Page 95 of Hard to Love
“Fine,” he said, “but I have a right to know if my sister is walking into something that could hurt her.”
Oh, the ways this could hurt her were too numerous to count. But as Delaney said, everyone was entitled to their secrets, so she lied to her brother. “The most dangerous thing about me taking money to Alex is how pissed off he’ll be that I went behind his back, and the biggest risk is that he’ll turn me down flat.” Not only the money, but her heart.
That, at least, was true.
“I want to hear from you,” her brother said, pushing a restless hand through his hair.
“You will. Just give me a little time, okay?” Greer pressed a kiss to his cheek and squeezed Delaney’s hand. “Can you handle the raffle for me?”
“Absolutely.”
With that, she dashed for the door and barreled through it, the harness bells jangling against the glass with a discordant warning.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The house Greer walked up to wasn’t on the worst side of town, but the atmosphere was expectant—as though waiting, breath held, for a drunk to start raving and shaking his fist at the world. Once at the door, she calmed her own breathing, but it didn’t still the nerves jumping in her stomach.
Alex could be in there right now. They could have hurt him…or worse.
She tapped on the door.
Nothing.
She knocked again, louder this time.
From the corner of her eye, she caught a twitch of the blinds in the window. Someone was home.
She pounded on the wood with the side of her fist. Again and again. “I know you’re in there. You damn well better open this door or…or…”
The door swung open to reveal a handsome Latino man with a soul patch on his chin and a Jude the Apostle medal hanging heavy on his tight T-shirt. Both arms revealed elaborate tattoos. Alex’s work? If so, he was even better than his brother had been. “If you’re selling Girl Scout cookies,” the man said arrogantly, “we only buy from the girls wearing short skirts and knee socks.”
“Where is he?”
The cocky smile still stretched across the man’s face, but his eyes narrowed fractionally. “I’m the onlyhehere.”
From what she’d read about gangs, she doubted that was true if he was one of head honchos. Those guys always had protection. “Where is Alex?”
He ran two fingers down his soul patch, apparently made a decision because he stepped back and pulled her inside, his fingers a bruising clamp above her elbow. “How did you know where to find this house? Did he tell you?”
God knows she didn’t want to put Alex’s mother in danger so she blurted out, “I’m resourceful.” The details of the house barely registered in her mind when she’d normally catalog every fabric and color and texture. Now, all she cared about was looking for Alex. “Is he here?”
“Hewashere.”
“Was? What did you do with him?”
“Tell me, what do you know about Alejandro Villanueva? Do you have any idea where he’s been and what’s he’s seen and done?”
“I know he’s not proud of everything in his past, and I know he’ll do whatever it takes to get Nicolás out of this life.”
“Problem is, he didn’t bring me whatever it takes.”
“But I did.” Greer lifted the grocery sack. “He was short ten grand, right?”
Another stroke of that soul patch. If the guy kept doing that, Greer would yank every one of his facial hairs out strand by strand. “That was the old deal.”
“You son of a bitch.”
“I’ve been called worse,chavala.”
