“Who?” Black asked, when Shy called him in Port Saint Lucie.
“Andrade Ferreira?”
“Shit.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I wish you would have told me that’s who Valencia put you on to.”
“What?”
“Andrade may be a simple tobacco farmer, but the rest of his family are The Comodoro Cartel.”
“Oh, shit.”
“Yeah, oh, shit.”
“That’s what the DEA asshole was doing there.”
“You think?” Black exhaled. “I’ll be back tonight.”
“No, Michael. I don’t want you to cancel your meetings. This is nothing but the DEA fishing. They don’t have anything on me … because there is nothing,” she laughed. “It’s like Patrick said, you and I have been playing nicely in our own sandbox lately. Stay and finish your business.”
“You sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure.”
“Okay. But I will be home tomorrow night.”
“Good. You’ve been gone too long.”
“I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
“See you tomorrow,” Black said sweetly and ended the call. “Fuck!” he shouted and slammed his fist on the desk, causing Deana and Jaila to look at him like he had lost his mind. But that was only natural because they’d never been exposed to this side of their boss. They had never seen him in protect-Cassandra-at-all-cost mode.
His first call was to Rain. She was in her office with Carter and Geno, talking about Rex Steward and who he could have been protecting. And as Rex feared, the names Jaylinda Harvey and Hareem Epps were being discussed.
“What’s up?”
“Two cops questioned Cassandra about the murder of Andrade Ferreira. See what you can find out.”
“Who the fuck is Andrade Ferreira?”
When Geno heard the name Andrade Ferreira, he felt a cold chill all over his body.
“He’s a tobacco farmer, but his brothers and the rest of his family are The Comodoro Cartel.”
“That’s not good.”
“Not at all. See what you can find out. I’ll be back in the city tomorrow, and I expect you to know everything about this,” Black said, and without another word he ended the call. Rain turned to Carter and Geno.
“What’s up?” Carter asked.
“Cops questioned Shy about the murder of some guy name Andrade Ferreira.”
“That can’t be good. The Ferreira’s are The Comodoro Cartel,” Carter said, and Geno dropped his head in his hands. He had heard Valencia mention Andrade Ferreira while she was in the hospital, and then suddenly Shy is questioned about his murder. Since in his mind there is no such thing as coincidence, Geno knew that in some way, somehow, Valencia was involved in this. And as soon as he got away from Carter and Rain, he would find out what her involvement was.
“What the fuck did you do?” Geno asked the second Valencia opened the door.
“What are you talking about?” Valencia asked as Geno pushed his way past her.
“What were you thinking?” he shouted.
“Geno, calm down and tell me what’s wrong?”
“Who is Andrade Ferreira?”
Valencia was caught off guard by the mention of his name, and in that second, she knew that Ezequiel Simmonds had played her again. But why?
“Answer me! Who the fuck is Andrade Ferreira?”
Now Valencia was scared. She had never seen Geno so mad before, and the fact that it had something to do with Andrade Ferreira meant that this couldn’t be good.
“He’s my late husband’s uncle.”
“And a member of The Comodoro Cartel!” he got in her face and shouted.
“No, he’s not!” she shouted back. “He owns a tobacco farm in Brazil.”
“A farm? In Brazil? And you thought that hooking him up with Mike Black’s wife was a good idea?”
That diffused Valencia’s anger. Geno saw the look on her face soften from the exasperation of not knowing what he was talking about, to the resignation that whatever it was, was her fault.
“What happened?”
“Andrade Ferreira is dead, Vee. The police and the DEA questioned Mrs. Black about his murder.”
Valencia said nothing. She dropped her head and went to sit down. “Did they arrest her?” she asked on her way to the couch.
“No.” Geno followed her to the couch and stood over her. “They just questioned her, but she was sure that they weren’t done.” He folded his arms across his chest. “So why don’t you tell me what you know about this?”
“It’s a long story,” she looked up at him and said.
“I got nothing but time,” Geno said, and sat down next to her. “I’m listening.”
“When I married Gustavo, I had never heard of The Comodoro Cartel. Before that, I thought that his family was in the soybean business and he was just a spoiled rich party boy. I didn’t find that out until we moved to his hometown.
She could still hear him shouting, where do you think all this comes from!
“When he got back there and started working for his family, it was like he was a different person. That was when the drinking, and the cocaine and the womanizing began. I can’t tell you how many nights and mornings he’d come home smelling like liquor and perfume.” Valencia stood up and walked to the bar. “He’d be gone for days, sometimes weeks at a time; and if I’d ask him about it, he’d just say that it wasn’t my place to ask him about his business.” She picked up a bottle of Angel Envy’s Rye Whiskey and poured herself a drink. “You want one?” she asked, holding up the bottle.
“Sure.” Geno came and joined her at the bar as she poured, and then handed him the drink. She drained her glass and sat down at the bar. He shot his and sat down next to her.
“So one day, one of his whores, Julieta Sanz, shows up at my house.”
“You knew about her?”
“Of course, I did. It was a small town, and everybody talks; and they couldn’t wait to tell me all about her and his other whores.”
“How many were there … that you knew about?”
“You want their names?”
“I don’t think that’s necessary. Do you?”
“Let’s see,” Valencia paused, and put her hand on her chin. “There was Manuela, and Ana Sofia, and Guadalupe, and Agustina—”
“Vee!” Geno held up his hand to stop her. “I think I get the point.”
“Anyway, she’s got a bag full of his clothes and she throws them at my feet, cursing at me in Portuguese. Cadela, você pode tê-lo, sua cadela. O filho da puta me bate. Muita cocaína, ele não pode continuar, was what she kept screaming at me. At the time, I had no idea what she was saying, until one of the maids told me. After that, those words stayed in my mind because they would become my life.”
“What does it mean?”
“Bitch, you can have him, you bitch. The son of a bitch beats me. Too much cocaine, he can’t keep it up.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Believe me, so was I.” Valencia poured them both another drink and she took a sip. “I asked him about it, and he said that she was lying, he barely knew that woman. That she was a friend of his cousin Pérez.”
“What happened after that?”
“I just told you. That became my life and one night I had had enough. I told him that I was leaving. That I was tired of him being gone all the time; and when he was here, he was a drunk that couldn’t get it up.”
“I bet that didn’t go over well.”
“No, Geno. He beat me, and then he raped me, and then he left.”
“I’m sorry,” Geno said, because he didn’t know what else to say. All this time, he thought that when Valencia left him dirt broke and fucked up, as he liked to say, that she had moved to paradise and was living the life of a queen. Geno had no idea that it was her life that was fucked up.
“So, there I am, crying. I had just got beaten and raped, my eye is swollen, my lip is bleeding, and my clothes are torn. I’m trying to cover myself, and Ezequiel Simmonds walks in my room and sits down on the bed next to me.”
“Who is he?”
“My nightmare.” She took a sip. “He’s an enforcer for The Comodoro Cartel. He tells me that Gustavo was becoming a problem for more than just me. But since he is Pérez’s cousin, that most people are afraid to do anything to him out of fear.”
“Pérez? He the boss?”
She shook her head. “No, his uncles, Juan Esteban Ferreira and Sebastián Esteban Ferreira, run the cartel.”
“Go ahead.”
“He said that he wasn’t afraid of Pérez and he would make all my problems go away, and all I had to do was ask him … and do one thing for him. I said, ‘Kill him,’ and I never saw Gustavo again. Three weeks later, they found his body in the trunk of an abandoned car when it started to smell.”
“What did he want you to do?”
Valencia just looked at him as if he should have known the answer. “He wanted me.” She finished her drink. “He pulled me up from the bed, spun me around, ripped the rest of my dress off, and I got raped for the second time that night.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to keep saying that.”
“I don’t know what else to say, and I am sorry this happened to you.”
“I am too.” She touched his hand. “After that, I stayed down there for a few months, playing the grieving widow for as long as I could stand it, and then I came back to the states and tried to restart my life,” she paused. “And yes, Geno, I did look for you.”
“Thank you.”
“I thought a lot about you those days, wishing I had chosen with my heart instead of my head.”
“But I was a street hustler and he was a millionaire.”
Valencia didn’t like the way it sounded, but it was the truth. She married for money. That was what she did and why she did it. She saw her future life with Geno, and although she thought that she was falling in love with him and the time that they spent together was awesome, Valencia just didn’t see a future in it for them beyond living on love.
“Yes, and I am still paying the price for that decision.”
Geno was about to say I’m sorry, but what did he have to be sorry for?
“I had gone back to school, reimagined my company and was just starting to get it back together, when Coleman Patterson came into my world.”
“The dead blackmailer,” he said, since he didn’t tell her that Marvin killed her other blackmailer; he just gave her back the money and said that he wouldn’t bother her anymore.
“He presented himself as an art collector looking for a business consultant. Next thing I know he’s telling me how I arranged for Ezequiel Simmonds to murder Gustavo and knows more details about it than I do.”
“What does any of that have to do with Mrs. Black getting questioned in Ferreira’s murder?”
“Because Ezequiel is blackmailing me too.”
“What does he want?”
“He wants me to arrange a meeting with him and Mike Black, because they want to run their drugs out of Freeport.”
“Why can’t they approach Black directly?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t tell me why, just that he was forbidden. But I do know that it has something to do with the Comodoro’s, and somebody named Rodrigo Iñíguez. While I was in the hospital, Ezequiel came to see me and all but told me that he was responsible for the food poisoning. Then he told me that Andrade was in New York looking for somebody to supply tobacco machine parts for his cigar business in Brazil and asked me to help him. So, me, like the stupid fool that I am, thinking that if I do this for him that I would finally be free of him, I put Andrade in touch with Shy.”
“Guys like that.” Geno shook his head. “Once they get their hooks in you, there will always be something else to drag you in deeper.”
“What am I gonna do?”
Geno picked up the bottle and poured them both another drink. “No point in you talking to Black about it. Rain Robinson is the boss of The Family in New York, but Napoleon runs things in Freeport. I think that we should go talk to him.”
Valencia leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.
“Thank you, Geno.”