CHAPTER TWELVE
“You’re asking for a beating.”
THE JEEP ROCKS AS my twin loads his luggage into the trunk, grumbling words I’m too tuned out to hear over the noise of the busy airport.
When he finally dumps himself into the passenger side, he gripes, “You couldn’t have gotten out and helped me with my shit like a normal person, asshole?”
I lift my attention from my phone screen and direct it to him. “You still got two balls on you, right?”
He grunts and fakes a punch at me. “After being gone for six weeks, I thought I’d get a better reception than this.”
“Nah.” I drop the handbrake and shift into drive. “It’s more fun when there’s only one of me. I get to piss people off and have them hate you by extension ‘cause you aren’t here to smile it away.”
“For shit’s sake. How many people do I have to apologize to on your behalf this time?”
I navigate out of the lot. “How’s the Denver office?”
“Running smooth. Putting Scratch in charge was a good move. Business is steady. Everyone’s on their A game.”
“If everything’s so perfect, then why were you there for so long?”
He coughs. “Just to, uh, oversee and…you know.”
“Pussy,” I say, shaking my head. “Pussy got you, didn’t it?”
He laughs. “If you saw her, you’d have stayed until you got every last drop, too. Saweeet!”
“You’d be so easy to kill, brother,” I say through a low chuckle. “So easy.”
He shrugs, unrepentant. “Well, everyone’s got their weakness. Mine’s women. And yours is…” He trails off and clucks his tongue. “…well, same, but singular. A woman. A spicy little Latina who chose the older brother.”
“Shut the fuck up.”
He laughs at me, hard. “And you think I’m easy to bait.”
“Home or office?” I ask through gritted teeth, sick of him already.
“Hom—wait, don’t we have a Zoom meeting with Tor at two?”
“Shit. Yeah. Forgot about that.”
He flips his phone idly in his hands. “So, guess who called me asking for money.”
“Who?”
His glare penetrates the side of my face, but I keep my attention on the road. “You fucking know who. Because the only time she ever gets the gall to call me is when you give her cash and let her think the door is open.”
Fuck. He wasn’t supposed to find out, but I should have known. Give Annette an inch, she takes a mile. “I didn’t give her cash directly. I gave it to the bank. She was gonna lose her club. I just paid a couple months on the mortgage to help her out.”
“Yeah, it’s always something with her. Always coming with her hand out,” he spits. “Well, guess what, she’s never getting a dime of my hard-earned money. So tell her to stop damn well calling me. Your heart might still be open to her but mine’s sealed fucking shut.”
Our memories of our early childhood years with our biological mother aren’t good ones. They’re filled with angry shouts, painful, punitive pinches on the arms, deliberate neglect, and zero affection. Even at three years old, we could feel her hate and resentment toward us.
Our uncle Roberto Castellos would come take us with him much of the time to play with our cousins, and I can remember him always shouting in her face so hard his veins would bulge. Once, though we were barely five at the time, I remember him finding pinch marks on True’s arm and becoming so enraged he pointed—what I now know was—a gun at her head. I remember her clasping her hands as if in prayer with tears streaming down her face.
Our favorite memories from that period of time were when we came to L.A. to spend the weekends with our father and his wife. Monica was everything Annette wasn’t. She hugged us, spoke to us with soft, kind words, and smiled at us with love.
She loved us so much she made us her own.
True’s not a hateful person, nor an asshole like I am. Between the two of us, he’s everyone’s favorite. But his hate and resentment for Annette Darling is severe. Lethal. He wants nothing at all to do with the woman. And I can’t blame him.
While a part of me does still resent Annette for her horrible treatment of us, her own flesh and blood, another part of me still harbors an inherent…something for her. Not love. A something that makes me give in and help her whenever she asks for it.
There’s no forgiveness in True’s heart where she is concerned, but because I know he will regret it later in life, I’ve chosen to forgive her for the both of us.
~
WE ARRIVE AT our office downtown in twenty minutes. On the outside, it’s a plain, nondescript, unadorned edifice hidden amongst showy and contemporary architecture. On the inside though, RED CAGE COMMANDO SECURITY & INVESTIGATION SERVICES goes all out on things that matter. We make sure our employees are comfortable and have every tool and tech gadget needed to get the job done effectively and with minimal hiccups. We are the leading private investigation firm for a reason.
Our first-floor receptionist, Katy, sits up with a stricken expression and a tight smile when she sees me approaching. As True comes in behind me, her forced smile morphs into a wide, sincere grin. “Welcome back, Mr. Garza.”
That’s how it is around here. I’m the “mean” one, and True’s the “nice” one. And even though we’re identical down to the T, they easily and unerringly tell us apart from just our demeanors.
Can’t blame them. I’m a crabby motherfucker half the time and I don’t smile unless I’m around people who make me want to smile. Trueman, on the other hand, is full of charisma and charm. He smiles and he winks, and he doles out compliments and encouragement like licorice. And when I piss people off, he cleans it up.
Suffice it to say, he’s the favored boss around here, because Torin is even worse than I am, and Tripp hates being in the office so he’s never here unless he has to be.
As True moves to the desk and starts chatting up Katy, I head for the elevator. He’ll stop and chat to everyone on the way up and I’m not in that kind of mood right now. We have three floors, four departments, and about forty in-office employees, so yeah, he’ll be a while.
When I get to the conference room on the third floor, Guy, our head of tech, is setting things up for our virtual meeting with Torin. Tripp, surprisingly, is already here, his feet kicked up on the table as he dicks around on his phone.
“Hell has frozen over,” I say as I shove his feet off the table. “You’re actually on time for a meeting?”
He points his phone in Guy’s direction. “Only because that four-eyed, suspender-wearing prick lied about the start time.”
Guy shrugs unapologetically but focuses on the task at hand.
“Don’t blame him.” I throw my weight down in one of the chairs. “You’re a lousy fucker.”
He flips me the bird with one hand and continues scrolling on his phone with the other.
At twenty-five, Tripp is four years younger than True and me. He’s still in the youthful, booze-party-sex phase of his life and hardly takes much seriously except this job. Which, to us, I guess is all that matters. No matter that he’s late for every meeting and hates the office, he delivers one hundred percent on every task assigned.
“How do they let you fight with those locs?” I ask him.
“‘Cause I’m good at getting my way.”
We’re all baffled about Tripp’s golden hair, considering both his parents have jet-black hair. Our dad—Italian—had an insatiable appetite for Black women. Where True and I are fifty-fifty on both genes, and Torin’s Black genes are stronger, Tripp’s an anomaly. His hair—much like his complexion and his eyes—is a burnished gold that grows faster than he can trim it. He gave up a few years ago and started wearing it in groomed locs.
“Did you win your last fight?”
He shoots me a glare. “If you came to see me fight, you’d know.”
“Told you, I can’t stand and watch you get pummeled in a cage,” I say. “I won’t be able to stop myself from jumping over the fence and beating the shit out of your opponent. Don’t even know why you do that shit. There are better recreational activities, bro.”
“Then don’t fucking ask.”
“Okay, I think we’re all set here,” Guy interrupts. “It’s about one AM in Russia—the time he thinks is safest to call—so we’ll just wait for him to connect.”
Torin’s the head of the company. Red Cage was the thing he’d always wanted, and what the rest of us didn’t know we’d be good at.
Back in Colorado, his stepdad, a vet and a hero to him, ran a small private investigation company. Taught him a lot. He told us he always knew it’s what he wanted to do.
He suffered a lot of loss in a short amount of time; his stepdad, then his mom, then our dad. That pain is what I’m convinced drove him to join the army.
Did two tours, then came back and started Red Cage.
By that time, True and I were both just going through the motions in college. I was majoring in business only because True was, but really, I’d had no fucking clue what I wanted out of life—except her.
Until Torin pitched Red Cage to us. True had laughed it away, but I was all in. It was the first thing I showed any real interest in, since her.
Joining Red Cage meant going to a secret camp for eleven months in Virginia for training, which included learning hand-to-hand combat, tactical firearms training, at least two languages—I chose Russian and French—tech, weapons, artful breaking and entering, detective skills, interrogation skills, problem-solving skills, laws and regulations…the works. I remember the pressure of having to learn so much in a short amount of time, but it’s one of my most epic experiences to date.
True finished college, and after I returned and he saw how jacked and sharp I was, a whole new person, he came on board.
Tripp dropped out of college, much to Mom’s rage, and went straight into training.
As Red Cage grew and became more and more successful, we expanded to private security when our affluent and famous clients started asking for the service.
Then, just over a year ago, we launched our cyber security software, thanks to our in-house genius, Guy. Now that’s bringing in twice as much income as the investigation service and the private security service combined.
We’re doing pretty fucking good, not to brag.
Dad would be proud.
Torin is currently in Russia on an international job. These kinds of jobs generally go directly to him since it’s his area of expertise. He has mastered almost every language at this point and has the kind of patience and connections that the rest of us don’t, which is imperative for jobs such as this one.
He’s been there on this job almost two months now, so we have virtual meetings twice a week to keep abreast of his progress.
True saunters into the office and staggers exaggeratedly when he sees Tripp. “Holy shit. Am I seeing this right? Too Cool is here, in a meeting, on time, before me?”
Tripp flips him the bird as he did me, but for him, he sets down his phone and gets up to give him a hug. “Glad you’re back home safe, bro.”
“You get a hug and all I get is attitude,” I grouse, though I’m not serious. I fucking hate that kind of open affection.
“Awe don’t be jealous, brother,” True coos, turning to me. “Think of it this way, when someone hugs me they hug you, too. You are me and I am you.”
He grabs my face and smacks a noisy kiss on my cheek. I shove him away. “Get off me, idiot.”
Laughing, he goes off and starts harassing Guy. “My favorite Italian nerd. With your bow ties and suspenders and colorful tattoos. One of these days I’m gonna figure you out.”
I chuckle under my breath. Dude’s got no chill, I swear. But he’s the only person in this world I’d kill for. I love that fucker with my whole being. Which makes sense since we shared a womb together. I’ve got a different kind of love for Tripp and Torin. We’re from different mothers with different memories to the start of our lives.
Bonding with Tripp was easy when we moved to Redlands; he was a golden-haired little ball following us around, happy to have new brothers since he was an only child at the time.
Bonding with Torin was much harder. By the time he came to live with us he was practically a man. Dark and temperamental. Each of us eventually developed our relationships with him separately and in different ways, but for the first couple of years, he and I had a lot of animosity between us—because of her.
Even though we’ve moved past it, there’s still a gossamer-thin curtain of it hanging between us, because, in the end, neither of us has the girl.
And both of us still fucking want her.
Torin’s call finally rings in.
Guy connects the call and Torin’s face fills the sixty-inch screen on the wall ahead. Brief pleasantries are shared before we launch into discussions of current operations.
While True gives a rundown on the happenings and suggestions for the Denver branch, I pull up the surveillance of the guesthouse on my phone. I skip from feed to feed before I find her. She’s out in the back gardens with a woman who looks familiar, but I’m only seeing her side profile so I can’t place her yet. They’re laughing and talking with expressive hand gestures, and also touching each other a lot, so there’s definitely some familiarity there.
Because I’ve told her not to, she doesn’t update me on anything, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know almost everything she’s done so far.
I’m shameless when it comes to that woman.
I haven’t seen her face to face since I left her there a few weeks ago. Not just because I’ve been tied up with a job, but also because I’m giving her time to settle in and focus on the task she’s been given, to come to terms with the truth that she’s really on her own with this and there’s no conning her way out.
Once she becomes immersed in it, too invested to want to beg out, that’s when it’ll be safe to pop back in and make her my task.
It’s a big risk throwing a project like this in her inexperienced lap, but I needed a reason to keep her in L.A. and out of trouble. Truth is, True and I had just put the place back on the market. Our agent even had a buyer lined up.
Then Vegas happened and I had to come up with an idea for her to “pay me back.”
She might screw this up and plummet the value of our investment, but it would be all on me. True was flat-out against it, so I signed an agreement which pretty much stated that if this experiment went to shit, I’m to return him his half of the investment in full.
I want her to do well, not because I’m worried about my bank account taking a hit, but because if she does well with it, she’ll be running it. A surefire way to keep her here forever so she can’t run away from us—me—again.
An incoming text drops down over the feed.
Amanda: Hey handsome. When am I seeing you again?
Me: You won’t. I’m seeing someone. Don’t contact me again. Thanks.
I don’t even remember who this Amanda person is.
Do I have a bad habit of having random no-attachment hook ups? Yeah. That’s how I prefer it because I’m already owned by someone.
But now that she’s within reach, these kinds of messages annoy the shit out of me. Mostly because they’re making me realize just how thin I’d been spreading myself to avoid “catching feelings” for anyone else.
A paperclip bounces off my forehead and I glance up to see my twin grinning at me from across the table. “No sexting in meetings.”
I glare at him. “Do you even know what the word chill means?”
His grin broadens. “You mean like Netflix and ‘Chill’?”
“I mean like chill the fuck out.”
“Oh, that type of chill…” He makes a face then shrugs. “Yeah, I know what it means, but I don’t know how to do it.”
Tripp chuckles.
Torin sighs from the screen. “From my point of view, none of you know how to chill or stay focused for two seconds.”
“That’s why you’re the one in Russia, boss,” Tripp says, saluting him. “You’re the serious one. Blend right in with them stony, never-smiling Russians. You’ve got so much fucking chill you could freeze the equator.”
I run my hand across my mouth to clear my smile.
Torin glowers. He’s the king of it. People sweat when he gives them that glower. But for us, we know he’s, well, Torin. He loves us. He just can’t fucking stand us.
Though I’m often accused of being a moody asshole, I’ve got a shit ton more warmth than he does. I don’t like most people, I tolerate some, and some I do enjoy being around. But that motherfucker doesn’t like anyone.
“How are you holding up, brother?” I ask him.
He rubs his forehead. “Well, it’s never fun being here, but I believe I’m close to getting access to the target.”
“Well shit, that’s good news. Means we’re getting you back soon.”
“Doubt it. This one’s more dangerous than we thought. I’ll have to work my way in, choose the right time for action, and call in some favors from our contacts here for aid and reinforcements.”
I sit up straight. “How dangerous are we talking?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Fuck that,” I spit. “You need to get the hell out of there if it’s gonna put you in more danger than we prepared for.”
“This is a seven-million-dollar job, Trent. I’m not walking away from it.”
“Seven million dollars you won’t be able to spend if you end up with a bullet in your head,” True retorts, his easy smile gone.
“Guys, I’ve got it under control.” Torin holds his hands up. “I’ll be careful. I promise.”
Silence stretches as we all exchange glances. None of us are comfortable with this. Had it been anyone else from the team, we would have pulled them from the assignment immediately. But it’s Torin. Not only does he have the last word, but no one can get him to do shit. We’ve tried to pull him off risky jobs before, but we’ve never been successful. He thrives on danger. Chases it. The guy’s got a goddamn death wish.
Tripp breaks the silence. “So, Tor, guess who’s back in LA?”
Shit’s sake. He could have just let the silence live.
“Who?”
Tripp smirks evilly at me as he tells Torin, “Your favorite, brown-eyed Latina.”
Torin frowns. “Lexi?”
“Yup.”
“Oh.” A short pause. “How’s she doing?”
Like he doesn’t know. I fight back a snort. He’s been keeping tabs on Lexi for years. Shit, I kept tabs on her through his tabs. That’s how I know he still wants her and never did let her go. Torin doesn’t care enough about people to keep tabs on them. The only people on that list for him are Mom, Tillie, and Lexi.
“You’d have to ask Trent that,” Tripp says, stirring shit. “He’s had her under lock and key.”
I point my phone at him “You’re asking for a beating.”
He stretches his arms wide with a shit-eating grin. “Step in the ring with me, bro.”
“She’s at our guesthouse,” I say. “Working on getting things up and running.”
“Your place in Pasadena?” Torin asks. “Thought you were selling that.”
“We took it off the market.”
I pull out of the conversation and scroll mindlessly on my phone. Torin and I have an unspoken agreement to never discuss Lexi. Ever. She’s a hard limit.
“Well, it’s good she’s back. And smart that you gave her something to focus on, so she doesn’t go running off—”
“She’s not back because she wants to be back,” Tripp cuts off. “She’s paying off a debt. Your wild Latina got herself in trouble in Vegas and Trent—”
“Shut the fuck up, Tripp,” I growl. Then I cut my glare at True. “You don’t know how to keep your mouth shut, man?”
True holds his hands up to profess his innocence. “It wasn’t me. I swear.”
“Stefano told me,” Tripp supplies. “He came to my fight last Friday.”
“Lexi got into shit with Stefano?” Torin growls from the screen.
“It’s taken care of,” I growl back.
“Stefano?” he barks.
“It’s. Taken. Care. Of,” I bark back. Yeah, we’re feral dogs at this point. It gets like that with us sometimes. “Now everyone just shut the fuck up about her.”
“Alright,” Guy says placatingly, “let’s move on to the Daniel Bollard assignment. They want to—”
“You and I need to talk, Trent,” Torin interrupts.
“No,” I shot back. “We don’t talk about her. You know this.”
Tripp rubs his palms together, reveling in the tension.
“We’re talking,” he insists.
“That’s not fu—”
“Like Guy said, let’s move on to the Daniel Bollard assignment,” True interjects while staring at me, silently begging me to let it go.
Tripp has always been a shit-stirrer, and we played right into it.
Rubbing my hand across my jaw, I decide to let it go. Because this time, I have the advantage. I’m here in L.A. and he isn’t. And I’m going to make sure she chooses right this time.
Lexi Flores is mine.