The Heart of a Stranger (11 page)

Ricky met Weston's gaze. “Then count me in. Just let me the know the time and the place, and I'll be there.”

“Are you sure you're up for it, Mercado?”

He nodded. “I can handle it.” But what he couldn't handle was not seeing Lourdes, not touching her.

“I owe you an apology.” This came from Yardley,
the ATF agent who'd considered Ricky the prime suspect in the smuggling ring. “All those weeks I harassed you. I made your life a living hell.”

“You had evidence pointing in my direction.”

“Evidence Valente planted.”

“It's over now. Besides I got you back.”

Yardley cocked his head. “You did?”

“Sure.” Ricky managed a smile. “Whenever I saw you and Agent Campbell together, I was exceptionally nice to her. I kept flirting with her in front of you. I knew it would piss you off.” Because Ricky had sensed Yardley's hunger for the slender, auburn-haired woman. “You still lusting after her, Yardley?”

“Naw.” The ATF agent grinned. “I got her out of my system. Of course, I had to marry her to do it. And make her pregnant.”

Westin congratulated Yardley, and Tyler Murdoch grinned. “Good going, man.”

“It was the only way to keep her,” the expectant father joked.

I wouldn't know, Ricky thought.

He drew a breath, his heart clenching. He was losing Lourdes. All of his plans for the future, all of his dreams were dying.

Murdoch sobered. “Hey, Mercado. I'm sorry, too. For treating you like crap the last time I saw you. For not believing that you ditched the mob.”

Ricky shrugged. He didn't know what to say, especially since his past association with organized crime would haunt him for the rest of his days.

Long, miserable days without Lourdes.

She'd barely looked at him after their ordeal, after he'd put her family in peril.

Elise Campbell came down the hall, and Yardley moved forward to acknowledge his wife.

His pregnant wife.

Ricky wanted to bash Yardley's teeth in. Lucky bastard. Hell, he wanted to bash Westin and Murdoch's teeth in, too. They'd all be going home to their wives tonight, to ladies who loved them.

Elise looked at Ricky. “The children would like to see you.”

“Really?”

She nodded. “They're still a bit shaken. But I think you can help calm their fears.”

“Thanks for helping out.” He knew Elise had treated Lourdes's family with gentleness and compassion, acting as a trauma counselor when one was desperately needed.

He excused himself and headed for Lourdes's bedroom, where she and her family were taking refuge.

He opened the door, anxious to see them. But afraid.

So afraid of facing Lourdes's rejection.

H
e entered the room, and Lourdes's heart lunged for her throat.

Suddenly she couldn't breathe, couldn't think. When she'd heard the gun go off earlier and he'd gotten shot, she'd feared he was dead. The man she loved had been lying on the floor in a pool of blood.

She still loved him, but his world scared her. His past, his future. Everything about him frightened her now.

He stood in the center of the room. He wore no shirt, and his shoulder was bandaged.

She wanted to touch him, to run her finger along his jaw, to memorize his handsome features, but she didn't know how. Not without crying, without missing what they should have had.

Her daughters, who cuddled beside Lourdes on the bed, looked up at him. They'd wanted to see him, but
suddenly it seemed as if they'd fallen shy in front of the man they longed to call Daddy.

Cáco and Amy were in the room, too. Amy sat at the vanity, and Cáco in a bentwood rocking chair. The battered old antique squeaked as she rocked. It was the chair Lourdes used to lull her babies to sleep in.

Amy spoke first. “This is, like, the
Sopranos
or something. I can't believe all of this happened. We were so scared.”

Juan moved closer. No, not Juan, Lourdes thought. Ricky moved closer. Ricky Mercado.

“I'm sorry,” he said.

Amy's eyes were wide and bright. “It's okay. We're all okay.” The teenager gave a nervous little laugh. “And I like the
Sopranos.
It's a cool show.”

Lourdes drew a breath. Cool? It wasn't cool to be in love with a man who'd been some sort of reputed Mafia underboss. Elise Campbell had told her a few things about Ricky's background, about the crime family he'd been born into.

The Texas mob. Right here, in Mission Creek.

She'd learned lots of things from Agent Campbell. Ricky had been implicated in a gun-smuggling operation, but he was innocent. And he no longer had ties to the mob.

No longer had ties.
How could that be? How could a man walk away from the mob without looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life?

Nina ventured to the edge of the bed. Her little nose was still red from crying, her eyes swollen. “That nice lady said no more bad men would come. Is that true?” she asked Ricky.

“Yes.” He came toward her, then reached out to touch her cheek. “It's over, sweetheart.”

She stood on the bed to hug him, and he held her, his expression laced with emotion.

“We thought that bad man killed you,” she said. “And the other bad man was gonna shoot us.”

He kept her close, nestled against his chest. “That won't happen again. You're safe now.”

“Does your ow-ee hurt?”

His smile was fleeting. “A little. Not too much.”

Paige came forward next. The quieter child reached out for her hug, and he looped his other arm, the one with the ow-ee, around her.

“I love you,” he whispered. “Both of you. And I always will.”

Lourdes knew they loved him, too. But love was simpler for children, easier to grasp.

Ricky was still Juan to them.

The twins remained in his arms, and he looked up at Lourdes. Their eyes met, and she felt the pain wrenching his soul. The same pain wrenching hers.

They were strangers again. She and Ricky Mercado didn't really know each other.

The children pulled back, and Nina started to chatter. “Know what? When the bad man grabbed us on the porch, Cáco hit him with the broom. But the other bad man grabbed her, too.”

Ricky turned to the old woman, and she sighed. “I was sweeping, and the girls were playing. Amy was inside watching TV. They caught us off guard.”

He frowned. “I'm sorry. I never meant to bring harm to your family.”

“I know.” She left the rocking chair. “May I see your shoulder?”

He nodded, and Lourdes could see how much it
meant to him that Cáco was concerned about his injury.

She peered under the bandage. “Your friend did a good job of treating you. But I'd like to make a poultice. Something to help it heal sooner.”

“Thank you.”

Cáco left the room to boil herbs, to pretend, Lourdes assumed, that everything was going to be all right. That they could resume their lives, go back to the way things had been.

But they couldn't, Lourdes thought.

Juan Guapo was gone. And in his place stood Ricky Mercado—a tall, dark, dangerous man.

The man she loved but was afraid to keep.

 

The evening came quietly. Murdoch, Westin and the government agents had left hours ago, but Ricky stayed to talk to Lourdes, to speak with her alone.

He waited for her on the porch. He'd already kissed the twins good-night and accepted the poultice from Cáco. He'd also said a few words to Amy, who couldn't wait to tell her friends about her harrowing experience.

Lourdes came outside. She wore jeans and a lightweight blouse, her long hair loose. She looked so pretty, soft and vulnerable.

“Are the girls asleep?” he asked.

She nodded. “But they refused to sleep by themselves, so Cáco brought them into her room.”

“I'm sorry,” he said for about the hundredth time that day. The guilt was eating him alive, the truth of what he'd done to Lourdes and her family.

She crossed her arms around her body, comforting herself with a lonesome hug. He wished he could hold
her, draw her into his arms. But he could see that she was afraid of him now. Afraid of what he represented.

Finally, she sat next to him, and they stared out at the night. The moon drifted behind the ghost-tree in her yard, sending soft beams of light through gnarled branches.

“What exactly is an underboss?” she asked. “How far up the ranks is that?”

Shame coiled in his belly. “It's the second-in-command.”

“That's what I thought.” She didn't turn, didn't look at him. “You had a lot of power. One of the hit men said something about your uncle being a…respected boss.”

She'd hesitated at the word respected, he noticed. “Uncle Carmine was head of the family for years. I was strongly influenced by him. At times he was more like a father to me than my own dad.”

“How did Carmine die?”

“He had a heart condition.”

“What about your dad?”

“He's still alive.” Ricky thought about Johnny Mercado, his weak-willed father. “I love my dad, but he lets people push him around. He's a good man, but he doesn't have a lot of backbone.”

“But your uncle did?”

“Yes. Carmine took charge. There was nothing he couldn't handle.” Ricky paused, conjuring a mental picture of his uncle. “He was old-school Mafia. His dealings were dirty, cunning and corrupt, but he had that Godfather way about him. The mobster mystique. Part fact, part fiction, I guess.”

She turned to look at him. “And you were his underboss?”

He nodded. He understood that she needed to know these things, to try to comprehend them. “I've always had a love-hate relationship with the mob. When I was a boy, I longed to be part of it, yet I knew it was wrong. My dad sent me to military school in Virginia to keep me away from the family business.”

She continued to look at him. “But it didn't work, did it? You still became a ‘made' man. A wiseguy or whatever they call it.”

“Uncle Carmine chose me as his underboss. But there's more to it than that. When I believed that my sister drowned, that she was dead, I went crazy with grief. It drew me closer to the family, closer to a life of crime. The men I thought were responsible for her death were my friends, my marine buddies. And I couldn't stand to be around them anymore.” He let out a raspy breath. “But my sister wasn't really dead. She'd faked her death in a boating accident to get away from Frank Del Brio, her fiancé at the time. He was part of the mob, too. One of the biggest bastards who ever walked the face of this earth.”

A beat of silence passed. “Your sister is alive?”

“Yes, Haley is alive. But I didn't know that until this past year. That's why I kept mixing up my memories about her.”

But now he recalled every detail about Haley, including the body he'd grieved over, the body that wasn't hers. Which was something he intended to explain to his sister the next time he saw her. It was time to come clean, to admit what kind of man he'd been. The things he'd done that shamed him, that made him ill inside. “I'm not making excuses for myself, Lourdes. No one forced me into the family. I made
the choice on my own. I was young and arrogant, living fast and playing hard, cheating death and the law.”

She clasped her hands on her lap, twisted her fingers. “Have you ever been arrested?”

“No.”

“But you've committed crimes?”

“Yes,” he answered honestly. “When I was first inducted, I was a
capo,
a position right below the underboss. I had a crew who worked under me. That crew is still involved in the family.”

“An organization that condones all levels of crime?”

“Yes.”

“Like what?” she asked, putting him on the spot.

He answered, knowing she deserved the truth. “Gambling, extortion, racketeering, drugs, guns, smuggling cigarettes to avoid the tax, smuggling artifacts, fencing stolen goods, hijacking trucks, loan sharking.”

“And you've done all of those things?”

“No.” He shook his head. This was worse than being grilled by the feds, worse than a police interrogation. This was the woman he loved, the woman he still wanted to marry. “I stayed away from drug-trafficking, gun-running, extortion and racketeering.”

“That leaves gambling, smuggling, hijacking trucks, fencing stolen goods…” Her words trailed, lending him a demoralizing image of himself.

“I've run all sorts of rackets,” he admitted, cringing at the thought. “But for the most part, I got a cut from the family's earnings, whether I was directly involved in a racket or not. That's how it is at the top.”

A strand of hair blew across her face. She tucked it behind her ear, stilling the gentle motion.

And because she was silent, he continued, “I'd probably be in jail if it weren't for Haley. She went undercover to help the feds take down Frank Del Brio. In exchange, they offered immunity for our dad and me since we were working with Del Brio at the time. Carmine was ill, so the FBI focused on Frank, who they considered the defacto boss. When my uncle died, Del Brio was officially voted to the top. He became the head of the Mercado family. I didn't want to be the boss, but I didn't want Del Brio to take over, either.”

He paused to explain further. “I didn't trust Frank. I stayed in the family to watch him, to see what he was up to. I think he kept me on as his underboss for the same reason. He was starting to suspect Haley was alive, and he wasn't about to demote her brother.”

“How long have you been away from the mob?”

He took a moment to consider her question. “In my heart, I've been gone for years. Technically, it's only been four or five months.”

“What about murder?”

Ricky's pulse nearly stopped. She was asking him if he'd ever killed anyone? The ache was almost too much to bear. “I'm not a murderer.”

“Sometimes the mob kills people.”

“Yes, but what happened here today isn't how it usually is. There are rules to follow. Codes of honor, if you will. Every mobster is fair game, but you're not supposed to touch his family or take hostages.” He breathed a deep and troubled sigh. “Frank Del Brio didn't follow those rules, and apparently neither did Valente. But I guarantee, Valente won't get away with hiring hit men who were willing to kill children. If he's ever paroled, someone from the family will get
him. Hell, they might even go after him in prison. And if my old crew has their way, the hit men are already as good as dead.”

“So we're talking murder again.”

“They broke an ironclad rule. That's the way it is, Lourdes.”

She frowned at him. “If the hit men knew these rules, why would they take a chance and break them?”

“Because Valente probably told them to do whatever was necessary to get me.”

“But now someone will probably get Valente because of it.”

“Yes, but he didn't expect to be found out. He didn't tell anyone in the family that he'd put a hit on me. So if innocents were deliberately harmed along the way, he wouldn't have been blamed. And the hit men certainly didn't plan on getting caught.”

“It's horrible,” she said. “Every last bit of it.”

Yes, he thought. He'd chosen a horrible life.

She turned away, and they both fell silent.

Suddenly the night haunted him. The ghost-tree loomed, its branches clawing the sky.

Would she ever see him as something other than a criminal? Than a man who used to condone the mob?

“I remember where I got your cross,” he said, needing to bare his heart. “And why I chose to wear it.”

She turned back, and their eyes met. He longed to touch her, to lean into her, to hold on and never let go. But it was too late for that.

“Tell me,” she said.

He shifted in his chair. “I had some dealings with the pawnshop. Shady dealings. The owner used to fence stolen goods for my old crew.”

She didn't say a word, she just watched him. And listened.

“I spotted the cross in one of the cases. It was a legitimate piece. Or so I thought. I didn't know that the man who'd pawned it had taken it from his wife.” From her, Ricky thought. From Lourdes. “This desperate feeling came over me that day. The need to latch onto something safe, something that would bring me closer to God. I told the owner I wanted to see the cross. And when I examined it, I noticed the inscription on the back.”

“To keep you safe,” she said.

“Yes.” He recalled the comfort those words had given him. “It was as if that message had been engraved just for me.”