I unwrap Lucia’s arms from around my waist and kiss her forehead.
“Please let me come with you, Jax?” she pleads, staring up at me with those huge brown eyes that will usually get me to agree to absolutely anything.
“No, Angel. This is between me and your father. I have to do this alone. Surely you understand that?”
She blinks at me. “But what if you start fighting again? What if you hurt him?” she blinks at me.
“I won’t.”
“What if he hurts you?”
“He won’t. I’m not going to lie to you, he’s going to hit me. And we’ll probably fight, but we’ve fought plenty of times. I broke his trust, Luce. No matter the reason why, it doesn’t change that fact.”
“But, Jax…” I see the uncertainty in her eyes. That she still doubts my commitment to her stings, but I know it will take a long time to undo a lifetime of her feeling like she’s not good enough.
“I don’t regret a single second of any of it. Being with you is a decision I would make one thousand times over, Angel.” I brush her hair back from her face.
“Just don’t do anything stupid, okay?” She leans her head against my chest.
“Stupid? Me?” I kiss her head again. “I’ll see you later.”
I step out of the elevator and nod to the two armed guards who always stand outside this suite when Alejandro is here. I half-expect them to draw their guns and shoot me, but they greet me as they always do. I suppose he hasn’t sent the memo that his most trusted employee and best buddy is no longer welcome.
I walk through the suite and his office door is open. He looks up at me when I step into the room. “I wondered when you’d finally have the balls to show up,” he snarls.
“Well considering it’s only 10 a.m. you didn’t have to wait very long, did you?”
“What the fuck, Jax? She’s my fucking daughter!” he bellows, standing up and planting his hands on his desk.
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry?” he growls. “Sorry is when you dent my car or break my fucking watch or something. It doesn’t cut it when you are screwing my fucking daughter.”
“It’s all I have, amigo,” I say, aware that my apology is futile, but I needed to say it anyway.
“When you were supposed to be working together these past few weeks, have you really been sneaking around? Laughing at me? Thinking I am some sort of idiota?”
“No!” I shout back at him. “Is that what this is really about? Your fucking ego?”
“Don’t you fucking dare.” He vaults the desk like an Olympic gymnast and punches me in the face. I stagger back and rub my chin. That stung like fucking hell, but I deserved it.
He comes at me again, but this time I defend myself, ducking to avoid his punch while landing a right hook on his jaw. Then we go at it again, like two brawlers in a street-fight, neither one of us prepared to back down, too matched in strength and agility for either of us to best the other. We have sparred together for over twenty years. We know each too well.
When my lungs are burning with effort and the sweat stings my eyes, I drop to my knees and hold my hands up in surrender.
“Alejandro,” I shout. “I love her.”
He staggers back as though I’ve just punched him in the gut. Surely he knew that? Surely he knows me well enough to know that I wouldn’t put us through this if it wasn’t for something real?
He glares at me. His tongue darts out of his mouth as he licks the blood from the cut on his lip. I stand now too. My head is pounding from where he has just landed me a right hook on my temple and my blood thunders in my ears as my heart races in my chest.
“When did it start?” he growls.
“A few weeks ago. Just before Dallas?”
“So that was why you took her there?” he rages at me. “Not to protect her, but so you could take advantage of her?”
“No,” I shout.
“I would never have allowed you to take here there if I’d known you were fucking her.”
“I wasn’t fucking her,” I run my hands through my hair. “Not then.”
“You said before Dallas?”
“There was one night before Dallas, but then I realized how wrong it was and I put a stop to it—”
He scowls at me. “Because you’re such a fucking stand up guy!”
“I tried to ignore how I felt, but I couldn’t.”
“You didn’t try hard enough, Jax. Of all the women in LA, in the whole fucking world, you had to choose my daughter. It’s fucked up.”
“It’s not like I watched her grow up—”
His entire face darkens further and he squares up to me again. “Are you suggesting because she’s adopted that this is somehow okay?”
“Not even for a second,” I snarl back at him. “All I mean is that she was almost seventeen and pregnant when I met her. It’s not like I used to take her the park and push her on the fucking swings.”
“So you’ve always looked at her like that?”
“Fuck, no. Not until—”
“Until when?”
I swallow hard as I recall that night I picked her up from some dive bar downtown. I walked in there and saw her dancing with some guy, wearing the shortest dress imaginable. It’s not like I’d never seen her body before then. I’d spent plenty of time with her wearing nothing more than a bikini around Alejandro’s pool, but there was something about seeing her dancing in there. Watching the way she moved. The way some jock was salivating over her. Suddenly, she wasn’t a little kid anymore. Then I’d taken her home; she was drunk and she’d thrown her arms around my neck, kissed me and told me that she loved me. I’d driven home with a raging boner.
“It was last year some time. I picked her up from a club and drove her home. Nothing happened, I just saw her differently.”
“My fucking daughter!” he snarls at me, his teeth bared like a rabid dog.
“I know,” I reply. Does he think that I’ve forgotten this fact? “I wish that it wasn’t her, Alejandro.” I shake my head because saying that feels like I’m betraying her. But I do wish that the one woman I can’t live without wasn’t my best friend’s daughter. But he is more than that to me. He is my brother. Since we were fourteen years old, we have stood by each other’s sides. He has been with me through every high and low I have ever experienced, and I for him. I am godfather to his sons. He is the only true family I have.
“What if I asked you to choose?” he says, his eyes narrowed as he stares at me.
“You wouldn’t!” I glare back at him.
“Oh, I would. Choose, Jackson. You can’t be my brother if you are screwing my daughter. So which is it to be?”
My throat constricts as I try to swallow. Surely he’s not asking this of me? I have been nothing but loyal to him for over twenty years. I have watched him become the man he is today, stood proudly at his side as he took his place as head of the Montoya family. I can’t imagine a life without him in it.
“Then there is no choice,” I say as I drop my head to my chest and in that moment, the only thing I can think about is all that I have lost.
