The Viper (Untamed Hearts #1)(69)

“Ay Dios mio.” Marcos groaned. “Are you sure?”

“What the f*ck do you think I do for a living? Yes, Marc, I’m sure. Why do you think it’s bleeding like that? No gloves? No f*cking Vaseline. It’s going to scar.”

“Maybe the stitches will hide it.”

“In your eyebrow? No.” Chuito pulled back and gave him a look of disbelief. “Are you worried about a scar? Really? That is the least of your problems. You don’t know that fighter! You don’t know if he’s clean.”

“I’m sure he’s clean.”

“Just like you’re sure he’s a hundred and eighty-five pounds?”

“My hands are fine.” Marcos held up his hands as evidence. “I didn’t touch my face.” Chuito gave him another harsh look. “I didn’t. I’m not new. I know this shit. I’m not soft. You’re soft. Now you’re a fancy fighter who doesn’t know how to protect himself on the street. A little blood and you freak. I’m fine.”

“Where’s your truck? Hopefully we’ll end up in the same hospital as the motherf*cker you almost killed. I’ll figure it out when we get there.”

“You want me to go the hospital naked?”

“Yup.”

“No, I’m not going to the hospital.” If it was still going to scar, Marcos didn’t see why he should bother. “They’ll ask questions.”

Chuito sighed and looked heavenward, staring at the moon as if searching for patience. “You’re sure you didn’t touch your face?”

“I am sure, motherf*cker.”

Chuito pulled out his phone and flashed it at Marcos, running the light up and down his body.

“What’d you want? A date?”

“No cuts anywhere?”

“No.” Marcos gestured to his naked body in nothing but his underwear. “Still sexy as ever.”

“Except for the eyebrow.”

“Mierda.” Marcos groaned as he turned to walk back around to find his truck in the packed parking lot. “We need to find Neto. He’s got my phone.”

Marcos heard Chuito grab his shorts, the rattle of keys giving it away.

“Forget your phone.”

“Fuck you. He’s got my gun too. I need my gun.”

“Forget the gun.”

Marcos turned back to him in disbelief. “You really are soft. Angel’ll kill both of us.”

Chuito lifted his shirt, showing off the gun tucked into front of his jeans. Marcos just stared at it, because he knew it’d been a very long time since Chuito had walked around strapped.

“You carry a Beretta?”

“What’s wrong with a Beretta?”

“That’s a very Italian weapon.” Marcos lifted his gaze to Chuito’s face and studied him. His cousin was really back in Miami, and this time it wasn’t just to visit. He was packing. The icy cold shock of realization made the world swim. “Ay Dios mio,” he whispered, and when Chuito looked away, Marcos felt actual tears sting his eyes. “What did you do?”

Chuito shook his head. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Oh my God,” he repeated in English. He went to put a hand to his eyes and then stopped at the last minute. He lowered his head instead and choked out, “Did you smoke him? There’s kids in that warehouse.”

“No. I didn’t smoke anyone.”

“Chu—”

“I didn’t. Angel’s alive and well. I promise.”

Marcos forced air back into his lungs, hating that he was still half-blind and the world was wavy and he was starting to notice little things. Like the fact that he hadn’t been eating much since he’d left Katie, and he had been living on pure adrenaline for a week.

The facts weren’t adding up in his hazed mind. If Chuito was back and strapped, someone, somewhere was supposed to be dead. Garnet didn’t change him that much. Once Chuito took over a problem, motherf*ckers started dying.

“I promised Juan,” he whispered.

“Juan’s dead,” Chuito snapped in the cold, harsh voice from Marcos’s youth.

He flinched at the sound of it. He was going to stand there in the parking lot of an underground fight club and actually cry. Really cry.

Like Katie cried.

Like that chica Grayson cried.

“Come on.” Chuito wrapped his arm around Marcos’s waist, obviously deciding he wasn’t toxic anymore. “I’ll drive.”

Marcos let him, because if he was going to cry, he sort of wanted to do it at home. He sat in the passenger seat of his truck, with his head tilted back, the blood from his eyebrow still running down his face and onto his chest.

He was mostly naked.

Very wet.

And cold.

Chuito stopped at a twenty-four-hour drugstore. Marcos looked out the window fighting the tears as he waited. He didn’t know what Chuito did, but it was something he knew would undo five years of Garnet programming.

He missed him, but Marcos liked his cousin happy and in Garnet. Playing whatever game he played with his neighbor and being everything Marcos wasn’t. Successful. Rich. Famous.

Even if it meant they weren’t a team anymore.

He’d always wanted it for Chuito.