Page 68 of The Slayer
Figured it took Marcos one week in Garnet to do what Chuito hadn’t managed to do in five years.
Marcos had always been the lover.
Chuito was the one born to be a gangster.
Now Chuito was back where he’d started, neck-deep in Los Corredores issues that were huge right now, but there would always be some reason to drag his tired ass into the gym and bleed just for the fucking fun of it.
’Cause they were crew too.
And his family.
His life had become a series of contradictions in the past few months. One minute he was on the phone with a mafia underboss, talking in code about gang politics and stolen cars. The next, he was teaching self-defense classes or helping mop the floors of the Cellar when their cleaning guy quit.
Starting today, Chuito was in charge of babysitting some green fighter from California, because this new fighter was Mexican and Chuito was Puerto Rican and in the eyes of Garnet, that made them practically brothers.
Different fucking culture, but that shit was totally lost on Garnet.
He was tired before the shit with Alaine got real, and he ended up on his knees in her bedroom, tasting what he’d been fantasizing about for five years.
Now he was cranky as fuck.
Horny as hell.
Still hungover.
Queasy and sucking down coffee like liquid cocaine.
He turned off his car and sat there, drinking his coffee while blinking at his windshield. He needed to center himself, because this guy was not part of his crew, had stolen a fighting spot from his cousin, and had forced Chuito to come in when he needed a lot more recovery time after last night.
The Mexican was currently public enemy number one.
Hopefully he was as tough as they said he was.
Chuito jumped when someone knocked on his window, which made him angrier. This shit with Alaine was forcing him to let his guard down left and right. It was the worst possible time for everything with Alaine to come to a head. Now more than ever, Chuito couldn’t afford to get lazy, and his life in Garnet was falling apart instead.
He was one very small step away from a gang war in Miami.
“Good morning, sunshine,” Valentino “Tino” Moretti said in a singsong voice and then, just to make Chuito’s afternoon better, tugged down his fighting shorts and pressed his bare ass against the driver’s-side window. “Awake yet?”
Chuito caught a flash of tan skin and a tattoo over Tino’s left ass cheek.
100% Grade A Italian
He wasn’t in the mood for Italian attitude any more than he felt like dealing with a Mexican one. He opened his door. Hard. Forcing Tino to stumble with his ass still hanging out for anyone to see.
A lesser man would have fallen, but that was the annoying thing about Tino.
That motherfucker never fell.
“Guess what I heard,” Tino said as he tugged up his shorts.
“No.”
Chuito grabbed his gym bag and locked his doors before he reluctantly crawled out into the late-afternoon sunshine.
“I heard that your punk ass got plastered last night,” Tino went on as if he hadn’t noticed Chuito’s disinterest. “Jules told Wyatt, who told Romeo that you were too fucked-up to get out of bed. Two hours late. That’s bad even for you.”
“But I’m still here,” Chuito reminded him and then kicked the back of Tino’s knee, making him stumble.
