Untamed Hearts 1: The Viper (5 page)

Marcos looked to Mia, whose gaze was as calculating as Angel’s.

“What’s in it for you?” he asked Mia curiously, because he didn’t put it past Angel to sell his cousin to the first dick who could help him make more money. “You really wanna share a room with a prick like me for some bodywork?”

“It’s not about the vin numbers. That’s his problem.” Mia’s gaze ran over Marcos slowly. “Like I said,
I heard things
. They say you’re good at all kinds of
bodywork
.”

“Man, you should’ve seen this pendejo when we were younger.” Angel laughed and turned to Mia. “He had every girl in Miami calling him. His mother changed their phone number five times when he was in middle school. Probably more than that when we got to high school.”

Marcos was already feeling a little raw, and he didn’t trust Angel. They’d been friends when they were younger, but something changed after high school. Greed had consumed Angel a little more than the rest of them. Marcos just had an innate knowing that he would do anything and sell out anyone for enough cash, and he hadn’t trusted him for a long time because of it.

“Don’t talk about my mother,” Marcos warned him before he could stop himself as the dark, dangerous side from his youth surfaced without warning. “You know you don’t get to talk about her,
cabrón
.”

Angel’s shoulders tightened, and Marcos half expected him to lash out. He welcomed it, realizing just then that sex or booze wasn’t the outlet he needed. He wanted to fight. To hurt someone until they bled, because he was so fucking tired of his life without options.

He suddenly didn’t want to do Mia’s bodywork any more than he wanted to do Angel’s. She was beautiful, but he realized now she was just as cold and calculating as her cousin. He had the unexpected urge to shower and wash off her touch rather than stand there.

“I heard what happened,” Mia cut in before Angel could say something stupid. “I’m sorry about your mother.”

“It was a bad night,” Angel confirmed and then took a deep breath as if remembering just then how bad of a night it was. “I’m sorry. Sore subject. I get it.”

Marcos took a breath too, knowing that the rum and cokes were probably getting to him. “I’ve had a shitty day. Maybe I’m just looking for a fight.”

“Hey, I got people you can fight.” Angel laughed, the tension slipping away as easily as it started. He turned his arm, showing Marcos the snake tattoo that matched his as a reminder. “But we’re brothers. Los Corredores need to stick together, right? Look at Chuito, he’s still my bro even with all the money and shit, and I’ll be at his next fight. Front row. Us against the world, right?”

Marcos hesitated, not so sure about the loyalty anymore. They were obviously in a lot deeper than a group of teenagers stealing cars. It had been more than that for a while now. The game became deadly the night Juan died.

The same night his mother died.

Unconsciously, Marcos rubbed his arm, feeling the snake tattoo like a brand as he agreed on autopilot, “Right.”

“You want another rum and coke?” Angel asked as he gave him a wide smile.

“I guess.” Marcos nodded, because he knew he wasn’t driving anywhere. Might as well be drunk for it. He could certainly use it. “Yeah, why not.”

“Mia.” Angel gestured to the backdoor of the warehouse.

For one long moment, Mia gave her cousin a dirty look. Then she glanced back to Marcos, her gaze hot once more and then turned and left. Marcos watched her go, her hips swaying, the skirt she was wearing clinging to her in all the right places.

Strangely, an image of Katie Foster came into his mind.

Innocent eyes, pale skin, all those soft, wavy chestnut curls. He wondered what her ass would look like in a skirt like that. Then he shook his head and blamed the rum. He didn’t deserve a girl like Katie Foster. Not even close.

“She wants you.” Angel grabbed Marcos’s shoulder, shaking him playfully.

“Huh?” Marcos frowned at him, his mind still on Katie.

“That one.” Angel gestured to his cousin. “She fetches for no man. Not even her papi, but she’s getting a drink for you.”

This was all sort of strange. It was almost as if Angel was trying to push his cousin on Marcos. Since money hadn’t worked on luring Marcos back into the deep end of gang life, Angel must have figured pussy would do the trick. Top-shelf pussy with a brain
and
an ass.

No one could say Angel wasn’t good at what he did. He was observant. He obviously knew what Marcos liked, and it wasn’t the brainless nineteen-year-olds hanging out at the warehouse every night.

Marcos was still contemplating it when his cell rang. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone, seeing Chuito’s face on the screen.

“Sorry, it’s my cousin,” he mumbled to Angel and answered his phone. “
¿Hola?
”

“I want you to tell me, play by play, what the fuck you said to that gringa Katie Foster the night you got into that accident.”

That was the last thing Marcos was expecting to hear, to say nothing of the hostility in Chuito’s voice when the two of them had been as close as brothers since birth.

“Excuse me?” He scowled, thinking he had heard him wrong. When Mia handed him another rum and coke, he leaned in and kissed her cheek. “
Gracias
.”

“Where are you?”

“At a party.”

“Where?” The suspicion was deep in Chuito’s voice.

Marcos took a sip of his drink, very aware of Angel and Mia standing next to him. “What’s this about Katie Foster?”

Chuito was quiet for a long moment, making it obvious he heard what Marcos couldn’t say.

“You’re an idiot.”

Marcus answered Chuito’s accusation by saying, “I lost my job today.”

Chuito was quiet again, before he whispered, “I told you I’d give you money.”

Marcos coughed and cursed in Spanish before he added, “Kiss my ass.”

“You’re drunk.”

“I’m trying to get there,” Marcos confirmed. “And I’m working on something.” He winked at Mia, even if his stomach lurched when he did it. He wasn’t near drunk enough for this, but he knew now this was as good as life was going to get. No pretty, sweet girls like Katie and no honest jobs. He might as well just accept his destiny. “Can you get to the point?”

“Hijo de la gran puta!” Chuito sounded more than little irritated when Mia’s giggle reached his ears. “This is what got you into all this trouble to begin with. I dunno what you said to that poor chica, Katie Foster, but she’s been bugging the fuck out of me for your number.”

He raised his eyebrows, wondering for just a moment if destiny was trying to send him a different message, and held up his glass to Mia. “
Un momento
.”

Marcos walked over to the junkyard behind the warehouse. He looked at the hollowed-out bodies of long-dead cars and whispered into the phone, “Tell me.”

“You tell me what party first.” Chuito switched to Spanish, making it obvious he was somewhere public. Probably the Cellar. He always worked out at night. Life before moving to Garnet had made him a night owl. Car thieves didn’t do mornings.

“I’m at the warehouse,” Marcos admitted, also speaking Spanish.

“Is Angel there?”

“Yeah, I was talking up his cousin before you decided to ruin my night.”

“You’re going to fuck Angel’s cousin? What the hell?”

“Consider it a fringe benefit. I’m going to end up working here anyway.”

“I thought—”

“You thought wrong,” Marcos cut him off before he could start in with a lecture. “I lost my job because the heat’s been shaking down Sebastian’s since I started. Fighting and auto body are the only two things I know in life, and I can’t get an honest job doing either of them. What the fuck do you want from me? I tried.”

“I want you to try harder.”

“Yeah, you fucking try.” Marcos took another drink of the rum and coke, allowing the burn of it to fuel his anger. “Angel told me you got him front-row tickets for the fight. You didn’t even get
me
front-row tickets, motherfucker.”

“I didn’t give him those tickets.” Chuito sounded disgusted. “He must’ve bought them.”

Marcos winced, knowing that was a sensitive subject. No one wanted to untangle themselves from Los Corredores more than Chuito. He’d even moved to the bumfuck, backward town of Garnet trying to get away.

It hadn’t worked out so well.

“Do you want front-row tickets?” Chuito sounded slightly abashed, as if realizing just then he was in no position to give Marcos shit when he was in deep too. “I didn’t think to ask, but—”

“Just tell me about the gringa.” Marcos took another drink. “Why does she want my number? Did you tell her I’m broke? If she thinks suing me will get her anything—”

“I thought that’s what she wanted at first,” Chuito started, making it obvious he was as suspicious as Marcos. “But I don’t think that’s it. She’s been wearing your jacket around town, and today I heard her tell Jules she’s been putting out messages to you on craigslist.”

“What kind of messages?” Marcos pulled his earphones out of his pocket. “Hold on, let me check it out.”

He plugged in his earphones, letting him look at his phone and talk to Chuito at the same time. He typed in craigslist on the search engine and waited for it to pull up.

“What did you two talk about that night?” Chuito asked, clearly trying to fill in the silence.

“I don’t remember,” Marcos lied, because he had relieved every moment of that night a million times in his head. He was still looking at his phone, now paging through the dozens of categories on craigslist. “Where do you think she would put the message?”

“Do I know?”

“She didn’t say?”

“No, she just told Jules she’s been posting messages on craigslist, and every weirdo in Miami has been messaging her. That’s got to mean personals or something, right?”

Marcos went to the personals. He was silent for a long while, and Chuito just let him search. His eyes got wide as he looked through them. “Have you seen the shit on here?”

“What did you say to her that night? Really. Try and remember.”

Marcos sighed, his gaze still on his phone, but he tried to sum up the conversation for his cousin. “I said sorry for running into her. She told me it wasn’t my fault. I told her I was probably getting a DUI. I thought it’d make her feel better knowing I was going to get screwed too, but she told me to leave. As if that would get me off. I’d already called 911. I was just keeping her company. It’s not like I was talking her up or anything.”

“Then I don’t get it.”

“What kind of messages do you think she’s posting to me? This can’t be the right place. Is there another section?” Marcos was having a very hard time wrapping his mind around the idea of a woman like Katie Foster being interested in him for anything more than maybe paying him to do work on her car. “It’s got to be money. She knows you’re rich. She probably thinks you’ll pay her off if she tries to sue.”

“I don’t think its money. I think she’s into you.”

He laughed in disbelief. “I wish.”

“Marc—”

“I’d definitely hit that,” Marcos confirmed without remorse, realizing just then that he was drunker than he thought for admitting out loud to Chuito something he didn’t even want to admit to himself.

He’d been trying to live an honest life for the past four months simply for the memory of a woman he’d spent five minutes with.

“You know she’s a high school teacher.”

Marcos’s smile grew devious. “Where were teachers like that when we were in school?”

Chuito grunted in disgust. “There’s something wrong with you.”

“I like the gringas.” Marcos’s smile grew wider, though it hadn’t been true before Katie had ran into him. He went back to looking at his phone rather than analyze how one pretty gringa could change his preference so completely. “I need help with this. Mia!”

“Who’s Mia?”

“Angel’s cousin.”

“You’re going to ask one woman to help you look up an ad another woman is posting to you on craigslist? What the hell?”

“It’s not like it’s that kind of message.”

There was no way he believed pretty Katie Foster, with those innocent eyes, was even remotely interested in him—but he was intrigued enough to ask Mia for help with craigslist.

Mia walked up with her eyebrows raised curiously.

“Okay.” Marcos turned to Mia and explained, “This gringa Katie Foster that I got into an accident with back in January is supposedly posting messages to me on craigslist. Do you know where to find them?”

Mia took his phone from him and stared at the craigslist postings on the screen. “What kind of messages?”

Marcos shrugged. “Chuito says she’s been trying to get my number, but he wouldn’t give it to her. She probably wants money, right?”

“She wouldn’t post something on craigslist if she was looking for money. Maybe she likes you.”

“Yeah, right.” Marcos laughed as Mia started looking through craigslist on his phone. “She’s from that place, Garnet, where my cousin Chuito trains, and it is one seriously country town. She probably thinks touching a guy like me will get her hands dirty.”

Mia looked up and grinned. “I wouldn’t mind getting my hands dirty with you.”

“Thanks, chica.” Marcos’s tone was encouraging, but he looked away rather than meet her gaze.

Chuito coughed. “You know I’m still on the phone, right?”

“Yeah, I know.” Marcos pointed to his earphones when Mia looked up. “My cousin.”

“The fighter?”

“Yeah.”

“Nice.” Mia raised her eyebrows as she continued to page through his phone. “I might go with Angel to see the fight. He bought twelve tickets.”

Chuito cursed, making it obvious he had picked up what Mia said.

“Anything?” Marcos asked, hoping she hadn’t heard Chuito through the earphones.

“I’m looking in Missed Connections. Women love Missed Connections.”

“What is it?”

“My sister reads them. Sometimes they’re romantic.”

Marcos snorted. “You’re probably in the wrong spot.”

“Here it is.” Mia held up the phone.

Marcos was going to ask how she knew the post was for him when she handed the phone back, allowing him to see for himself why Mia was so certain.