CHAPTER FOUR

Santana

Once I saw the pale light beneath Sammie’s door go black, I sighed. I didn’t know if I’d be able to sneak past her room so I could meet up with Pop. If she caught me and asked where I was going, I would probably spill everything and Pop would be pissed.

He wanted her out of it so I had to keep her out of it.

I crept down the steps shrouded by darkness and exhaled with relief once I was in the foyer. “You know you don’t have to sneak, right? Sam knows I go to the restaurant after hours,” Pop stood at the door with his hands in his pockets, regarding me curiously.

“You know how Sammie is. If she opened her door and saw me going anywhere, she’d demand to go with me and if I told her no, she’d spew a million questions at me. I have to sneak, Pop.”

“You know what? You’re right, son,” he laughed. “You and your sister have a different kind of relationship. You two have always been more like an old married couple than anything else. Your mother and I used to joke about it all the time.” We headed out the door and I took a second to suck the night air deep into my lungs. It would be at home with the other darkness spreading in my chest.

I’d always had inky dark thoughts fleeting in my mind but tonight with Sammie in my room, the darkness seemed to thrum. I stared out at the white stars against the purple and navy sky while Pop drove. He’d been talking to me for a while but I only tuned in when I heard him mention Marco.

“What you did today was stupid, Santana. You can’t jump all over every guy that makes a pass at your sister. She’s gorgeous. She’s going to have men saying stupid shit left and right.”

“I know that. He was out of line though. He told Sammie to come to his house later.”

“And do you think your sister would actually go?” His words were tight and low.

“No. Of course not but it’s the principle,” I pointed out.

“Stop losing your head. Look, I’m bringing you into the family business because evidently, you’re drawn to it. I tried to keep you and Samira out of it. I tried to let you two live a normal life but you…” He shook his head and scoffed as the tires ate up the pavement, bringing us closer to our destination.

“Pop, you shouldn’t have kept this from me. This is huge,” I felt the space between my brows crease from the weight of frustration.

“Well, now you know. It’s time to throw you in head first,” he muttered, pulling around the back to the employee parking lot. He killed the engine and looked over at me. “Any grievances you have with these motherfuckers during the day…handle it at night, Santana. At night, our sins don’t seem as bad.” He fingered the rosary hanging from the rearview mirror.

“Marco is going to be here for the meeting. If you had a cooler head, you would have fed him your fist the second you walked in the door tonight. During the day though? Papa’s is sacred. It’s holy ground as far as you’re concerned. Got it?” His tone left no room for debate so I gave him the nod I knew he wanted.

I really did hear his words though. I let them sink into me. I had to cool the fuck down. Pop was getting ready to take me fully under his wing. No more secrets. Everything was out in the open.

The back room of Papa’s was a medium-sized space with concrete floors and pallets of non-perishable food items stacked high on the walls. They created barriers that acted as mini offices. Nothing was out of the ordinary there.

The out of the ordinary shit came when you accessed a door behind the pallet holding the giant yellow and red cans of stewed tomatoes. That door led to an interconnected maze of hallways and rooms that held the largest supply of drugs I’d ever seen in my fucking life.

My father was on the rise and positioned to be the biggest drug connect in Rhode Island. He ran Papa’s Family Mexican Restaurant during the day and pushed premium product during the night. His soldiers flooded the streets once he distributed the drugs and brought him back so much money he was able to pay for me and Sammie’s Dartmouth tuition and keep us well taken care of through our childhood.

When he told me about his after-hours operations, I was floored. He’d been dealing drugs since Sammie and I were kids. It started small at first then grew and grew. He didn’t want us anywhere near it though.

“Tonight’s a shipment meeting and I want you to be seen and not heard, Santana. Understand?” Pop looked at me as we walked through the back room and over to the pallet of stewed tomatoes.

“Can I punch Marco in the face one more time?” I asked him.

“No. You got your lick in. Let it go.” He moved the stack of pallets and pushed through the concrete door. The heavy scraping sound was one I’d have to get used to.

The first room we walked into smelled damp but other than that, nobody would ever know it was basically a fucking dungeon. Everything inside was plush and rich from the mahogany desk to the expensive art on the walls.

He cut on the Bluetooth speakers and had a seat in his Italian leather chair. “Why haven’t you told Sammie about all this?” I gestured around his office. Pop chuckled a bit then shook his head.

“Sam is too good for this type of shit. She’s smart and kind. She doesn’t have the heart it takes to do this type of work. You gotta have a hard heart. You have to be able to switch from diurnal to nocturnal. Sam is all sunbeams. There’s nothing dark in her.” He was right and wrong simultaneously.

I knew my baby sister and I saw the darkness that she talked about earlier in the evening. I saw it even more when she was perched on top of me, staring into my eyes. Whatever it was in her, I had it too and it started to thump louder now that I was back home and around my sister.

I took a seat in a plush chair across from his desk and said, “Sammie isn’t as innocent as you think, Pop. Have you heard the way she curses?”

“Not my Sam.”

“Yes, your Sam. She’s seventeen though. She’ll be eighteen in May. I think it’s okay for her to curse. As her big brother, I’m giving her permission.” The girl had been cursing since she was six. I honestly didn’t and couldn’t give her permission to do anything. She was her own person.

Pop grunted in response and strolled over to a piece of art on the wall that swung out to reveal a safe door. His fingers flew over the buttons as he punched in the seemingly endless code. I tried to keep count of how many high-pitched beeps sounded with each press but I lost count after seven.

“This is where I keep my connect contacts, mijo.” I stood beside him and peered into the square metal space. I thought I’d see papers but instead, I saw…pagers. My face twisted with confusion.

“What is this, Pop? I thought you said your contacts were in here.”

“They are. They’re stored in these beepers in a specific order. No names but I know the order. These are from the nineties. They’re disconnected with no trace. No trail.

I kept the contact numbers though and my IT guy Carlos can get inside and change the numbers as needed. He doesn’t know what contact is what. He just changes the numbers when I need him to.

Nobody knows the order or the names and numbers but I want you to learn them. You’re my son and I guess if I have to bring you in I’m gonna make sure you know everything so you can take over when the time comes.”

I was stunned silent. Pop wanted me to take over his operation eventually. That meant a lot.

I thought about his contacts and glanced at him. “Nobody knows who’s who in the pagers? Not even Dom?” Dominic Vargas was Pop’s best friend and right-hand man. I never saw them apart when I was younger.

Pop chuckled at my question and said, “Not even Dom. He knows where they’re at and knows what’s in them but I’m the only person that knows who’s who.” He paused a beat and let a contemplative smile crinkle the corners of his eyes. “When we come here, I want you to study these before our meetings. Only by memory though. I won’t allow you to write a thing down, Santana.”

“Okay, I can do that.” I was determined to make Pop proud since he was letting me in. As hard as it was not to push to learn everything immediately, I made myself shut the fuck up.

When we went to the meeting, I couldn’t help the smug grin on my face when I saw Marco sitting in a chair, his jaw swollen and bruised. He didn’t talk much the entire hour Pop delegated tasks. He only nodded his head and shot me dirty looks.

When things wrapped up and the seven men that were gathered in the back walls of Papa’s vacated their hide out spot, Dominic Vargas came to sit with us in the storage room sandwiched between stacks of cleaner and plastic gloves.

Dom eyed me for a few moments then turned to Pop and said, “So, you finally letting the kid pull his weight, huh, Chris?”

“I had no choice. You know I wanted better for Samira and Santana but life chose his path for him.” He still seemed torn about the entire thing.

“He’ll be a good boy. You starting him out on the streets to let him get his chops?” Dom cracked a smile that made my hackles rise.

“Santana is an Alvarez. He’s not pounding anybody’s fucking street. He’ll learn this side of the business so he can take over when I’m gone.” Pop’s brows sloped forward making his eyes narrow at Dom.

“You’re not starting him on the bottom rung of the ladder?” He asked again as if he needed further clarification.

“No.” Pop’s tone was final. I knew that tone. It meant shut the fuck up and don’t ask anymore. Dom nodded his head and stroked his chin.

“Well, welcome to the business, Santana.” Dom laughed and clapped my shoulder a few times. We sat around tossing back drinks while I soaked in stories from the two best friends about how hard they fought to get the operation to the place it was today.

I was drunk as fuck when I got home. I stumbled up the steps and crashed face first into my mattress after stripping down to my boxer briefs. The bed groaned beneath my weight when I flipped over to my side. It wasn’t until then that I noticed a body already there.

It was warm and smooth and when I cracked open my eyes, I saw the golden glow of her sandy skin and butterscotch hair tied in a messy bun.

Samira.

I knew she was going to pelt me with questions in the morning. For the night though…I wanted to hold her.

My hands went to her waist and I marveled at how tiny it was. Her hips flared out accentuating it like drums in an otherwise flat song.

Damn, Sammie. Why the fuck did you have to be a late bloomer?

I clasped her to me and she wiggled flush against my body. Her head nestled beneath my chin, her back to my chest and her ass right against my cock.

Fuck.

I wanted to pull away from her but she felt so perfect right there. A low and pleasant hum warmed my blood when I held her like that. Something dark splintered inside of me sending shards in every direction. I should have let her go.

My fingers splayed out on her flat stomach and I rubbed against something dangling from her navel. A piercing. When the fuck had she gotten that?

I swallowed the thick darkness that got lodged in my throat and trailed my fingertips down her smooth shoulders. A shudder slid through her body and it made my cock twitch.

Wrong.

So. Fucking. Wrong.

I was too drunk to think through the haze enveloping me though. When Sammie was pressed against me under the blanket of night, she wasn’t my little sister. She was a silky warm body made of curves that my little sister didn’t have the last time I saw her.

I let my eyes fall shut before I fell victim to the blackness tempting me. My mind was a mess of static and my hands…they were wandering places they shouldn’t have. I felt the thump of my heart in the roof of my mouth but even more in my fingertips as they slid down her honey thighs.

When she pulled in a breath, it stuttered in her chest and it was just enough vibration to knock some sense into my thick head.

Both of them.

I was thinking with my dick and I needed to stop. My little sister wasn’t someone for me to feel up.

She’s not your blood sister…

The thorned thought pricked my consciousness before I could bury it. I moved my hands from her soft frame and turned over, facing the wall. I needed to go to sleep.

It was a hard feat to manage with a hard-as-steel dick in my briefs though. I moved out of bed and into the bathroom, opting not to turn the lights on so I didn’t disturb Sammie. I pressed my back against the cool wooden door and stroked my thick cock from base to tip.

Why the hell did she have to be so warm and smooth? She smelled like jasmine and baby powder. I squeezed my eyes shut and moved my fist up and down my shaft. It bulged with veins, ready to cum.

I automatically pictured the way her cheerleading skirt flared out in the restaurant earlier. I pictured bending her over and seeing her white panties drenched for me. I pictured her pulling them to the side and letting me in.

My body tensed and my balls seized as hot spurts of cum landed on my hand. My chest heaved and I pushed out one sinful breath after another.

Goddammit. What had I done?

You jerked your dick thinking about fucking your little sister.

An annoying voice answered back. I shook my head, letting hair brush my forehead. I didn’t want that thought in my mind anymore. It was the liquor.

I just needed to go to sleep and wait for the sun to rise. Everything would turn back to normal once the sun came back out. It would chase the darkness away.

It had to.

***