Page 29 of Cartel Devil

“And los Mendoza?”

I look over at Javier. “Keep tying them up in legal red tape. Do they have any other projects we can target?”

“No. Their accounting system is a dumpster fire. They’re in the red. They’ll have to sell off the equipment and lumber if they want to recoup even a quarter of their lost investments. You could offer for them under market.”

Jorge turns his laptop toward me, and I can see the spreadsheets he created. He keeps track of all our rivals’ and vassals’ accounts. We’re deeper in everyone’s shit than the IRS. With my brother’s meticulous record keeping, we know where everyone’s money is, where it went, and where it’s going. It helps having a Type A, Virgo brother who’s a whiz with numbers.

“Angelo never should’ve mentioned Mamá in that email to his brother. We’d have gladly ignored him and let him have his piddly project. Caremonda.” Face of a penis.

He mentioned Mamá and how he’d “tap that ass” in an email to his younger brother six months ago. I about lost my ever-loving shit when I read it. One might say that’s what I get for reading other people’s private correspondence. Fuck that shit. No one talks about my mother like that and doesn’t feel the wrath of Tres J’s.

Javier wanted to burn him at the stake. It was Jorge who suggested we make the pain last longer. We’ve been systematically ruining them, and they don’t know it’s us, and they don’t know why. They’re too fucking stupid to realize it’s us, and we don’t give a shit whether they know why. We’re having too much fun to share the secret.

“Quino, Vita just texted me. She and Tricia plan to have drinks with Sera after work. Can you accompany them until I can get there? I have a shareholders’ meeting until six.”

Alejandro’s the CFO of Pablo’s biotech firm. I’m the only bachelor. I’m pulling extra duties now that there’re so many more women in our family. Normally, I wouldn’t mind, but this… After last night’s disaster…

“Javier never goes anywhere, and Madeline’s at work. Can’t he do it?”

“What the fuck?”

My younger brother’s head pops up from staring at his monitor. We’re in his home office, and he looks ready to kick me out.

“You don’t have plans. I was going to see Mamá.”

“No, you weren’t. You just don’t want to see Tricia because you keep shitting the bed.” Javier leans back in his chair and crosses his arms.

“I haven’t seen Mamá this week.”

“You said you were going over there tomorrow night.”

I stare at Jorge, but he shrugs in that youngest brother kind of way before typing something on his laptop.

“When are you going to ask her out on a real date?” Pablo can’t mind his own business.

“Et tu, Brute?”

It’s Pablo’s turn to receive my glare. The fucker grins.

“As funny as it is to hear about you tripping over your own tongue, the poor woman won’t wait forever.”

I don’t need Pablo’s reminder that Tre’ll move on if I can’t get it together. I want to ask her out, but the last two times we’ve been around each other, I’ve screwed the pooch so badly that I can’t imagine she’d want to see me again. Maybe things would be better if it were just the two of us. It’s not like we were alone at the reception, but no one else was around to make me self-conscious.

“I—”

All our phones go off at the same time. We keep our phones on vibrate all the time except for our family text thread and the alert if someone’s tracker goes off. It’s never good when more than three phones buzz at the same time.

“¡Qué gonorrea!”

There’s not exactly an equivalent in English to the Colombian street slang. This time, when we all mutter it, we basically mean “fucking hell” or something along those lines.

“This has to be Misha.” Javier takes the words out of all of our mouths.

Fucking pissant Russian asshole.

Everyone’s probably thinking similar to that too. Javier’s out of his seat and moving to the hidden closet in his office. It’s like some shit out of Scooby Doo. A lock clicks, and he pulls a bookcase away from the wall. He slides a door open to reveal a gun safe. His fingerprints and retinal scan open it, then he’s handing out rifles to us. He grabs his go-bag while Jorge and Pablo toss their keys to me.

Alejandro sprints outside with me as we grab the bags from the various cars’ trunks. My cousin and I are back inside in less than three minutes. Everyone strips down to their boxer briefs before donning our black turtlenecks, black cargo pants, and boots.