Page 50 of Miguel

Loco’s lips twitched. “Relax, Migue. No one wants to steal your Viejita.”

“I’m not his Viejita,” Lorena protested quietly. When I looked at her, her cheeks were suffused with color, her eyes wide as they bounced back and forth between Loco and I.

I couldn’t deny that those words pierced some vulnerable part of me in ways I didn’t think possible.

Loco laughed. “You are, beba. Even if you won’t admit it yet. Now…” He turned away from her and held his arms out. “Somebody fucking feed me.”

The club putas all but tripped over themselves to serve Loco’s plate. Lorena just watched with her brows pulled together in an expression of confusion.

“Nena.” I drew her attention back to me. “Sit and eat. Before those animals take all the food.”

“Right. Hold on.” She went back through the motions of preparing two plates, one of which she sat in front of me.

Camila always bitched about the misogyny behind the gesture of a woman preparing a plate for a man. Maybe that was true. Maybe it was a way for a machista society to keep their women chained to the men in some way. Maybe I was a fucking neanderthal myself, but having her set a plate in front of me, a meal she’d cooked in appreciation, did something to me.

“Thanks, Viejita.”

Her glare made me laugh before I picked up my fork and dug in.

It wasn’t long after we started eating that Mayan came trickling into the kitchen, trailing behind Lorena’s friend.

Almost immediately, Lorena stood and walked over to Desi, setting her hands on her shoulders before she pulled away and began signing.

I watched the movements with attention, wondering if I could decipher a single bit or piece of the conversation. I found my eyes traveling over Desi as well, at her expressive face and the passionate way she signed back to Lorena.

Even though he had hearing aids, that would be a big part of Zeke’s life. He would learn to sign, learn to communicate. And soon I would learn to speak that way as well. We all would.

Mayan was watching the interaction with as much intensity as I was. When Desi threw a glare at him from over her shoulder and angled her body away from him, he seemed to press closer like a statue behind her.

I tried not to snicker, because I probably looked just as pathetic when it came to Lorena.

Finally, Desi and Mayan went to go get themselves a plate and Lorena came back to sit in front of me.

“All good?” I nodded in Desi’s direction.

Lorena huffed a small laugh. “Everything is fine.”

I hoped that was true, because they’d both had a hard day yesterday. I wanted the words to be true. Mostly, I wanted our fucking enemies caught, so that Lorena didn’t have to look me in the eye and fucking lie to me again.

“Everybody finish eating, because I want to hold Misa in fifteen,” I called out to the club.

They all echoed their agreement while Loco cackled over his plate of eggs.

The sooner we could get our problems solved, the sooner life would fall back into place.

“First order of business, I need you pendejos to pay close fucking attention.” I held up Zeke’s hearing aid containers. “These are hearing aids for Zeke. I need all of you to know how to fucking work them in case he needs help and I’m not around.”

As I started explaining, I was proud to notice everyone paid rapt attention. Some of my hermanos even asked questions and asked for a demonstration on how to adjust the aids.

It brought me a great sense of pride to see my brothers focusing on my son’s well-being. The DNA results hadn’t come back–not that they needed to–but they’d already pulled him into our fold. That was how MC life was. He was ours, which meant they’d fight for him as fiercely as I did.

“Migue,” Chema chimed in from his seat across the table. He held his hand out in my direction. “Can I borrow those for a bit?”

My brows pulled together in question, but I gently placed the aids in his palm.

“I’m going to check a few technical things on them. I’ll have them back to you soon,” he promised.

I nodded. I didn’t ask what he was going to tweak and I didn’t need to tell him to be careful with them, either. When it came to technology, Chema was a brujo with that shit. He knew what he was doing, and I trusted him.

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