THE TIME for reckoning had arrived. No longer could they travel together without Wren discussing that fateful night and the events leading up to it. And Jaeger needed to know the depths of depravity that consumed his family and their associates.
Wren plumped a few of the bed pillows and leaned against them to make himself comfortable for the long haul. Jaeger remained in the desk chair, but swiveled to face him.
“So,” Wren began. “Obviously I’m gay.”
“Babe, I think we already established that.”
“I know, but it’s important to repeat, because it plays a part in what happened.” Wren paused to make sure he had Jaeger’s undivided attention.
“Like I said before, I came out to my mother, and then, of course, she told my uncle. My father had passed. Seamus O’Riley led a violent life and died the same way. Colombian drug runners attacked the coffee farm outside of Caracas—you know, the one where drugs were manufactured. My mother and I were already residing in New Mexico, and my father came every so often to visit. He was due to come home in a week when they were attacked in the compound. He, along with four of his men, were killed.
“I remember my uncle traveling to get his body and bring him back to the States for the funeral. My mother was inconsolable for months after and practically became a recluse. She loved my father very much. I like to believe he would have been supportive if he’d lived to find out I was gay. For all his faults, he loved my mother and me very much.”
“How did your uncle take the news?”
“Of me being gay? Confused. Hurt. He’d raised me ever since my father died. I guess all the things any parent or relative would feel, but also scared. Not the trembling-with-fear kind of scared. After all, he was the head of the cartel. But the kind of scared… he believed people would hold it against the family and try to do me or the family harm. Does that make sense?”
“Sure. It goes back to the machismo ideology. Men are men and not….”
“Yes. Exactly.”
“He never swept it under the rug, but as long as I wasn’t in-your-face gay, he didn’t say anything. Sometimes I’d go out to a club and hit it off with a guy. Maybe make out or blow jobs in the bathroom—just never at his or my house. I always had bodyguards. Even if you didn’t see them, they were there.”
“So you got your rocks off in clubs and never went home with anyone? Wow. That’s impressive.”
“We can’t all be studs like you.” Wren attempted to infuse a bit of levity into the conversation, knowing it was about to go south.
“One night I was sitting at a club in Mexico and having a drink. I was to meet a good friend of mine, Clarissa. She was late, as usual.” Wren chuckled.
“I rarely drank, but I was sipping on a frozen cocktail when this extremely good-looking guy approached my table. He was tall and thin with midnight-colored hair and eyes so dark they bordered on black. He was stunning in a pair of dark, tight-fitting skinny jeans, a lavender button-down, and combat boots. I had to stop myself from prostrating before him and licking his boots. He exuded charisma and strength, and he couldn’t have been more than a year or so older than me.
“Javi was a walking wet dream, and I felt out of place when he approached my table and ever so politely asked to sit. I practically swallowed my tongue. But I gestured to the vacant seat across from me.
“Javi extended his hand across the table, and I shook it. His skin was a lovely shade of olive, slighter darker than mine. His grip was strong and assertive. He knew what he wanted.
“When Javi finally released my hand, I hung on a bit longer than protocol dictated. I wanted to make sure Javi knew I was interested—even if only for a quick hand job in the back room.
“He explained that he and his brother Cristobal owned Paraiso Sexual. I knew I wanted to get to know him—and more than in a bathroom. I couldn’t imagine the owner of one of the hottest clubs in Mexico City pimping himself out to men in bathrooms.
“I explained that I didn’t get out much, that I was usually behind a computer screen, working. I guess Clarissa got delayed. I told him that I actually lived more in New Mexico, but I was visiting the family estate for a week or so.
“He said that her timing was his gain, and he invited me to his private booth. I followed him to the back wall at the edge of the dance floor. A wraparound staircase led to the top and overlooked the entire club.
“The private booths, offices, and security room were all upstairs. No one who wasn’t trusted staff or family were allowed up there. It was also quieter, and he said he wanted to get to know me better, if I was interested. And I was definitely interested.
“The rest as they say is history.” Wren peered at Jaeger.
“Yeah. We sat and talked for hours, sipping drinks and holding hands. A little petting and a few kisses. He was so charming, and I was starved for someone to truly see me for me. I found out later he was Javier Chino. He’d introduced himself solely as Javi, owner of the club. And his father was a very powerful man. Import-export. Fuck. I was so naïve. Import-export my ass. Drugs, weapons, women… all the same shit my uncle was involved in. My mother kept me so much in the dark, and by the time I started to question things, deep down I really didn’t want to know. So I lived in my own ignorant world.”
Wren inhaled deeply and hugged one of the pillows to his chest.
“What happened to your friend that night? Did you and Javi go out in public, like on a date?”
“We went out to his club mostly. We were inseparable for the week I was there. No one dared say anything to him in his own territory. And besides, his brother Cristobal was fucking scary. Not a soul crossed him and lived to tell about it with all their limbs intact.
“As for Clarissa, Javi had seen her strolling over to my table and asked her about me. In order to give us time to get to know each other, she had slipped out without me ever seeing her. She later texted me with a smiley-face emoji. I couldn’t be mad at her because I was having too much fun with my new date.
“His family also had houses across the border, and as luck would have it, in New Mexico as well. Of course in hindsight, I’m not sure how lucky. Javi and I had been seeing each other maybe three months when things started to go downhill. My uncle was getting more agitated and always calling meetings with the presidents of his holding companies. Apparently word on the street of a possible take-over was rampant in his circle. That kept him close to the people he most trusted, in an attempt to stay one step ahead. Since I kept the ledgers for him, he always had me running some report or another. That’s when I started seeing the inconsistencies.”
“You mean the figures didn’t add up?”
“That and the dates didn’t match. For instance, when a shipment of goods comes in, time and date is noted and also to keep track of inventory. Remember, my family also operated out of the United States. Shipments needed to be recorded for tax purposes, so everything had to be accounted for. I discovered shipments recorded coming into the harbor, yet no merchandise was unloaded. When I looked at the purchase orders and the payout, there was little merchandise, but the coffee beans sold for millions. The numbers should line up at the end of the day, and they didn’t. That meant something was unloaded that we didn’t want to record, but that the potential to sell it was astronomical.”
“Drugs. Or women. Fuck.”
Wren nodded.
“Yes. My guess exactly. Many of the shipments were coffee beans, as the family maintained coffee plantations in Maracaibo, along the coast in Venezuela. The plantations were a front for smuggling weapons and drugs imported from Colombia. So I looked a little more closely and noticed that many of the entries didn’t match and that they were also not my original spreadsheets.”
“How did you know that?” The inflection in Jaeger’s voice altered just a tad. He was having a hard time believing him.
“I put a signature on all my work, like a watermark, unidentifiable to the naked eye, but subtle. That’s how I know it’s mine, and no one else knew about it.” Wren was very glad he’d done that, especially since he’d turned most of his files over to the feds.
“So let me get this straight.” Jaeger stood, grabbed two bottles of water, and tossed one to Wren. “You secretly investigated your family, not entirely knowing what they were up to, and now you’re going to turn state’s evidence? And wait. Let me guess. The feds have no idea about this secret signature. Just in case.”
“Just in case. Yes. Once I realized the depths of my family’s dealings, I went back through and concealed my signature, so to speak. Since my uncle didn’t know I’d done that, if he had someone change the books after I’d already input the information, I would know. My computer automatically saved the new file, but to the untrained eye, the file was the same one. Little did anyone know it was a duplicate. There was one with my mark and one without. Then I kept a file of everything—half of which I gave the federal government. The rest stays in my possession until the trial, just in case.”
“Holy shit. You are good. And do I get to know where the rest of the file is? Or is that a secret too—being as I’m supposed to get your ass safely to the courthouse.”
“It’s at a little church on the edge of our family property in Avenida Las Nubes in Santa Fe. The church hasn’t stood for decades, but the ruins are still there. I used to explore it and the grounds all the time as a child—my hiding place when I wanted to be alone. Clarissa is the only other person that I ever took there. There’s a few statues of saints, and it’s in one of them.” Wren spoke with pride at his actions, but the expression on Jaeger’s face made him doubt himself.
“Okay, let’s jump ahead to the murder.”
IT WAS crazier than Jaeger thought possible. He was protecting a kingpin’s nephew because he turned state’s evidence against his family after witnessing a murder. And the nephew had incriminating evidence against said family, and the fucking evidence was hidden in a statue on the family property. The same fucking property that was confiscated by the government after the arrests. Could things get any more complicated?
“So the murder… and how does Javi tie into all this?”
“Javi and I kept our relationship a secret. Like I said before, we only really saw each other socially at his club while in Mexico and then at another prominent gay club outside Santa Fe. I didn’t realize that my uncle and his father were mortal enemies, because they both wanted to be the king of the cartel. Javi used to joke that we were a match made in heaven, and if one of us were a woman, we’d marry and join the two families.”
“Didn’t his father know you were seeing each other? Or your uncle?”
“We kept everything pretty quiet, but then his father caught us in town together. He didn’t say anything to us at the time, but the look on his face said it all.”
“I’m surprised the bodyguards didn’t say anything to either family. After all, they were paid by them.” Jaeger found that little bit of revelation interesting, but kept it to himself. The full extent of the story still had to unfold, and he didn’t think even Wren knew all the 411.
“They never said anything as far as I knew. Maybe they didn’t care enough. After all, they were there to protect us from an enemy, not to stop us from screwing. But… not too long after we were caught, Señor Chino confronted Javi. Javi told me his father was furious and planned to send him away—not to a rehabilitation camp or anything like that, but to one of their other estates, so he could think about his life sans influence from me.” Wren took a deep breath, which telegraphed that his story would not end well.
Wren continued. “To say I was shocked was an understatement. I mean what fucking century are we in? A person can’t turn gay from another’s influence. But I could see Javi not going against his father, being the powerful man he was. And even though Javi supported himself with his club, the loss of your family, especially a close-knit Latin family, is a knife through the heart and a fate worse than death. The exile would tear the strongest person apart.”
“What happened when Jesus Chino confronted your uncle about the affair…?” Jaeger asked.
“Eventually Chino came to the house, which was most unprecedented. He came with only one bodyguard, which was also strange, but I guess, since they had personal business to discuss, not professional…. Anyway, Chino shouted at my uncle and told him that I made Javi gay. My uncle blew his shit at that preposterous allegation. Even he knew you couldn’t make someone fall for the same sex. The old nurture vs. nature. The shouts got louder, and I saw them fight. My uncle shot Jesus Chino in the chest.”
Two macho men fighting over the virtues of their heirs. But the story didn’t add up, and Jaeger was determined to discover the truth. He feared the two cartel kingpins had been manipulated and that an even bigger threat loomed.
“What ever happened to Javi? Did he stand by you?”
A sad look crossed Wren’s face, and his voice lowered to barely a whisper. “It didn’t end well.”
Jaeger catapulted himself from the desk chair, strode the short distance to the bed, and climbed on the end. He crawled his way to Wren, sat next to him, and pulled him into his arms to offer comfort. Wren had been through enough, and anything else could wait. His defeatist body language and solemn look gave Jaeger pause. It was clear that Wren believed what he said, and it wasn’t the time for Jaeger to dispute it. There would be plenty of time for that later.
“So, Wren O’Riley, how do you plan we get the flash drive that you hid under the saint if we have a week and a half to get you to New York? All flights, trains, any public transportation will be watched, so it’s not like we can stroll into a station and purchase a ticket.”
“Clarissa.” Wren’s matter-of-fact attitude stunned Jaeger. “I can tell Clarissa where the flash drive is. She doesn’t need to know what’s on it because I didn’t want to put her in danger with details, but she’ll know it’s very important.”
“Oh, fuck. What did you tell her, exactly?” Jaeger shifted in the bed and faced Wren They sat with their knees touching.
“Just that I had to go away and do something very important. I’d contact her when it was safe and tell her when it was time to send the drive to me at whatever address I gave her. She’d never betray me, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“I’m more worried that your family or the Chino family suspect she knows something.”
“Clarissa never stayed too long when she visited—in any of our homes. Her dealings were more with my mother than anyone else.”
“How do we get word to her about sending the flash drive? We need it before we get to New York.”
“All I have to do is send her a text coded with an address, and she’ll get right to it. She plans to travel in Europe for a few months. She’s just waiting to hear from me before she goes.”
“Then let’s get word to her and have the package mailed.” He kissed Wren on the forehead, slipped from the bed, and snatched the laptop. “Time to make our move. So get some rest. We leave at three.”