“You have your job.”
“Bah. My job. It is no job to oversee the farms and production of the coca. A child could do this.”
“We have a deal,” Ian reminded him, his voice hard. “Don’t fuck me over on it, old man, or I’ll be gone even faster than I made it here.”
It wasn’t an idle threat. If he couldn’t control the cartel, then Ian didn’t have a hope in hell of drawing Sorrell in. He knew it, and Diego knew it. To safeguard the business from being forcibly taken by the terrorist, Diego needed Ian. Ian needed control.
“You are hard, Ian.” Diego sighed. “Harder than even I believed. More so than my investigations into you revealed.”
“I’m a product of my childhood, pop,” he bit out. “Remember?”
Diego grimaced. His black eyes were, for the barest moment, bleak with sorrow. It was a sorrow Ian refused to acknowledge, even to himself. He didn’t care about Diego’s past regrets, his hopes or his dreams, no matter the illusion Ian allowed him that he did. All he cared about was catching Sorrell and delivering him and Diego Fuentes into the hands of justice. Or, their heads on a platter. The latter if he could get away with it.
“If I could go back, I would give my life to have spared you that pain,” Diego said softly, with apparent sincerity.
“There’s no going back.” Ian shrugged. “Just think, it made me hard enough to straighten your little world out, pop. We haven’t had a successful hijacking or a missed load since I arrived.”
“For a man who does not enjoy war, you shed enough blood,” Diego griped. “And refuse to allow me in on the fun. I was pleased though. The agents of the U.S. that you uncovered last month will steal no more information from us, yes?”
The men he had killed had been perverted monsters posing as American agents. They had worked for the DEA, drawn their pay, and given just enough information to make them viable. Until they tried to kill Ian in the name of that bastard Sorrell.
Killing agents was something Ian preferred not to do, but when a man had the barrel of a gun aiming in his direction, he did what he had to.
“I have to head back to town this morning.” Ian glanced at his watch and grimaced. “I’m meeting one of our lawyers at the casino. One of our Miami clubs seems to be losing a tidy little profit. I want to know why.”
“Why did you not have him come here?” Diego stared back at him in angry confusion. “You do not go running like a hound to the underlings, Ian. They come to you.”
“Good idea, pop.” He sneered. “Let’s just throw a party for all of them so they can scope out our security and hit the house in the dead of night. Why the hell do you think so many of your friends end up dying in their beds from an enemy bullet?”
Diego’s expression flickered with anger. “I am aware of the risks to this life. I have lived many years and survived many attempts against mine. We are Fuentes. We do not hide and we do not scrape to those beneath us by observing their rules. They come to us.”
“And Sorrell has managed to turn some of your most loyal associates his way simply because of your arrogance,” Ian snapped. “Let’s not make this harder than it already is. I’ll be back in a few hours. Until then, try to stay out of trouble.”
Diego hated nothing more than being talked to as though he were a child, and though Ian tempered it, there was nothing he delighted in more. He was afforded very few pleasures in this little game he was playing and he took them where he could.
“Should I consider myself under house arrest while we are at it?” Diego burst out angrily as Ian made to leave the room. “You will not tell me who I may or may not invite into my house.”
Ian shrugged. “Invite them all for all I care. I don’t sleep deep enough for anyone to slip into my room unawares. You do, though. I’d remember that.”
He opened the doors and stepped into the foyer before Diego could say more.
“Mendez, have Deke and the others join us outside,” he ordered the waiting bodyguard. “We have a lawyer to meet.”
Ian strode through the marbled foyer to the front door, almost grinning as the houseman rushed to open the wide doors ahead of him.
He stepped onto the sunlit portico, gazing at the ferns, palms, and swaying greenery that surrounded the large circular driveway and sheltered the paved road that led from the gated entrance. The entire property was enclosed by a ten-foot stone wall that Ian had had wired for security. Guards were posted around the property, and the additional training Ian had insisted on had paid off several times when attempts were made to slip into the estate.
He was vulnerable and he knew it. Shoring up his defenses and inspiring loyalty throughout the Fuentes networks was imperative now. He needed men who were loyal to the heir of the cartel rather than the cartel leader himself. Soon, Ian would know every dirty little player, every scumbag assassin and petty drug dealer Diego possessed.
He would know the whores, the pimps, clubs, and owners and which location yielded the highest sales. He was gathering the names of political buyers and sellers as well as those within the law enforcement community that not just Diego, but a dozen other drug kingpins, were blackmailing.
By the time he brought Sorrel and Diego down, there wouldn’t be a secret of Diego’s that Ian didn’t know. And that brought satisfaction. If he lived to achieve his objective, then two fewer drug-dealing terror-selling sons of bitches would cease to breathe air.
He should feel a measure of guilt, he was sure. Diego was after all his father. The same father whose wife had nearly killed Ian’s mother, as well as Ian. Who had been responsible for the most terrifying night of a ten-year-old boy’s life. The night his mother had lain bleeding to death in his arms.
Because of Carmelita Fuentes. Because Diego was a drug-dealing slime pit with more enemies than friends and hands so bloodstained Ian could smell the stench of them anytime he was around the other man.
And soon, his own hands would carry the same stench, Ian thought with a sigh, as Deke pulled a white Range Rover to a stop in front of the villa.
Rather than driving this time, Ian stepped into the back seat, accepted a briefcase from Mendez, and opened it as the doors closed and the vehicle drove way.
The fourth bodyguard was in another Rover behind them, providing backup and an additional vehicle in case this one encountered any unforeseen accidents. In this business, Ian had learned to expect the unforeseen.