Page 138 of Dark Romeo

Marco let out a forced laugh and looked around at our audience. A red flush had crept up his neck. “I was just joking, Roman. Lighten up.”

I gave him a tight smile. “I’m not,” I said in a voice low enough so only he could hear. “Watch your step, Marco.”

“Where’s your wife? Where’s little Azucena?” my father asked, breaking the tension. Marco cleared his throat, shot me a weary look, and moved past me to walk my father through the open French doors. After he’d fled here, Marco had married a local Colombian girl. Azucena was the daughter that they’d adopted because his wife couldn’t have children naturally. She’d be eleven now if I remembered correctly. I’d never met her.

“Sofia’s in Bogota with Azucena,” I heard Marco say, a note of contempt in his voice. “Spending my money on shoes and dolls and God knows what else. It’s just us men.”

I followed them through the climate controlled house. It was an attempt to replicate my father’s mansion back in Verona; all glaring white and too much cold marble. Abel and the other suited monkeys cleared the rooms before they stationed themselves around the house like a well-oiled circus.

Marco took us out to the back balcony that stretched almost the length of the living area inside, coca plantations like a patchwork quilt across the jungle beyond. My family owned all the land as far as the eye could see, bursting with the flat leaves of the coca plant as green as money.

“We can produce cocaine here at about $1,500 per kilo in our labs,” my father said to me as we stood along the balustrade. He cut off the end of a Camacho cigar and lit it, the ruby end sparking as he puffed away. “It sells for up to $50,000 per kilo in America. A return of over 3,000 percent,” he announced in a puff of smoke like some kind of magic trick.

Three thousand percent return. It only cost you your soul.

“Marco oversees the operations from this side,” my father said. I glanced at Marco and found him already glaring at me. “If you’re to run the American side, you need to know how it works. We’ll take you for a tour through the plantation in a little while. But first, we eat.”

After lunch, an over-catered affair of imported meats, cheeses, breads, pasta and Dom Perignon, we took the same four wheel drives through the plantations. We passed gaunt sun-leathered workers being carefully guarded by well-fed men with rifles.

“We provide work for the local communities,” my father said as we drove past field after lush field. “We’ve installed streetlights, provided clean running water, built a local school. We’ve done much to support them. They are much better off.”

I could only stare at him as the jeep rattled my bones. He truly thought he was doing good. The drug dealer with a heart of gold. I wanted to puke.

We passed through the workers’ camp, a jumble of huts ramshackled together from plastic tarp and plywood. Among the matchbox homes, I spotted a few females in short skirts and tight tops leaning against a wall. Their faces followed us as we passed. Other than that, they didn’t move. I caught the gaze of one, long dark hair in a ratty mess, thick, swollen mouth. Something seemed dead in her eyes. My gut twisted.

“Who are they?” I asked.

It was Marco who flashed me a grin from the front seat of the jeep. “Got to provide the workers some form of entertainment.”

I tasted bile at the back of my throat. These ladies were hookers. Used for sex. “Are they paid for what they do or forced?”

“They’re fed and clothed,” Marco said. “Isn’t that enough?”

The horror must have shown on my face because my father laughed. “Honestly, Roman. Anyone would think you were a bleeding-heart pussy.”

“If you like,” Marco said with a wicked grin, “we can organize one or two of them to entertain you tonight after dinner.”

A realization hit me like a sucker punch to the liver. This plantation had been funding my extravagant lifestyle in Europe the past eight years. I didn’t know. Truthfully, I didn’t want to know. It was easier for me to focus on my singular problems, to stick my head in the sand. To remain in my comfortable, luxurious ignorance.

I was no longer ignorant. This time I was not running away. I had a new plan.

I would bide my time. Wait until my father had passed, inherit his dirty empire, then dismantle it from the inside. I could do that. I could claw my way into being the kind of man who deserved to walk down the busiest street of Verona, chin held high and holding Julianna Capulet’s hand. Maybe even her father could learn to like me. Perhaps, eventually, see me as a son.

I was jolted out of my daydream by a series of yells. The jeep skidded to a halt in front of a large cluster of buildings, the labs where the coca leaves were dried.

“What’s going on?” demanded my father.

Marco jumped out of the front seat and snapped orders to a few of his men. Beyond them the yelling continued, the air ripe with tension. Now the Tyrell heritage was clear; with his back straight and a determined furrow to his brows, he seemed even taller. He could have been my father at a younger age.

I slid out of the jeep, my gun in my hands, as Abel helped my father out, his men scrambling from the other vehicles to form a protective circle around us.

Movement alerted my attention. A group of soldiers were dragging a bruised and bleeding man towards us. I almost recoiled as my mind threw me a picture of Vinnie Torrito, swollen with blood under his thin skin, face screwed up in pain. Inside I yearned to tear the unknown man from the rough hands clamping him in place, I wanted to pick him up from his knees. Outside, I numbed my features and stood my ground like a coward.

The man was shaking, begging in Spanish. I caught the words “yo no fui” and “ayúdame, Jesus”.

I didn’t.

Help me, Jesus.

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