Just Another Liar

Chapter 10: Aurelio

"Love me now, when I'm gone, love me none."

"Love me none, love me none, numb, numb, numb, numb." He sang softer.

"You should sing for me more often," I told him.

"Why don't you speak in Spanish," he asked out of the blue. He was a master of conversation diversion. The question caught me off guard since few people asked me that.

"It's an assimilation tactic. Río Dorado, always has a majority of dual citizenship members. Most of us are at least bilingual, but we hide it to make it harder for others to make the connection. I use English so much that I've lost some grasp I used to have on Spanish," I explained. The answer satisfied him, and he began nodding his head to the music again.

The car alerted me we were close to the destination, and I removed it from the auto-navigation mode and began manually driving us to our destination. The safe house was off of the road where there were no lights to guide you. I had been to the building enough times to know exactly how to get there in the dark. Milo stopped singing along and looked out the window. I don't know if he was thinking or focused on the nothingness around us.

I turned down a path shown by three cacti planted only a few inches from each other. The car vibrated as we traversed the uneven surface of the road. I could see the safe house from fifty yards away. It was a structure the color of the surrounding sand. There were cars parked out front. The building was unremarkable, about the size of the average garage and only a single story tall.

Bootleggers built the structure a century ago, they would use it as a place to rest while smuggling alcohol from below the border. Deandre had bought it five years ago and told us to use it as a place to hide, if we got into a turf war or something along those lines. The last time we used it was for a meeting much like the one we were about to have.

I parked close to the building and got out, waiting for Milo to step out and walk to the door. His hands were shaking with anticipation, so I grabbed them and felt the clamminess. He looked up at me as I brought my lips to his forehead. "Nothing will happen to you while I'm around. You know that, right?" He nodded his head but averted his eyes. With a soft hand, I pulled his chin up so he had to look at me. It was important that he knew he was safe with me.

When our eyes met, I held his gaze, just to see if he believed what I had said. He squeezed my hands and nodded. I dropped his hands and did a special knock, three knocks followed by two after a ten second pause. The door opened and Tony stood in the doorway; he gave me a nod and stepped out of the way, allowing me inside. Milo grabbed my hand and followed me.

Deandre designed the space as a studio apartment. The floors were concrete to keep the space cool with no need for power as that would strain the solar panels. The walls were painted black, making it impossible to see anything when the one window was closed and the light off. There was a full-sized bed opposite the wall where a small kitchen stood. In the center of the room was a large round table that sat ten comfortably.

I thought I would have been among the first to show up, but there were five others at the table. The other lieutenants sat waiting on me along with Deandre. Behind them stood their head hitmen. Since this was my territory Isaac who acted as my head seller, and Soraya, the woman in charge of smuggling, sat on the bed.

Río Dorado had five major regions; South California, Southern New Mexico/Arizona, Louisiana, the Florida Pan-handle, and all of Texas, which was my domain. We only sold heroin, which we worked out as a way of not stepping on bigger cartels in the region.

I walked over to the table and took a seat and had Milo sit next to me. My counterparts stared at him down. As I sat, I felt the gun in the waistband of my jeans.