Page 62 of The Saint

“Trying to see you, but your little girlfriend here won’t give me the time of day.”

It was a low blow, calling Gloria his girlfriend, but it had its intended effect—disgust bubbled up from the fiery pits of hell inside her, and she screeched, “I’m his sister, not his—”

“Gloria!” Hector’s voice snapped like a whip, and the woman cowered like she’d been hit. He stepped toward her, long legs eating up the space between them, and grabbed her arm. He yanked her back toward the front desk, murmuring under his breath the whole way. “Don’t you ever talk to our customers like that. Especially them.”

He bent over her, lowering his voice so I couldn’t hear, and she shrank in her seat before her gaze darted to my tattoos. Her eyes widened, and there was no stopping the smirk that graced my lips as she realized just who I was and what her behavior today could have cost her.

She looked thoroughly chastised, but I had a feeling it had more to do with how her brother had spoken to her than from any guilt over her own behavior. All the info we’d received from Shaw showed Gloria was a reckless ballbuster. Spoiled by her brother, she followed him here from Miami when he left there to start a new life. She’d been running the front desk of the shop since they opened, taking classes at a community college at night.

By the time Hector turned away from her, both of them were visibly shaken. And having Rolly by my side seemed to make it worse. The man looked Rolly over, lingering on his tattoo-less left arm.

“I apologize for my sister’s behavior. She didn’t know—”

“It’s fine,” I snapped, cutting him off and leaving no doubt in my tone that it was anything but. I didn’t have time to deal with her, though. “We need to talk.”

The door on the far side of the room swung open, the chime singing its warning sound. Two of Alvarez’s mechanics walked in, oblivious to what was going down. I lifted my head, and he flinched like I’d lifted a gun.

Hector nodded, head bobbing like he couldn’t stop it, and bit his lip before gesturing toward his office in the back room. “Please. Can we speak in private?”

I followed him into the back room with Rolly on my heels, casting a snide look at Gloria as we passed. All the attitude she’d had earlier was finally gone, though I had no doubt it’d be back the moment we left.

Alvarez’s desk was fit for a king, the chairs in front of it lower to the ground. A reminder that he was in charge, that those coming in here should bow down to him and his vast knowledge of creating custom art pieces out of big machinery and turning over stolen cars.

That was the last thing I’d ever do.

As he sat in his chair behind the desk, I perched my ass on the back of one of the visitor’s chairs, leaning my elbows on my knees and staring down at him. A reminder that I was the one that held the power here, no matter how big he was to anyone else. Rolly sat beside me, slumped back in his seat like he didn’t have a care in the world. Giving the most obvious signal that I was in charge.

Alvarez rubbed a tattooed hand over his bald head. “I already gave you a name.”

“I’m aware of that.” Zee had told me as much, and that information was being used at that moment to take down the murderer they’d found; the same man who had hired Alvarez to take out the friend of the family.

When I didn’t continue, he raised his hands, frustration and worry bleeding from his pores. “I don’t have anything else to offer.”

I tipped my chin up, a crooked smile tilting my lips, and he looked half a minute from shitting his pants. “I’m not here because of what you can offer us.”

“Then why the hell are you here?” He shot a look at the closed door behind us, and I wondered what little Gloria was doing. Was she eavesdropping? Worried she’d done something to severely shorten her brother’s life? Or perhaps she was back to filing her nails, unbothered by the fact that there were other people in this world.

“We’re here to offer you protection.”

“Protection.” He gave me an incredulous look, then shook his head and wiped his hand down his face. “I suppose I have to pay you for that?”

“That’s usually the way it works.”

“That’s not the way this works,” he said, his voice raising. He shook his head, as if thinking better of it, and lowered his volume again. “You don’t get it. When I said I don’t have anything else to offer, I meant it. This company is bleeding. That fifty grand I didn’t get because I backed off my last job? I needed that. I’m fucking living off bread and butter so I can make sure my sisters and my crew can have food in their stomachs and a roof over their head. I don’t have anything else to give you. You want me to pay you? You may as well just shoot me now.”

Without so much as a shift of his body from the slumped, disinterested position he was sitting in, Rolly said, “You’re of more use to us alive than dead.”

“I have no money!”

“Yet.”

That word, and Rolly’s sharp delivery of it, gave Alvarez pause. His face twitched, as if he wasn’t sure whether to be annoyed or angry or intrigued. Then, with a furrowed brow, he asked, “What does that mean? Yet?”

Rolly shrugged but didn’t elaborate. Alvarez shifted his gaze back to me.

“We’re offering you protection, yes, but that’s not where this ends. There’s nothing in it for us if you close up shop and leave town.”

“So what, the debt piles up until I have money to pay?”