The dining room was filling up with people, and while they jostled for position, from her place at the head of the table, Luciana took her time to look around the room and take in the furnishings and family photographs.
There was a nice portrait above the fireplace showing an older couple with two sons. The boys were probably college age.
Other, more recent pictures, showed the boys had aged about ten years since the formal picture had been taken, as later pictures showed the family with two young women, and most recently with a few young children.
She probably should feel some sense of remorse at having removed the patriarchs from the next family gathering, but then, as they’d been living in the house for three days and not a single phone call had come through either to the house, or to the mobile phones of the old-timers now languishing in the big chest-freezer in the garage, Luciana guessed that the pictures were more for show than anything else.
Pedro took the seat immediately to her left, and Jesus took the seat immediately to her right, and she could have laughed at the smug look on Jesus face as he looked around the assembled men, as though he were reinforcing the message that he was her right-hand man.
As if! Not even when hell froze over!
Luciana might have laughed if she had thought nobody would have asked her to explain her mirth.
The table was set up with eighteen seats, and various men decided their place was seated at the table, while others positioned themselves behind certain chairs, signalling where their immediate allegiances lay.
Half a dozen men stood behind Jesus, and Luciana noticed that her brother-in-law was acting as though he was heir to the throne.
The big question buzzing around in her head was whether he considered he was heir to her throne, or Hector’s?
Just as it appeared that everyone had arrived, and a few of the lesser players were about to take the empty seats at the far end of the table, the door was pushed further ajar, and a couple of newcomers entered, followed by a few of their own men.
Luciana watched them walk into the dining room, and almost jumped out of her seat. It was hard for her to watch the arrival of men she’d grown up with like brothers, whom she’d adored since she was a little girl, and not rush to embrace them and give hugs like she had when she’d been barely able to reach high enough to wrap her arms around their waists.
Instead, she simply nodded her head slightly, a small smile playing on her cherry red lips.
“Who the fuck are they?” Jesus snarled, his hand going to the gun at his waistband.
“Family.” Luciana answered simply, ignoring the glances Pedro was shooting her way.
“Ok, everyone, sit!” She instructed, not needing to raise her voice to get every man’s attention.
She watched her cousin Ricky take the end seat opposite her with a wink.
She scowled at him playfully. Unlike her other cousin, Rafael, Ricky was happily married with a couple of kids, and thankfully, felt no need to treat the women he came into contact with like pieces of meat.
But like his brother Sol, who’d taken up position standing behind him, they’d always stood up for Luciana, and acted like guard-dogs whenever anyone had threatened her.
In short, there was nobody else on the planet she’d rather have watching her back than these two.
“Right. If you take a look at the pictures on the table, this is an areal photo of Gregor Diminov’s house.” She pointed to the printed images scattered the length of the table. “What you can see to the north corner is the wall which adjoins this property. That’s one of the points we’ll use for the assault.”
She watched the men around the table while they studied the image.
“Pedro and Jesus will each lead an assault team.” She continued. “Jesus, you and your men will launch the assault on the front of the property. You’ll take out the security team at the gate and make your way to the front of the house. That will distract them while the second team punches a hole through the joint perimeter wall and goes in from the north.”
Jesus glanced up at Luciana.
“Where will you be?” He asked, obviously unclear as to her role in the plan.
“I’ll be launching a third assault from a property to the south of the target.” Luciana clarified. “We’ve had people watching the family who live in the property, and they’ve got a pretty rigid routine. They’ll leave by seven o’clock, and we’ll move straight in afterwards. Even if we meet some resistance from the domestic staff, it will be minimal, so my team should be ready to go by eight o’clock.”
Jesus looked at her suspiciously.
“Why don’t you go in with the front team?” He suggested. “Why are you going in last?”
In other words, why didn’t she stay where he could keep his eyes on her? He was so predictable, Luciana thought.
“Jesus, I was working on the basis that the front assault would require my strongest men, which was why I suggested you lead it.” She tried to keep her face expressionless. “Are you saying that you’re not up to the task, or that you think a woman would lead it better than you?”
She heard a few snorts of derision from further down the table but kept her eyes on Jesus’ reddening face.
“Hector would expect you to step up, Jesus.” She pressed. “Are you going to do what’s expected of you, or must I ask one of my own lieutenants to take your place?”
By the redness of his cheeks, and the way his black eyes blazed with anger, she guessed she’d pushed the right buttons. Jesus was absolutely furious!
“I’ll take my men through the front gate, and right up to the front of the house!” He insisted. “And if you pussies don’t come in fast enough, I’ll take the house as well, with Diminov inside it.”
He sat back in his chair, his chest puffed out like a peacock.
“Nobody touches Diminov, Jesus. I want that understood.” Luciana said quietly. “Anyone who touches Diminov before I get there suffers the fate he would have suffered at my hands. You hear me? Anyone! Nobody gets to take revenge for my father’s death except me!”
Luciana watched all the heads around the table nodding and stared directly at Jesus until he backed down and nodded as well.
“Good.” She smiled. “Pedro will run through the plan, so listen carefully. Anyone who fucks up because they didn’t pay attention gets a private meeting with me once the mission is over.”
Luciana pretended to give Pedro her undivided attention for the next hour while he outlined where everyone would be and what they were responsible for.
Several times she glanced up to see her cousins staring at her with barely concealed smirks, and she all but glared at them to get with the programme and pay attention. Assholes, she thought. They needed to be convincing or they would start to arouse suspicions.
“So, once you’ve come in and finished Diminov off, how are we all supposed to get out without running straight into the cops.” Jesus asked her, when Pedro finished outlining each team’s role. “After all, we have to assume that he will have triggered some sort of alarm the minute we bust in, so it won’t take more than ten minutes for the cops to arrive.”
“The response time is supposed to be eleven minutes.” Luciana nodded. “But there’s no worry about running into the cops on the way out. Firstly, we’ll level the place to create maximum confusion. They won’t know whether to search the property or not. We’ll come back through the wall to this property before making our getaway, because the front of this house is actually on a completely different street. The cops will all be coming from the city and will go to Diminov’s place first. Assuming they actually realise where we’ve gone, it will take them an extra five minutes to drive out of Diminov’s property and around the long way to get here. By the time they arrive, we’ll be long gone. We’ll head to a small airfield around fourteen miles west of here, where I’ll have a jet ready to get us to Miami. We’ll lay low there for a few days before heading home again.”
There was a general murmuring around the table, and one by one, Luciana watched all the men nod their head in agreement with the plan.
“I suggest that you all get your gear ready today, and phone home to speak to your loved ones.” Luciana looked around the room. “All being well, we attack first thing tomorrow morning.”
Luciana sat in her chair watching the men leave the room. Jesus led the way, with his cronies huddled in a group behind him, and Luciana shuddered at the thought of what they might be planning next.
When the only men left were her cousins and their men, she watched Ricky say something to his men and they stepped outside, closing the door quietly behind them.
“Guard duty.” Ricky grinned, standing up. “To make sure nobody tries to listen at the door.”
Luciana sighed in relief. For the first time that week she felt like she could finally breathe.
She stood up and walked around the table, meeting the brothers half-way.
“You have no idea how good it is to see you two.” She whispered, as Sol, the slightly taller of the two brothers wrapped her in his arms.
“Aww, cousin, you knew you only had to reach out.” He kissed the top of her head. “We wouldn’t have come without your agreement, but we knew you’d be hurting once you found out about your papa.”
Luciana found it hard not to burst into tears, but even here, with two men she’d known since birth, she still struggled to let down her guard.
She had an image to maintain, and it wouldn’t do for them or anyone else to see her with swollen eyes or tear-tracks down her face.
Sol finally released her only for Ricky to pull her into his arms.
“I see Jesus is still just as much of a fucking prick as he’s always been.” He growled into her hair. “I can’t believe he didn’t recognise us. I put a bullet in his ass the last time we met!”
Luciana snorted a laugh.
“Lucky for us both, he was drunk off his face at the time, and believed us when we said that it had been a ricochet when someone was firing off their gun in celebration.” She smiled. “Otherwise, you’d have found yourselves on his shit-list, and would have spent the last ten years looking over your shoulder.”
Ricky shrugged, but he obviously knew she was right.
“Besides…” She grabbed his chin. “Ten years ago, you were still a boy! Not even shaving properly. Man, you actually look like a grown-up now!”
“Ha-fucking-ha!” He shrugged, his cheeks reddening slightly. “Ten years ago, you were still but a girl! Yet you were already married to Hector, thanks to your old man, and your eyes looked haunted, like a woman who’d gone to live in hell on a one-way ticket. Has life improved any since Hector has been in prison?”
“Being Hector’s wife wasn’t so bad.” Luciana smiled. “And, of course, he taught me all I needed to know about how to succeed him. Including the most important lesson.”
Ricky tilted his head, waiting for her to continue.
“To kill your enemies and your friends with equal detachment.” She shrugged. “Nothing puts the fear of God into your men quicker than convincing them you’d kill them as soon as reward them. It keeps them in line, and has them doing exactly what you tell them, the minute you tell them. Nobody wants to be the last one to obey.”
“Are you really as bad as your reputation, cousin?” Sol asked, pouring himself a drink of something from a cut glass decanter. “Or was your father hyping you up, trying to establish your hard-assed reputation so nobody would mess with you?”
“My father spoke of me?” Luciana was shocked because he’d never said a kind word to her face.
“Oh, yeah!” Ricky grinned. “Every time word came in that you’d killed someone, he’d be sure to tell us all about it, in graphic detail. He was proud of you, Lucky.”
“You’re pissed now, that he didn’t say it to your face, aren’t you?” Sol took a swig of his drink, finding it to his liking. “But you know the world we lived in, cousin. If he let people see a softer side to him, it would have weakened his standing with his men. He was a bastard. A killing bastard, at that. Any chink in that persona would have been exploited.”
Luciana could see where they were coming from and knew the world they lived in was brutal.
But, fuck! Couldn’t the man have picked up the phone once in a while and told her in private that he was pleased with her?
Obviously not!
“Ok, so while we’re on the subject of your old man, and more specifically, we’re talking about avenging his death, why the fuck are we the last group to breach the house?” Ricky asked. “You know damn well that one of those other fuckers will take Diminov and his daughter down before we get close to him.”
“Probably Jesus.” Sol agreed with him. “So, why would you want to be late to your own party?”
Luciana smiled at her cousins, glancing at the door to make sure it was safe to talk.
“Firstly, it will only be Diminov, as his daughter seems to have gone to ground. No trace whatsoever. And secondly, because we’re not going to that party, cousins. We’ve got an invite to another party, where I, for one, will have a whole lot more fun.” She chuckled.
Ricky glanced at his brother who looked back at him with as confused an expression as Ricky himself wore.
“Wait, why are there two parties?” He asked.
“Because the person who killed my father is not going to be at the house tomorrow.” Luciana explained. “But Jesus is. And when his team reach the house, Pedro and his men are going to help them dispose of the residents and their security, and then they’ll ‘accidently’ dispose of Jesus and his men before they’re finished. Why else do you think Pedro’s team has three times as many men as Jesus’ team?”
Ricky’s jaw dropped.
“Seriously? You’re using this as an excuse to get rid of Jesus? Wow, that’s just… just… audacious!” He grinned.
“But what will Hector say about it, if he ever finds out you knocked off his brother?” Sol asked, obviously aware of Hector’s reach and reputation.
“Sadly, Jesus had already been planning on using this assault to remove me from the picture.” She explained. “And just to make his bid to lead the cartel assured of success, he’s already arranged for someone to kill Hector in prison tomorrow.”
“You’re fucking shitting me!” Ricky whistled. “Have you warned Hector? Told him that Jesus has set him up?”
Luciana looked at her cousin like he’d gone mad.
“Why would I do that?” She asked. “This is my chance for freedom. Why would I throw that away?”
“Oh, my God! You’ve got it all planned!” Sol rubbed his hands together in glee. “I can’t wait to see the look on Jesus’s face when he realises what’s going down!”
“Well, you’re going to have to pass on that, cousin, because I need you for something more important.” Luciana shook her head. “While Pedro takes care of Jesus, the three of us will be getting my real revenge on my father’s killer, in the biggest, baddest way possible, before we head back to Mexico ready to take over the cartel from Hector, once and for all.”
“You’re taking a big risk with Pedro.” Sol pointed out. “What if Jesus or one of his men take him out? Can you afford to lose him?”
Luciana shrugged.
“He’s been getting a bit fresh lately, thinking he’s more important to me than he actually is.” She explained.” Obviously, I would prefer to keep him as part of the bigger team, but with you two by my side, Pedro won’t be such a key player any more. If he lives, great. If he dies? So be it.”
“So, are you gonna tell us how you’re gonna take over the world?” Ricky asked with a grin.
“The same way I always do things.” Luciana smiled. “Up close, and very, very personally!”