Page 61 of Cartel Devil

“Nothing.”

She looks at me in confusion, but I’m not buying it.

“Don’t lie to me, Tre. Tell me you don’t want to talk about it, and I’ll hate it but accept it. But don’t tell me nothing’s wrong when I’m sure of it enough to ask.”

“This is all just so heavy.”

“It is. But that’s not what you were thinking. Tell me to mind my own business, Tre. But don’t try to distract me. I read you too well already.”

“Yeah, you do. How?”

She winces when she finishes. She looks out the window rather than meet my gaze again. She knows why. She knows I was trained to sniff out even the slightest hint of vulnerability or untruth. I’m a top enforcer alongside my brothers. We handle things in NYC and the surrounding area. We travel when we need to. Pablo’s NYC’s jefe, and as the heir to the title jefe de jefes, he deals with the people who fuck up so badly even Tres J’s—my brothers and me—aren’t high enough to punish them. Alejandro’s our chief strategist and our representative in Latin America when someone has to go down there. It means we all received the same lessons in coercion and consequences.

If we’re being blunt: torture.

“Chiquita, it’s also because we’re a lot alike even if you’re an extrovert, and I’m an introvert. We think similarly. We react to things similarly. I can just sense something’s off. I can’t help you—fix it if you need me to—if you don’t tell what it is.”

“There’s nothing to fix.”

It’s my turn to look away. I stare out the window until she squeezes my hand. I shift my attention back to her. She looks at me questioningly.

“Tre, you’re still lying. Maybe you aren’t used to sharing your burdens. Maybe you think I can’t handle whatever it is or will refuse to. Maybe you fear I’ll reject you. I don’t know. But just tell me to back off rather than telling me what you think I want to hear.”

She assesses me before nodding. “I don’t want to talk about it, Joaco.”

I want to crawl out of my skin. Climb up the walls. Scream into the abyss.

I’m not in control of whatever’s troubling her, and I might lose my mind. For a man like me, being out of control—being unable to solve whatever’s wrong for her—is a torture far worse than pliers, bamboo shoots, steel pipes, or waterboarding combined.

She doesn’t trust me yet.

Rational me understands that while we’re bound to each other now, we don’t know each other well enough for her to trust me implicitly. It makes me feel like a failure. It makes me want to pull my arms, legs, and head into my shell like a tortoise. I want my hard shell to protect me against the rejection. This evasiveness tests my trust. I get why hers isn’t implicit yet, and mine wasn’t either for the same reasons. But now that I know she’s hiding something from me, it weakens what was already fragile.

Do you want to be with someone who’s going to keep secrets from you?

Are you fucking for real? Do you hear yourself?

The man who lies for a living. The man who will lie to her as easily as he breathes.

You fucking monumental hypocrite.

But it’s different. She knows why I’ll lie. She’s supposed to trust me more.

Supposed to?

Insufferable ass.

I know she’s watching me as I have an internal argument. She cocks an eyebrow, challenging me to share my thoughts, both of us knowing I don’t want to.

“Tre, please, in the future, just tell me you don’t want to talk about it. If you’re lying to protect me or someone else, to protect yourself, then I get it. But if you’re scared to tell me something, that’s only going to turn into an earworm. I can’t let that go. It means you don’t feel safe. I know this is an unfair demand and makes me the world’s biggest hypocrite. I’m sorry for that, but not for wanting to take care of you.”

We pull up to the curb outside her building. She unfastens her seat belt, and I fear she’s going to bolt. Instead, she pushes it aside and turns toward me. She maneuvers herself to straddle my lap.

“Joaco, give me some time, please. There’s family stuff I need to work out. I’m not trying to worry you, even if I know I am. You know I’m used to lying about anything to do with my family. You do the same thing. It’s a hard habit to break.”

“Whenever you’re ready—if you ever are—I’m here.”

“I will be, just not right now.”