The Viper (Untamed Hearts #1)(38)
“With your Italian mafia brothers? No thanks!” Marcos laughed bitterly. “Who the f*ck are you to be judging me? All I do is strip cars. What the f*ck are you doing for that mobster motherf*cker?”
“He’s my friend.”
“Bullshit!” Marcos threw Chuito’s words back at him. “I know that’s a f*cking lie.”
“No, it isn’t.” Chuito shook his head in denial, doing a very good job of looking innocent. “I swear, he’s just my training partner.”
Marcos grabbed Chuito’s arm, pointing to the two red ink drops on either side of the snake’s head of his Los Corredores tattoo. They were small, discreet, something most people wouldn’t notice, but Marcos wasn’t most people.
“Those weren’t there before you left Miami. Hell, they weren’t there two years ago.” He glared at his cousin and then lowered his voice so no one could hear him. “Who did you kill for him?”
Chuito looked away rather than answer. There was a tick in his jaw, but he left his arm in Marcos’s grasp rather than wrench it away, which was telling.
He was proud of them.
But rather than admit it, Chuito just shrugged, still holding on to the lie he had obviously been telling himself since he moved to Garnet. “Those were nothing.”
“Really? Murder is nothing.” Marcos looked at Chuito’s arm that was so much more decorated than Marcos’s would ever be. The entire body of his Los Corredores tattoo was covered in ink drops. “I thought at first it was because you were out of room. That’s not it, is it? You put those outside because they had nothing to do with Los Corredores, but you still couldn’t resist getting the ink.”
“They were personal.” Chuito looked completely unremorseful, which was the scariest part of the whole thing. “I wanted them there.”
“Did you do it for him?” Marcos pointed downstairs.
Chuito looked away again.
“Yeah, some amigo. Found out what you’re best at, didn’t he?” Marcos said in English as he shoved his arm away. “I’m staying at Katie’s.”
“Marc.” Chuito followed Marcos when he walked into the living room and started gathering his shit. “You don’t understand. They helped me. I would be dead or in prison right now if it wasn’t for them.” He pointed downstairs. “I owed them. I’d do it again if I had to.”
“I know.” Marcos turned back to him, feeling his heart ache for a cousin who had everything and still couldn’t stop finding reasons to hurt the world just because it hurt him first. “I know you’d do it again. That’s why you made sure you remembered them. That’s the most f*cked-up part about it.”
“It was only two.”
“Only two?” Marcos switched back to Spanish, hoping to God that Tino motherf*cker wasn’t listening. “And you have the balls to give me shit about stripping cars. I haven’t done it once since I got out of prison, and I certainly wouldn’t do it for some mobster who will probably try to shoot you in the back the first chance he gets.”
“That’s not true. Tino’s a brother. I know it. Besides, I didn’t do it for him. I did it because—”
“I don’t care why you did it!” Marcos turned back to him and hit Chuito’s chest. “There’s something wrong with you. Losing Juan f*cked you up. You don’t feel anything. It doesn’t even enter your mind to be sorry about it.”
“Are you sorry?” Chuito asked, as if just considering guilt for killing the *s who’d murdered Juan and Marcos’s mother was a personal affront. “Would you take it back?”
“Do you hear yourself?” Marcos countered. “What sort of delusion are you living under that you can sit here over Jules Wellings’s office and pretend that you’re not that same gangbanger who took out anyone who was even remotely associated with Juan dying. You didn’t just kill them. You did it badly. I did too. That shit still haunts my dreams, and I know it haunts yours too.”
“It’s not like we did it for nothing. Every drop on here was for something.” He pointed to his arm furiously. “It mattered that we did what we did. We owed it to Juan and Aunt Camila, and I will not let you insult their memory by saying it didn’t. These two mattered too. Just like the others. No one is allowed to hurt my family, no one, and I better not find out that you’re starting to question it. When someone attacks my family, it’s war. You don’t feel bad in war, Marc. You know that. Tell me you still f*cking know it!”
Chuito’s dark eyes blazed with a fury that was raw and terrifying. Their fight had cracked the invisible shell he put around himself since he’d moved to Garnet—the wall that told the world he was nothing more than a famous UFC fighter trying to look tough. The gang tattoos were just a myth, part of his persona. Like some rapper trying to be hard but not actually doing the time. Few knew just how real those marks on his body were. This was the cousin Marcos remembered from the streets. Chuito had always been so much more dangerous than Marcos could ever be. There was something in the calculated way he did things. Chuito didn’t just kill for revenge. He plotted it out first.
“Don’t worry, I don’t feel bad about it, but a part of me is starting to think I should,” Marcos admitted as he turned to leave, knowing the drive-by f*cked him up just as badly as Chuito. He felt guilty for abandoning him to the gringa, because he hadn’t seen his cousin this unleashed since they were teenagers. “Do your neighbor a favor tonight. Don’t sleep. Dreams don’t lie.”