Page 65 of Hard to Love
“Oh, God. Alex—”
“All the protection I’d bought my family was gone before I ever tried to make my way out. They picked up Javi, told him that if hishermanowas aputo, then they’d take the next best thing.”
“Why didn’t you—”
“Do something? I did. Told El Águila,the head of the gang, to let Javi go. That I would stay. The Tejanos Pintados had all they needed from the Villanueva family. But I’d already blown their trust by that point. And Javi, he didn’t get the same immunity deal I did. He designed and inked the tats, but he was also a soldier, one of the guys out on the streets.” For the first time in forever, Alex felt the pressure building behind his eyes. A pressure that if he evergave in to would prove he was exactly theputoEl Águilahad accused him of being.
“You…you don’t have to tell me.” Her voice was shaky, tentative. Nothing like her normal take-charge tone.
“You said you wanted me, Greer. Did you mean only the clean and pretty parts? Because there aren’t a hell of a lot of them. What you’re hearing now, that’s the real Alex Villanueva.”
Seconds ticked by before Greer blew out a breath. “Go on.”
“I was at anese’s house inking a new soldier, sinking my needle into his virgin skin when I heard. Javi had been gunned down by a rival gang. Wasn’t even over drugs. Supposedly some bullshit honor thing over acholaJavi was messing with. That girl wasn’t private property. She was aputa—would do anycholowho’d score her a little something to drink, snort, or shoot.”
“Your brother was with her?”
“No, he just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The wrong place because I was such a selfishcabrón. If I’d just kept my mouth shut, kept my head down, it would’ve been okay. Ruben, one of myvatos,was El Águila’s younger brother. It was an unspoken understanding that they’d leave Javi alone and then Nicolás when he was older.”
“That doesn’t mean they wouldn’t have been approached by another gang, right?”
Alex lay there in the dark, her words smothering his brain. That thought hadn’t ever crossed his mind. But it was fucking moot. “His death is on my head.” Weighed so damn heavy on his heart every day of his life.
“So what happened next?”
“I packed up my mamá and little brother, sent them tostay with a relative in Georgia. I stuck around San Antonio, hid for a few days, long enough to make sure they were settled and safe. That no one else knew where they were.” And to steal twenty grand from the gang’s coffers. Javi’s blood money. Enough to keep his family above water until Alex could start sending them cash. “Then I disappeared too.”
She clutched his arms, her body vibrating against his. “What would they do if they knew you were this close to San Antonio?”
Probably put a bullet between his eyes. Then again, he’d kept an ear to the ground and found out gang leadership had changed hands. His old friend Ruben was El Águila’ssuccessor. “You can see why I want to keep a low profile in this competition thing.”
“I’ll cancel any media coverage.”
“No, you can’t afford that. I just need you to keep them away from me.”
“What if you win?”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”
Ridingin the backseat of his mamá’s third-hand minivan, Nic felt like a four-year-old who’d been kicked out of preschool for biting the other kids. All he needed was the friggin’ car seat and a handful of cheese crackers.
But when he was given his obligatory phone call after the police picked up him and José, dialing his mamá’s number had been his only choice. Jesus only knew what José’s papá would’ve done if Nic had called him. He wasn’t known on the streets of San Antonio for being a bighearted humanitarian.
Nic’s mamá cast a quick glance at José, who was riding shotgun, then caught Nic’s eye in the rearview. “Nicolás,what is going on here? You know the last place I want to find you is in a police station.”
“A mistake, that’s all. The police made a mistake.”
“They said something about vandalism. That you two were painting graffiti on public property. Is this true?”
“Mrs. Villanueva—”
Nic cut off José’s inevitable confession. “It was my fault. My idea, Mamá.”
Her mouth went tight, making all the hardships she’d shouldered in her life visible in the lines around her lips. “You promised me,” she said, her voice hoarse and hurt. “You promised me if we moved back home that you would stay out of trouble. That you would be a good boy.”
At fifteen, he didn’t exactly consider himself a boy anymore. Hadn’t considered himself a boy since his brother walked out of his life eight years ago. “They let us go, didn’t they?”
“I talked with the officer who picked you up. It didn’t sound like a mistake. Maybe I should drive by the library and you can show me the walls. The ones you didn’t paint.”
