Page 91 of My Darling Mayhem

“I can get you his number,” Ruth said, clicking away on her keyboard, which lit up with a variety of colors every time she tapped.

My eyebrow rose. “Really? The last name is Hernandez based on a few reports we gathered over the years, but at birth, it may have been Vasquez.”

She clicked around, and I just kept adding to her information pile.

“Mother is Anna. Father would have been Manuel Vasquez. Sister Henrietta.”

What else was there?

“Location, North Carolina…wife, no idea. Kids…Kingston and?—”

“Got it.” Ruth interrupted me and then spun around with a piece of paper in her hand with a number written on it.

Thistle let out what sounded like a dreamy sigh.

Fuck, the guy was gone for her, and he was too chicken shit to admit it. I stood up, gently squeezed Ruth’s shoulder, and walked off, leaving my second-in-command to deal with his crush and pay her.

Dialing this number could go one of two ways…but either really couldn’t be worse than what had already happened.

I punched in the number and let it ring.

On the third ring, he answered.

“Bueno?”

I paused, curious at his cheery tone.

“Juan, it’s Archer Green.” I waited a second to see if he’d hang up, and when he didn’t, I continued, “I need to talk to you.”

There was some shuffling on his end. “Where are you?”

A dark city greeted me as I walked to one of Ruth’s windows in her apartment. “I’m in the city.”

“Good. She left?”

I knew he meant Wren, but admitting I’d let her go still hurt. “Yes, with your mother and Cruz.”

Juan paused again. “And your brother.”

He must have eyes on them right now. My stomach flipped. “Are they safe?”

“Of course,” he replied easily, but I wasn’t buying it.

“Even my brother?”

Juan let out a sigh. “I would never hurt an innocent kid, Archer.”

“No, but your kids would.”

That made him go quiet for so long that I thought he might hang up.

“My sons aren’t perfect…there was an incident that sort of transformed them both…they weren’t always like this.”

Didn’t give a flying fuck how they used to be.

“Don’t care. I need to meet with this Kyle person; you called him The Joker. How would I go about talking to him?”

There was more shuffling in the background.

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