Page 6 of The Vows We Keep
“Looking for someone.” I pull up the picture of Papá on my phone. It was taken at my cousin Mini’s quinceañera. Mamá forbade him to wear his cut to it. “I need you to tell me if you’ve seen him.”
I hold the phone in front of King and let him study it. “Never seen him,” he says.
“Look more closely.”
King sneers. “Got a memory for faces. Suck at names. Don’t know who that is.”
I huff. “That’s a shame. For you, I mean. Because I don’t believe you.”
His eyes meet mine, so blue they’re glacial. “I honestly don’t give a shit what you believe.”
I step away from him, find my stance, and before he knows what happened, I curl my fist and punch the side of his face. Generally, my hands, with their impeccably polished short nails, wouldn’t do too much harm. But the large ring with small spikes does the damage for me.
King grunts, but that is the only sound he makes.
I pull up another picture, this one of Papá in his cut. “Now do you recognize him?”
My father is an imposing man. Tall, with broad shoulders. Thick black hair that I used to curl my fingers in when I was a toddler. Dark skin with darker eyes and a thick moustache. He used to say to me, “You might have the pretty looks of your mother, but you have the dark heart of your father.”
He also told me he’d moved to California for Mamá and to give me a better chance in life. I believe him because he made me promise that when he died, we’d return his body to Guadalajara.
King looks up at me. His eye is swollen from the pistol whip. The ring added a cut along his cheekbone. Maybe his orbital bone is shattered. Who knows. The scar that runs down the other side of his face tells me he’s dealt with worse. “Is this your idea of foreplay? Because I’m getting turned on,” he says, then laughs.
“For a man tied to a chair in front of two women who honestly don’t give a shit if you live or die, you’re extremely confident.”
“For a woman who clearly knows fuck all about me and my club, I could say the same about you.”
“You’d be surprised how much I know about you and your club.” Especially having grown up in one.
I pull up a kitchen chair and sit right in front of him. He’s even more handsome up close. Perhaps I should have played the long game here. Slept with the guy, become a girlfriend. In spite of Felipe’s big dick, he’s not great at holding off. There’s a reason I call him Five-Minute Felipe.
I have a feeling the man in front of me might have more stamina.
And as a woman who has always had a healthy love of sex, I appreciate that.
“Let’s start again. I need to know what happened to my father. Vice President of Los Reyes, Barstow chapter. He came on a ride north to do business or fight with the Iron Outlaws. He never came back. I’m not here to start shit with your club. I just need to know what you did with him and if there’s any chance of bringing what’s left of him home.”
King frowns. “Does your club know you’re here?”
“No. This is completely unsanctioned.”
“You realize how much shit you’re starting?”
Behind King, Neva raises an eyebrow, as if to say she agrees with him.
“I want to understand what happened to my papá and bring him home. Don’t underestimate what I’m willing to do to extract this information. Either you will tell me, or I will ransom you back to your club in exchange for the information.”
King leans back against the chair, as much as the ropes can hold him. “Well, you better get started. Because I can’t tell you a goddamn thing, seeing I don’t know who the fuck your dearpapáis.”
I sigh and stand. “Fair enough. Neva?”
Neva opens the case on the table. This is her specialty, and she’s so dramatic about it. There are syringes and vials. A mixture of chemicals designed to send King on the ride of his life. We can make him hallucinate until he wishes for death. We can kill him. And the first vial is designed for something utterly different.
King’s eyes go wide for a fraction of a second, the black dot of his pupils taking over the ice blue of his irises. Then I see this shift in his breathing, slowing it down. It all happens in a minute.
“Sodium thiopental,” I say, as Neva eases the needle into the vial. I rip into the packet of an alcohol wipe and clean a spot on King’s arm. Neva will insert it.
“Drugs are a coward’s way,” King says, his right knee bouncing.
