves nothing. Do you think I wanted to be attracted to Papá? I was supposed to marry someone else. I was already involved with someone else. But I couldn’t help it. I fell for Papá, and that was that.”

“Lo sé, mamá.” I know, Mama.

I know the story of how my parents met. It’s sweet in the most Cartel kind of way. Mamá was to marry a man my abuelo chose to end a feud. The man happens to have been my cousin-in-law’s father. If history had worked out differently, Pablo might have married a woman who would’ve been my illegitimate half-sister. Instead, Papá set his sights on Mamá and wouldn’t back down. Mamá didn’t love the other guy and was only going to marry him out of obligation.

Rather than wind up with a man she came to despise, she had an all-too-short marriage to Papá. They were the love of each other’s lives. Devoted until Papá’s last breath. There’s no way Mamá will ever remarry. She won’t even date. They were soulmates in this life and the next.

For a fleeting, drunk moment, I thought that’s what I might have with Tre.

Chapter Four

Tre

The man is the bane of my existence.

Joaquin Diaz is an earworm tunneling its way into the center of my brain. I can’t get the sound of his voice—especially his groans—out of my head. It plays back on a loop in both my waking and slumbering hours. It’s only drowned out when I’m speaking to someone who interests me. Any moment of boredom—any moment without a different distraction—has our night together replaying on a constant loop.

I’m going insane.

Like, lock me up and throw away the key.