Page 3 of Drowning in the Deep
“Fuck,” I mumbled as my mother came over to where I was standing. Why the hell did La Rosa need to know our shipping schedule?
“What is the matter with you?” Mom asked, lifting her hand to smack me in the back of the head like she used to do when I was a kid. There was no way in hell I was letting her do that in front of my guys. One menacing stare from me and she lowered her hand. “Shooting at the ceiling like some sort of animal. You were raised better.”
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” I asked her. “You shouldn’t even be here, let alone your asshole new husband.”
“Watch it, son,” she said, looking wounded. “That man is my husband now, and your stepfather, I’ll remind you.”
I grunted, not even willing to go there. The only thing fathers were good for, in my experience, was putting another notch in my belt when it came to counting corpses. “Maybe he’ll get the same treatment as your last husband then.”
Mom’s eyes grew even wider as she pretended to be pained rather than angry. I could tell the difference. “Listen, you seem to have forgotten that I am currently in charge of the syndicate, my dear boy. That means I need to be kept apprised of everything that’s going on.”
“Okay, Ma, I get that,” I told her with a shrug. “But you’re not the one over there grilling my guys, are you? What the fuck did you bring him here for?”
She cleared her throat, pursing her lips for a moment as she chose her words carefully. I knew that expression, too. She was trying not to let me know she was irritated with me. Her mother-heart had been wounded by my approach to asking her questions. Well, I wasn’t trying to make her mad, but I was beyond irritated that she was here and even more pissed off that she’d brought La Rosa.
Mom folded her arms and formulated a response. “Recently, we’ve been having some issues with other organizations infiltrating our warehouses. It has been suggested to me that bringing in an expert, someone with many decades of expertise in this particular area, might be essential to helping us regain control of our own operations.”
It was a carefully worded answer that she probably meant to set me at ease, but it only ignited a fire inside of me. “I know what I’m doing, Ma. I’ve got this figured out. I know what’s happening with the Latvian gang, the Savages, and I’m not going to let them infiltrate our operations.”
“You already have,” she argued. “Daemon, I wouldn’t be here if everything was hunky dory.”
I glared at her, that anger I’d felt when I first saw La Rosa in my warehouse catching fire again. “Mom, this is my operation, and I’ll run it however the fuck I want. You can go ahead and pretend to be in charge for as long as that makes you happy, but ultimately, this is my syndicate, and I’ll be damned if I’m letting Alexander La Rosa have anything to do with it.”
My mother took a calming breath, shaking her head like she might’ve done if I’d gotten too muddy playing outside as a kid. “Son, you just don’t get it, do you? You’ll never fully be in charge until you can prove to everyone within the operation that you know what you’re doing. They’ve lost trust in you. You’ll have to regain that. What better way to learn the business than by studying a professional like Alexander?”
I wasn’t having any of it. “He may be an expert, but he has been our sworn enemy my entire life, and that doesn’t change just because he put a ring on your finger. He is manipulating you, Ma. You might think you answer to him now, but I don’t. And I never will.”
“None of that is true. He is not manipulating me, Daemon. He’s here because I asked him to come, that’s all. Now, calm the fuck down.” She was using that quiet voice mothers use when they’re about to blow a gasket.
I was done with her telling me what to do. “Get that asshole out of my warehouse now, or I’ll put a goddamn bullet through his head, and then there will be no question as to whether or not he’s using you for information.”
Ma’s mouth dropped open as she blinked at me, shocked. “You could never do that! You’d start a goddamn war.”
“One that I would win,” I reminded her. “It would be a lot easier than what I’m doing now, trying to keep his nose out of my business while handling attacks on multiple fronts.” Mom didn’t know about Ragno going after my files, and she didn’t need to know. But the fact of the matter was that the La Rosas had never stopped coming after us. They’d only changed tactics, and getting my mother in bed, and consequently into her head, was just one more way for Alexander La Rosa to get what he wanted—my syndicate.
“You need to think long and hard about what you’re saying, son,” she cautioned.
Shaking my head, I dismissed her. “I’m tired of talking, Ma. I’m ready to burn the whole goddamn town to the ground if that’s what it takes to end this before La Rosa gets control of everything we’ve worked so hard for, everything we’ve built.”
I could feel myself balancing on the edge of control. One wrong word out of her mouth, and I would completely lose my shit. She knew it was a bad move to piss me off more than I already was.
Ma held her hands up in an act of surrender, at least for now. “Fine,” she said. “You don’t want help right now. I’ll get Alexander, and we’ll leave. I think it’s a mistake, but what the fuck do I know? I’m just your mother. I’m just the woman who is actually in charge of all this. I’m just the one who was overseeing operations like this one a decade before you were even born.”
She was just trying to make me feel bad now. Well, it wasn’t going to work. Whether or not I offended her, I needed her to get the fuck out of my warehouse and take that asshole with her.
With a sigh of discontent, she walked over to Alexander and looped her arm through his, saying something to him I couldn’t hear over the cacophony of the warehouse. Most of my men were back to work now, getting the next shipment ready.
As she walked back toward me, Ma was shaking her head. She paused to say, “You may not be ready for this right now, but you need to keep in mind that I am in charge here—in charge of everything. That means I need to be aware of what’s going on in each of our warehouses, including this one. I need to know what we’re shipping, where we are shipping it to, when we’re shipping it, and how much we’re making off the shipments that come in.”
I stepped directly in front of her to make sure she heard me clearly. “You don’t need to know jack shit about what goes on here or in any of the other warehouses I run. I’m in charge here. Me.” I lifted my head to look Alexander in the eyes as well. “That’s a hard line for me, Ma. Cross it, and bullets will fly.”
La Rosa was the one who responded to my threat. “That’s a big statement to make, kid. I sure hope you can back it up. You shouldn’t be speaking so disrespectfully to your mother.”
“I can and will back it up,” I assured him. “Don’t try to parent me, La Rosa. I think you know what happened to my mom’s first husband.”
A crooked smile formed on his face as he nodded. Of course, he knew. “Threatening that bullets will fly sort of implies they haven’t already started whizzing through the air, doesn’t it?”
“What are you talking about?” Was he admitting he was involved with the Latvians?
