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Mariposa was lying on her stomach watching a telenovela. Hector was on the loveseat, pretending not to be as interested as he was into the Latin soap opera. It was fascinating to watch them get glued to the overly exaggerated drama. Personally, aside from the pretty women, it was putting me to sleep.
Beyond the chatter of the TV I was texting Bridger, Yumi and Jin, keeping tabs on my remaining friends. Since Steven's murder Thursday evening we'd all been on edge. Whoever killed Steven had done so execution style, he didn't suffer like Chuy. In a fucked-up way, I had to give Los Soldados that.
Bridger: It'd be better if you were here
He and the guys were riding around, throwing caution to the wind and aiming for any and every Soldier they could find. It was apparent no one knew about my retracting my bid, which made me question Alec's plans and intentions on breaking the news to them.
Me: Believe me, if I knew who did it they'd be buried in a shallow grave somewhere
Bridger: Doesn't matter 'who.' They're killing us now. The gauntlet's been thrown down. EVERYONE is a target
Me: I hear you, my friend
And yet as I sat with Mariposa and Hector, I felt no need in hurting either of them. Hector blamed me for Chuy's murder and I didn't fault him, with Steven's killer being faceless I blamed every damn Soldier connected to Los Soldados. The old me would've been riding around with my boys intent to do damage on everyone involved in our rival set.
Now, I was just pissed off, and I felt extremely powerless in the fact that I couldn't do anything for Steven. Whenever the guys would rag on me he'd be one of the ones to defend or have faith in me. He'd been helping me along with Jin for my jump-in. And I couldn't even do anything for him in his fucking death.
The thought of doing nothing made me feel pathetic. What if Bridger, Jin or Yumi were next? What was I going to do? Wait around until they all got picked off? And then I thought about Nina, Hector and Mariposa and just felt confused.
Spending the whole day with Hector and Mariposa hadn't been bad. Hector dipped out to get something to eat and brought back something for Mariposa and me. We'd spoken maybe a word or two before Mariposa planted herself in front of me and started interviewing me. She talked a hundred miles per hour, asking me questions about my version of how I felt about Nina, our first date, how we met, details I picked up about Nina and so on. Mariposa was either a girl who annoyed the hell out of you, or you loved to death. Knowing how she'd taken care of Nina while she'd been mourning her abuela, as well as how she was dually there for Hector counted for something in my book.
