Page 1 of Miguel
Chapter One
Miguel
Thebottomofthecrystal cracked, a thin line that spread up to the rim, as I slammed the glass down and signaled with a finger wave through the air. The prospect behind the counter rushed to pour me another one, all but tripping over his own feet to quickly fill a shot of tequila that I just as hurriedly took in.
“Just leave the fucking bottle, carajo,” I growled when he went to pour me more.
He set the bottle of añejo next to my shot glass, leaving me to grip it by the neck and drink straight from its mouth. I dragged liquid fire down my throat in rapid gulps that blazed through my chest, though it didn’t seem to quench my thirst.
“Fuck’s wrong with you, Migue?”
A lot of things were fucking wrong with me.
I was fucking tired. Bored. Restless. Worried. There was a chasm of loneliness that echoed through my soul and threatened to suffocate my very being.
And I couldn’t say a single one of these things aloud.
Not that I didn’t think my best friend wouldn’t listen or understand. He’d laugh his ass off first, of course. But he wouldunderstand. Hell, he was the fucking president of our MC and probably had more stress than I ever could imagine dealing with. Sure, I was the VP and dealt with my fair share of the burdens, but never to the same degree.
I turned towards him with a sigh. Half-perched on the stool, leaning a heavily tattooed arm against the sticky bar, his dark eyes flicked over me. Though he wore a half-smirk, I knew he was worried. It was in the crease of his brows etching lines on his forehead that gave it away.
He had good reason to be worried.
I usually wasn’t the sentimental one. I could keep a level head amongst all the bullshit that was our lives. We toed the edge of danger every day. We got involved in deep shit. We ran guns and sometimes drugs when the money was good. Our hands weren’t clean. Far from it. We were cloaked in the remnants of blood and ghosts; they followed us like shadows, but they didn’t haunt us. They were the foundations of what we were.
Ruthless.
Killers.
Diablos.
And no member was crazier than our fucking president. We didn’t call Adrián RamosLocofor just any reason. His mind liked to hop off the rails from time to time. He was a good leader, if sometimes a little impulsive and violent, but that’s where I came in.
Level-headed Miguel.
I wasn’t feeling so level-headed now, and Loco could tell. Hence the distress in his brows that he tried to hide with that little smirk of his.
“I’m fine,” I lied. He didn’t need to know that I was growing restless. That I felt like there were a thousand ants beneath my skin. Like something in my life needed to change. That I just felt so goddamn old andtiredand like something had to give. “Just thinking about the run tomorrow.”
That wasn’t a complete lie. Runs always made me extra fucking paranoid. While Loco relished in the danger our jobs entailed, I erred on the side of caution. Anything could go wrong at any moment. The feds could show up. We could go to fucking jail. Our clubhouse could be raided. Our entire foundation could come crumbling down.
I felt like the responsibility of everything was suddenly crushing, so I took another swig from the bottle and let the burn slide down my throat. It didn’t give me a buzz, though. Probably because I’d been drinking this shit since I was thirteen when my father gave me my first drink at my cousin’s quinceañera.
When my mom complained about it at the time, he’d just shrugged. “Better he get fucked up here at home than out on the street.” Those words had shut her up. And boy hadIgotten fucked up.
Tequila didn’t do much for me anymore—at least not the small quantity I’d ingested—and I despaired. I could have used a buzz or even gotten black-out drunk, if only to silence the noise in my head that told me that something was fucking missing.
Loco clapped me on the shoulder, pulling me from those thoughts. “Don’t worry about a thing,” he said, nonchalant as ever.
He always acted like he didn’t give a fuck if the cops caught on to us or if he got arrested. It wasn’t like he was unfamiliar with the process, considering he’d been in prison before and had come out stronger than ever.
“You’ll get the guns there and come back in one piece. You always do.”
I sighed. “Yeah.”
“Shit, you worry more than I do and I’m the fuckin’ president. You need some pussy to help you relax?” Before I could protest, he was already waving at the group of club putas and drawing their attention to us. They came over in a fucking flock, draping themselves over my body and Loco’s, purring in our ears like they were cats in heat or some shit.
Any other day I would have been on them. I would have pushed Natalia to her knees and made her suck my dick right here in front of my hermanos. But I wasn’t in the mood. I hadn’t been in the mood for a while now. No meaningless fuck could take my mind off whatever it was I thought I needed. I’d tried it already and that shit grew boring fast.
