Just then, Hawkins got a text on his phone and when he read it, he growled. “We got company boys. Alvarez must have been closer than we figured. We got three vehicles coming up the hill.”
JuJu groaned. “I thought he wasn’t coming until dawn?”
“Maybe he just couldn’t wait,” Hawkins stated. “Some people are like that. Get ready for anything to happen but remember, we don’t start it. Hopefully, they’ll respect us enough not to come in shooting. You girls get to one of the rooms, they don’t need to see you here.”
Cat didn’t move and neither did Luna.
The cars pulled up outside and there was just enough light left so they all could see the parking lot through the windows.
The men in the vehicles all got out. They were all armed but no one made any sudden moves. Three men walked to the front door and one of them opened it, then they were inside.
The older man of the group looked around the room with eagle eyes. He froze for a moment on Cat and Luna briefly then he moved to where Hawkins, Cash, Wilder, Titan, and Kota were standing. “I am Manuel Alvarez, I was told you had something that belongs to me. I’m here to take possession of it.”
Hawkins stepped forward but only one step. “My name is Jedidiah Hawkins and this is my club. We had nothing to do with your item getting here except that we found it. And we are willing to give it back to you under certain conditions.”
Manuel studied Hawkins for a moment then smiled. “No está en condiciones de exigir condiciones.”
Hawkins cocked his head at him.
“I said you are in no position to make demands,” Manuel clarified.
Suddenly, the man next to Manuel gasped.
Manuel turned his head to look at the man and saw him staring at someone. He followed his gaze and then his face went ashen. No one realized he had even moved until he got right in front of Luna and studied her face. Then he whipped around to glare at Hawkins. “What is this?”
Hawkins looked between Luna and Manuel. “Do you know her?”
“Where is my son, Juan?” Alvarez demanded. “Juan? Juan, sal de aqui ahora!” he shouted.
“Whoa,” Hawkins held up his hands as he shook his head. “What the hell are you saying here, man?”
Manuel stomped back over to Hawkins. “My son Juan. He is here, si? I sent him here to make a deal with some couriers, over twenty years ago. He never came back home but you made sure his daughter remained here with him didn’t you? She was ripped from her mother’s arms moments after she was born and her mother was left to die alone.” He poked Hawkins in the chest. “Was that bitch involved in this deception as well? Where is she? I’m going to enjoy killing her for betraying us.”
Hawkins leaned in close and snarled at the other man. “If you’re talking about Isobel, you’ll have to get in line, but by the time your turn comes, there won’t be much left of her. And there isn’t any deception going on here. We believe your son died twenty four years ago at Isobel’s hand but he wasn’t the only one. She also murdered my son, Jesse.”
Manuel stepped back while looking stunned. “Juan’s dead? He’s been dead all these years? How can that be? His daughter is standing right there.” He motioned at Luna.
“What the hell?” Luna growled. “How the fuck, do you know who I am? I don’t even know who I am.”
Manuel turned to glare at her. “What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“I think we need to sit down and exchange stories here, to clear the air,” Cash suggested.
Manuel’s frown grew as his temper flared.
One of the other men with him nodded. “Padre, maybe we should listen to them to find out what happened here. We need answers, answers they might have. Let’s sit down and talk with them.”
Manuel turned his head to Hawkins and asked, “Lo primero es lo primero, why are your men watching the land around this place? Were you looking for us to get here then finish off the job that the Montoya cartel began years ago? Figuring out that taking the head of the snake and the rest of the body will fall?”
Hawkins crossed his arms over his chest and glared at the other man. “Mister, I didn’t know you were coming until my man spotted you coming up the hill. My IT just told us you would be here in the morning, not within minutes.”
Manuel glared at him for a couple of minutes as tension rose within the room.
“Padre, por favor … They contacted us about the amulet. Let’s at least listen to what they have to tell us.”
Manuel growled but nodded briefly.
Hawkins motioned them toward a table and everyone sat down.
Cat and Luna went with Titan sitting down with him. Kota joined them sitting on the other side of Luna.
Manuel tightened his lips when he saw this but he didn’t say anything. Instead, he looked over to Hawkins. “Now tell me about the death of my son.”
Hawkins glanced at Cat and shook his head. “Well, that’s just it, we don’t know if he was your son or not. We never really knew who the second man was at all. You see my daughter in law and my son had a fight, Jesse just found out Isobel had been dealing drugs for some time then she shot him. We may be an MC but we all agreed not to do the drug runs. But Isobel was a dealer…a courier in secret.”
“Quien es esta? Who is this Isobel you are talking about?” Manuel asked.
“You might know her as Gellis,” Cat spoke up.
Manuel’s expression turned deadly. “Si, that is the bitch’s name. We have been looking for her for years. She betrayed our family many years ago and allowed another cartel to find us, they tried their best to take us out. Many of our people died that didn’t need to die.”
“There was another man with her that day,” Cat told them as she stared at them with no emotion on her face. “I think she called him Juan. The day my dad confronted her, Juan was there as well. During the fight, she admitted to what she’d been doing behind his back, then she shot my dad. Juan checked on him and got a knife in the back for his trouble.” She paused when the cartel men gasped, then she pushed on with her story, “He asked her what the hell she thought she was doing. He told her his father would want to know why he died. Isobel smiled and told him not to worry, she could tell his father anything and he would believe her. She would tell you that Jesse did the deed and you would believe her. She said not to worry that his father and brothers would soon join him in hell, that she had made plans, plans that she wouldn’t or couldn’t stop now.” She looked over at Alvarez and his men. “Her plans were to destroy you and your cartel. She planned it all along with her guardian, the head of the Montoya cartel. She was nothing more than his mole in your organization.”
Manuel looked saddened. “Si, she damn near did destroy us. But we had a safety net. Some of us died but most of us got out. Over the years, we have grown stronger and now, we will take back what they took from us.” He turned to Hawkins, “We need amuleto de la familia…our family’s amulet. We had no clue where it ended up until your man asked about it.” He turned back to Cat. “So my son died by a knife to the back? That bitch stabbed him and waited for him to die?”
Cat shook her head. “I’m sorry but no she stabbed him and he wasn’t dead when she set the cabin on fire. He was still alive when the flames burned him. His screams were terrible and they haunted my nightmares for years.”
Manuel frowned as he stared at her. “Why would they haunt your dreams? You couldn’t have been very old when this happened.”
“She killed my dad just before she stabbed this Juan person. But I guess what you don’t know is that this woman they call Isobel is my mother. Isobel is the woman you know as Gellis.”
Manuel and the other two men looked enraged at her announcement.
Manuel surged to his feet as he glared at her. “You have that puta’s blood in your veins?” he shouted. “How dare you sit down with me like you belong here!”
Hawkins growled, as did the other men around him.
“She does belong here, she’s my family, and this is my table, not yours,” Hawkins stated in a low voice. “She belongs here because her father was my son and he was a brother to the club. She didn’t get to choose her parents, but there’s more to her story. So sit down, shut your mouth, and listen to what she has to say or get the hell out.”
Manuel uttered some words in Spanish, “El hombre es mejor que se controle.” He sat back down and glared at her. “Go on with your story.”
Cat sighed hard and continued, “After she killed both of the men, she started the old clubhouse on fire and dragged me away. There was no one else here that day and she made sure the fire was strong enough that it couldn’t be extinguished. She drove me to someone else’s house and just left me with them. I thought they were her parents but I found out just recently that they were no relation to her at all. She gave me to some strangers and left. I didn’t see her again for four years, then she forced the car we were in off the road. The people I thought to be my grandparents were killed outright. I was thrown from the car and survived. When I recovered, I was sent to an orphanage. That’s where I met Luna. We’ve been friends ever since.”
Manuel and his son again, turned their heads to look at Luna.
Cat went on, “Then a few weeks ago, I came here to right a wrong and found this group. While I have been here, it was memories from my past that led them to find why Jesse died and the reason he was murdered. You see, he’d found Isobel secrets and when he confronted her, she killed him. But he’d already hidden the amulet and some pages from a diary. The items he found have been buried for all these years. We were able to piece the puzzle together, then we just found the amulet and the diary pages. She wrote down the why and the what for in those pages.”
Hawkins took up the rest of the story, “It was a clue Jesse left that made us think he was hinting at an alliance between this woman Gellis and two of her cohorts, some kind of an unholy trio.”
Manuel frowned and asked, “What kind of clue did your son leave you that tied all of this together?”
“It was the word Bojangles,” Hawkins explained. “We think the Bo part of the word stands for a brother we kicked out of the club for dealing drugs, his name is Beau. The Jang part we think stands for the man who raised Luna for the first five years of her life. His name was Dennis Matchy but he was known as Jag by Isobel and the last part of the name Gles we thought stood for Gellis as we found out later was Isobel’s real name.”
Manuel nodded. “I can see where you would think that but you would be wrong. Bojangles does not mean anyone’s name.”
Hawkins frowned. “Then what the hell does it mean?”
“Algo estúpido.” Manuel shrugged his shoulders. “Bojangles is the name of an operation we had going twenty four some years ago. We were building a supply line from the Canadian border all the way down to the Mexican border. I believe it was your man Beau that gave it that name. He was always singing some little ditty called, Mr. Bojangles. We didn’t know him as Beau though. He liked the title Hogg.” Manuel sneered. “I thought his name was estúpido but that’s what he wanted to be called.”
“I thought that it meant there were three people ready to kill us,” Cat stated. “Especially Isobel.”
Manuel nodded. “I never knew why she did what she did but I’ve been looking for the bitch since she betrayed us.”
Cash nodded. “Well, we found out why from her own words. She wrote in her diary that she came to you at the bequest of her guardian Alfredo Montoya. He raised her after she lost her own parents in a blood feud. He’d been planning on a coup against your cartel for a very long time.”
“Eso suena bien.” Manuel nodded. “That sounds about right.” He thought for a moment and shook his head. “She was muy bien at convincing all of us she was doing her job. Now we know she was planning nuestra muerte…our demise, the whole time.” He turned and looked at Luna. “How do you fit into this unholy mess, mi querido?”
Luna glared at him. “I have no idea. I never did. I thought for my whole life that Dennis Matchy was my father, but I never knew who my mother was. So, in all honesty, I’ve never known who my parents were.”
Manuel growled. “If we are correct, you would be my son Juan’s hija…his daughter. Your father was here in the states when your madre went into labor with you. She had you a month early. We didn’t know it but Gellis was at the compound when she went into labor. One of the servants told us Gellis was there and she told Marie the maid that she was there to speak with Septima, your mother. When we checked on her, we found her bleeding to death from a cut she received after she gave birth. The baby and Gellis were missing. We had no idea what happened or why. We buried Septima and waited for Juan to return but he never did. We assumed he instructed Gellis to bring his daughter to him here in the states. We thought he betrayed us as well and was setting up a pipeline here on his own.” Manuel shook his head. “Then days later, the Montoya’s hit us and we scattered. It took us several years to find our way together and begin rebuilding. Now we are ready to retomar lo que una vez fue nuestro…” he paused and translated, “Take back what was once ours. With the amulet, we can do just that.”
Hawkins looked over at Kota and nodded.
Kota got up, went to the cabinet, and opened it. He brought back a cloth covered item and set it down on the table in front of his father.
Hawkins pushed the item over to Manuel.
Manuel gasped as he pulled the box closer and removed the cloth. He paused and everyone could see his eyes glaze over. He opened it carefully and with reverence as if it were a holy object. There on a bed of blue velvet was the amulet of his family. He stared down at it in silence for a minute before he spoke again, “Este amuleto es más viejo que yo. This amulet is older than even me. It had been in our family for generations until it disappeared all those years ago.” He looked over at his son with a glint in his eyes. “We have it back. This is what we’ve been missing for so long. Now we can take back what is rightfully ours.”
“Si papa,” his son agreed. “Now we can take back our home and this time, it will be Montoya blood that runs red.”
“But first we have to find Gellis, y le cortó la garganta,” the third man added. “Vengeance will be ours, finally.”
Luna looked over at Cat and shivered.
Cat reached out and grabbed her hand, holding it tightly.
Neither of them said a word, they didn’t have to.
Manuel turned back to Luna and smiled. “And now, we have Juan’s daughter back with us as well.”
Luna shook her head. “You don’t know that for sure. And I’m not going with you. I like it here just fine.”
Kota growled under his breath but didn’t say anything.
Hawkins shook his head. He knew his son would have to prove Luna belonged to him, to the club. He looked over at Cat. She needed Luna as well. For her sake, he would step up and protect them both. He just hoped it didn’t start a war that would see bloodshed.
