Page 74 of Twin Deception

I ground my teeth, peeved that he’d have this attitude. “Enlighten me.”

“Flores has been fucking everyone over with botched marriage proposals. Offering his daughter to leaders and bosses and then reneging.”

“His daughter?” I felt Isabel’s fingers tighten on mine.

Isabel wasn’t being offered in marriage. Or if she was, no one was telling her about it. She hadn’t been followed or tailed before I had gone after her.

“He’s been promising his daughter, letting her in on meetings to spy, and then after negotiations for deals change, he backs out and fucks them over.” Rueben shook his head and sighed. “He’s asking for it, pulling bullshit like that.”

That sounded like this femme fatale that Cartel man was talking about. This woman in Louis’s life who had to be ended.

But it’s not her.

It couldn’t be Isabel.

“And the boss isn’t happy about how he did it to one of their up-and-coming leaders. One of the supervisors at the docks.”

“A Carmello boss?” I asked, not wanting to assume anything since Louis wasn’t selective about whom he talked to.

“Yeah. Carmellos are pissed that Louis snuck his daughter into a meeting and killed him.”

“Shit.” I opened my eyes wide.

I’d already been thinking that another woman could be confused with Isabel, but it was still a reach. She hadn’t been involved with Louis for years. Why mix her into any of this?

As the conversation wound down, with Rueben referencing more examples of Louis’s pattern of using his “daughter” to trick the leaders of crime families, I grew uneasy and more confused about how Isabel could be targeted.

When another car pulled up, I kept Isabel closer to me.

I’d shown up uninvited, but by the sounds of these men getting out of not one but two cars, I heard them greeting Rueben. They seemed to be expected.

Now that I got a little more intel about Louis, Isabel and I could leave. I didn’t need to look at her to know she was nervous and anxious with more people crowding in. Until we knew who else was after her and more about why they were, everywhere would feel like dangerous territory.

“Graciella!” One man rushed at us on the porch. I blocked her as the man sneered, running up toward us. “What the fuck areyoudoing here?”

Graciella?

Isabel trembled behind me, clutching the back of my shirt and stepping fully behind me.

“Rueben, why the fuck is she here?” Another ran up close, bringing out his gun as he glared at me, as though he expected me to step out of the way.

“How dare you show your face around here,” a third man shouted at her.

Gunshots were fired, and with my priority to keep her safe, I fought the confusion over when Isabel could have ever shown her face around here before.

28

ISABEL

Graciella?

Who the hell was Graciella?

I hunkered close to Miguel, sticking behind him as though it could make me completely invisible.

We’d been standing here and talking with Rueben when those men showed up. They’d come like they had every right to stop by. Like friends visiting. They’d piled out of the cars, laughing and talking. But the second they realized Rueben already had visitors, they changed their tune.

Shouting. Pulling out guns. Angry and sneering atme.

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