Page 90 of Menace

“I need your help to get Antonio from my aunt’s house in Mexico. He will be sixteen on his next birthday. All the boys in the Mendez family are introduced into the family business when they turn sixteen. I don’t want that for our son. Please. Please come with me and help me get him out. He’s your son and he should be living here, in the States, free from Los Rojos. We can be together, the three of us, be a family like we had always planned.”

And there it was. The hook to get him to walk out of the front gates with her.

A son. A son with a version of his name. His son. A son who was apparently in danger.

Jesus.

Before he could say anything Dive took over.

“Not so fast, bitch. He’s not goin’ anywhere with you. We want proof the boy is his. Once you give it to us it will be taken to our president and he will decide what comes next. Not you, not Lucky, our president.”

Rage flew through her eyes but she quickly disguised it, looking down for a beat then back up when she had it under control. What she couldn’t disguise was the faint red tinge to the skin of her neck. It was something he had noticed back when they were together, it happened every time she started to lose her shit. It was something all the make up in the world couldn’t hide.

“My brother is right.” Breaker said. “We need proof before anything else happens. Do you have any?”

Her eyes went from one to the other before she nodded and walked back to her big leather purse. She bent over, far deeper than she had to. Her ass was up in the air and twitched from side to side as she pulled a manila envelope from its depths. Her heels clicked on the cement floor as she swayed her way back to him.

It was as if every sound in the room was amplified but he knew it wasn’t.

She held the envelope out to him but Dive took it from her hand. Stepping up the steel table in the centre of the room he opened and upended the contents on it.

Glossy photos along with two pieces of paper fell in a jumble on the table.

The photos looked like a set, documenting the growth of a boy. It started off with him as a baby, then a toddler, then a little boy and finally a young teen. He looked a bit like Gloria. They had similar hair colour and similar facial features. The kid’s eyes were brown.

What he didn’t look like was Lucky.

When he and Remy had been around fifteen they had already shot up to six foot and had shown the potential to grow into big men like their father. They’d had big shoulders even then.

This boy was maybe five eight, at a push five nine, with narrow shoulders and a skinny body.

“He looks nothing like a Boudreaux.” Dive said decisively.

“He takes after his Fortier family.” Gloria spat at him. “He looks just like his maternal great grandfather, Etienne Fortier.”

Dive looked at Lucky and he shrugged. He didn’t know, he would have to ask his mother.

Fuck. What if this was true? What if the boy was his?

What the fuck was he going to do?

Dive took care of that.

“Right, we’ll keep these and be in contact. Give me a number where we can reach you. It’s not safe for you here. Too many of the brothers know you’re connected to Los Rojos and they will not be happy that you’re here. It could get physical for you.”

He was lying through his fucking teeth but it worked.

Taking a card from her purse she wrote a number on the back and put it on the table. Blinking away fake tears she looked at him then shook her head as if she was disappointed in him

“I’m telling the truth, Lucky. You’ll see. Please don’t let bad feelings keep our son from knowing his father and his family. He’s not to blame for my mistakes.”

With that little side swipe at him she left.

Lucky stood staring down at the photos trying to find even one little bit of himself in the boy. Nothing. He found nothing. And his Fortier family? Not sure, not sure at all.

And how the fuck did she know what Granpère Fortier looked like? The only photos of him was in an album his mother had. He wasn’t sure but he could swear the old man had dirty blonde hair and very dark almost black eyes.

Most of his Fortier cousins were blonde but there were some with dark hair, and their eyes were blue-green or the same as his, so dark they almost looked black. Like his grandfather’s.

---