The Slayer (Untamed Hearts #2) (54 page)

Chuito took another sip of his coffee. “You do that.”

“What if they like it?” Marcos asked with a grin.

“No.” His mother put the dishes in the sink. “I need a new couch now.”

“Ask Nova,” Chuito suggested.

Marcos grunted in agreement. “I’m all for that.”

She gave both of them a harsh, icy-cold look, making it clear what she thought about their assumptions. If Nova tried to buy his mother a Ferrari, she’d probably stab him for the effort.

The only one who had earned that special privilege was Chuito.

“What?” he barked at his mother as she stood there glaring. “You have money. Buy a couch.”

“This was
your
party, chico.”

“I’ll transfer money into your account,” he offered. “I’ll do it before I leave.”

“It’ll take days to go through.”

Chuito set down his coffee and hopped off the bar stool. He dug his wallet out of his back pocket and pulled out a credit card. “How much is it?”

She took it from him. “Maybe six thousand.”

“For a couch?” he growled. “You do not need a six-thousand-dollar couch, Mamá.”

“It’s a set.” She gestured to the living room. “The tables. The lamps. They all match the old couch. Now I need a new one. Maybe, if I’m lucky, I can find something on sale and it’ll be six thousands.”

“Which means it won’t be six thousand,” Marcos pointed out.

“Gimme this.” He yanked back the card and gave her a different one. “Just put it on there.”

She looked at the platinum card in her hand. “I might need new rugs.”

“Whatever,” he said dismissively. “Put whatever on it. I don’t care. Do they let you use my cards to buy something that expensive? How come you don’t ever have a problem with that?”

“They let me.” She shrugged. “They like me.”

“Yeah, I bet they do.” Chuito laughed bitterly. “Just tell them to call me if you have an issue.”

“I won’t have an issue.” She turned away from them and walked back down the hallway.

Chuito remembered with crystal clarity why he hadn’t moved back to Miami. He turned to his cousin after the door closed. “Do you want the old couch? Can you fit it in the place out back? It’s less than a year old.”

“I’ll pass,” Marcos said with a harsh look. “I don’t want to sit on it either.”

“The tables. The lamps. There’s nothing wrong with those.”

“We don’t need any of it.”

“Shouldn’t you ask Katie?”

Marcos waved it off. “We’ll put it in one of the other houses. Someone will take it.”

“She needs to get her own credit cards,” Chuito mused not for the first time. “I don’t know why she doesn’t. She’s always stealing mine. Every time I come here, I lose credit cards. She collects them like postage stamps. I know I’m never getting that card back.”

“She doesn’t like banks.” Marcos shrugged. “I don’t like them either. I’m glad everything at the shop is in your name.”

“But I can deal with the bank?” Chuito laughed. “That’s okay? Using my credit cards doesn’t bother her, but having bank cards with her name on them does? She has an account that I put money in that she never uses. She puts everything on credit cards that cost interest. My credit cards.”

“You don’t have to deal with the bank if you don’t want to. That’s
your
choice, Chu.”

“So you think I can go to the grocery store and cash my UFC checks?”

Marcos gave him an annoyed look. “Am I supposed to feel sorry for you about this?”

“Can you just get the card for me?” Chuito huffed in annoyance. “Mail it back to me. I do use that one.”

“You want me to jack my tiá’s credit card?” Marcos asked with an incredulous look. “Are you crazy?”

“It’s
my
credit card.”

“But you just gave it to her.” Marcos gestured to the hallway. “You keep handing them to her. Now you want me to jack the card she conned out of you fair and square. That’s bad for
my
health. I’m the motherfucker who has to live with her. You try taking them back if you need them so bad. Leave me out of it.”

“Forget it. Let her keep it.” Chuito waved off his entire family and got up. “I’m going back to bed. There is not enough coffee for this.”

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chuito and Alaine got married in his mother’s backyard the next day, because most of the party guests had just crashed in the other houses Chuito owned on the street.

So it actually turned out to be a big event even though it was thrown together so fast. His mother and Katie took Alaine shopping for a dress at the same time Tino and Nova dragged Chuito and Marcos out. The Italians’ obsession with suits had to be a genetic thing, because they enjoyed shopping way too much to be normal.

After that, everything just sort of came together with little to no effort and zero expense to Chuito.

The caterers.

The flowers.

The cake.

And a whole crew of wedding designers who turned his mother’s backyard into something that looked like it belonged in a bridal magazine. Never in a thousand years would Chuito have thought he was going to have a wedding that over the top, but that was what happened when Nova took on a project with Tino to help.

The Italians were just so fucking spoiled.

Everything they did was extravagant.

Chuito suspected half the shit was gifted to them, because he didn’t see Nova signing too many credit card slips, and everyone who showed up seemed to know him.

They all appeared obligated to him in some way.

Chuito was famous, but Nova was something different. People acted like doing favors for him was a huge fucking privilege.

But more than that, they all seemed to like him.

His crew of Italians that had stuck around for the party would probably lie down and die for him if Nova asked them to, and they’d be happy as fuck to do it. Chuito was starting to realize the reason Nova’s grandfather wanted him dead wasn’t because he’d killed his father.

The old man wanted him gone because Nova inspired loyalty.

Strong, unshakable, unquestionable loyalty, and it made him powerful.

Too powerful.

Chuito got it more than he should. Nova had fucked his mother the night before, but somehow Chuito was willing to forget about it because Alaine was beside herself with excitement. Without expecting it, or even asking for it, a fairy-tale wedding had bloomed up around her.

When Alaine was happy, Chuito was happy.

“Gracias,” Chuito said to Nova as he stood under the gazebo that had been erected.

“For what?” Nova asked as he tilted his head, looking at the flowers lining the walkway.

“For doing this,” Chuito said as he watched Nova walk over and straighten the flower arrangement closest to them as if he couldn’t help himself. “It means a lot to Alaine.”

“Oh, this is easy,” Nova said dismissively. “These are the sorta favors I like.”

Chuito understood, for a man whose entire life had been nothing but a steady stream of favors, many of which ended like the situation in the foreclosure house, a wedding was nothing.

Still, Chuito realized something about Nova.

At his core, he liked helping people. That was Nova’s drug. Solving problems. Fixing things. Making whatever was lagging run smoothly again, and it was something he really couldn’t stop himself from doing.

Even Angel’s business had been running far more efficiently once Nova touched it, and Angel had been the dumb motherfucker not to appreciate it.

All these issues kept Nova’s mind busy; they stopped him from having to dwell on his own demons. He kept his shit hidden and made sure everyone around him coasted off his Midas touch.

Not for the first time, Chuito found himself agreeing with Tino.

Life in general would be much better if Nova was running the underworld.

He was still scary as hell.

Nova was capable of dark deeds as easily as the rest of them.

But he did have class.

Nova headed back to the house, and Marcos walked up to stand next to Chuito, looking scratchy and uncomfortable in his tuxedo as he said, “No outfit should cost seven thousand dollars.”

“I thought you were a baller,” Chuito said with a laugh.

“Motherfucker, if this is what it takes to be a baller, keep the job,” Marcos said with a snort of amusement. “You’re better at it anyway.”

The nondenominational preacher standing under the gazebo coughed at the two of them, and Marcos just looked at him. “I’m Catholic, bro.” Then he turned to Chuito. “I’m surprised the Italians didn’t get her converted overnight for you.”

“Nova did actually get permission from a bishop,” Chuito said, because the Italians took this shit seriously.

“Do they have God in their pocket?” Marcos asked.

“You have no idea,” Chuito said with a laugh, because he had spent a long time confessing last night while Nova worked on getting permission from the bishop.

Chuito was going to be saying Hail Marys and donating his time to charity until he died, but the priest hadn’t urged Chuito to turn himself in like others would. He let Chuito repent in other ways.

So he stood there waiting for Alaine as an absolved man.

“You should go to confession,” Chuito told his cousin. “I found a good priest.”

“Yeah?” Marcos asked him, giving him a silent look of communication. “How good?”

“Good enough to listen to me for two hours.”

“Holy fuck,” Marcos whispered.

The preacher coughed again.

Marcos rolled his eyes and said in English, “Why didn’t they get a gringo preacher? The Italians found the only non-Catholic Latino in Miami. Jesus.”

“I speak English,” the preacher chastised him. “You probably should go to confession.”

“Mmm,” Marcos hummed but was saved from saying more when the music started.

Luis walked Chuito’s mother down the aisle, because Nova had the good grace not to offer. She looked beautiful. Her dark hair was upswept with tiny white flowers decorating it, and she wore a blue dress that brought out her light eyes.

The sunshine made it a little too obvious that her gaze was glassy, which made Chuito amend his statement that he never wanted to see her cry again. He just never thought she would have something nice to cry about.

Neto’s daughter was the flower girl, looking very excited about it despite Neto and his wife, who were both clearly stressed about their four-year-old possibly ruining the ceremony, but she did fine, and Chuito’s mother swept her up and sat Maria on her lap as if she needed the distraction.

Then Katie stepped out of the house with a big smile on her face, wearing a pink dress that was low cut and showed off all her best assets.

A fact Marcos didn’t miss or fail to comment on.

“Coño.” He groaned next to Chuito. “I hadn’t seen her dress. Look at her—”

“No.” Chuito cut him off with a shake of his head. “Just no.”

“I never get tired of looking at them,” Marcos admitted. “Marrying her is like the gift that keeps on giving.”

Chuito actually laughed, because hearing how much Marcos still enjoyed being married was sort of nice. Then Alaine showed up at the top of the porch with Tino by her side, and Chuito felt like he’d lost the ability to breathe for a moment.

“Coño.”

Chuito didn’t even hear the preacher cough, because all he could do was stare at Alaine. Her hair was swept up, with the same tiny white flowers standing out in the red curls. Her dress wasn’t big and poufy like he’d expected. Instead it clung to her in all the right places without being too tight. It flowed with her, soft and feminine, making her look more gorgeous than he could honestly process.

Her shoulders were bare, and she didn’t wear any sort of necklace.

She didn’t need it.

Alaine never needed adornments to be beautiful.

Their future was unpredictable at best, but for the moment, Chuito felt like the luckiest man in the world, and he couldn’t imagine that changing anytime soon.

Because despite his flaws, his commitments, all the darkness and danger…this woman loved him enough to spend eternity with him.

Chuito didn’t see the Italians sitting on Alaine’s side, or the Boricuas on his.

All he saw was Alaine, walking down the aisle, with Tino by her side because he was the one they’d both decided had earned the privilege to give her away. Even if Tino had argued the exact opposite, saying he was the last one who should give her away, he was there with a knowing look on his face as he smiled at Chuito.

When they reached the gazebo, the preacher asked, “Who gives this woman away?”

And Tino said, “I do.”

Alaine smiled and turned to place a kiss on Tino’s cheek, leaving the stain of lipstick. Then she stepped forward, and Chuito reached out for her, grasping her wrist with the excuse of helping her, despite the fact that she was holding her bouquet, because he couldn’t resist touching her.

“I love you, mami,” he whispered, knowing that everyone could probably hear his emotions, because they were right on the surface. “You’re beautiful.”

She smiled, her light eyes watery as she said, “I love you too.”

The preacher coughed, and Chuito turned to him and apologized, “
Perdón
.”

“It’s fine.” The preacher gave him a smile as Alaine handed her bouquet to Katie.

Then Chuito grabbed both her hands, not really sure if this was part of the ten-minute rehearsal Nova had forced on them last night, but he didn’t care. He just needed to touch her.

Chuito thought he said his vows right.

Alaine did fantastic with hers. She was great with things like that, even if tears rolled down her cheeks as she said them.

When Marcos handed Chuito the rings, he had to turn to the preacher and say, “I have to give her two rings.”

So the preacher amended Chuito’s vows, allowing him to say, “With these rings, I thee wed.”

But Alaine gasped as Chuito slid an engagement ring down on top of the simple gold wedding band. “Chu,” she whispered, trying to slip her hand out of his, because the rings had been one thing Chuito
did
pay for. “How much was this?”

“Shh.” He gave her a look as he slid the two-carat oval diamond ring on her finger. “My turn.”