Black Collar Beginnings: Cuba (Black Collar Syndicate)
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Authors: AN Latro
AN Latro
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The author makes no claims to, but instead acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of any wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction including brands or products.
Copyright © 2014 by AN Latro
Black Collar Beginnings: Cuba by AN Latro
All rights reserved. Published in the United States of America by Crabby Books.
Summary:
Alone in Cuba, Seth Morgan isn’t a mafia prince—he’s a thug with a gun and everything to prove.
1. Mafia 2. Family Drama 3. Romance
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
For information, address AN Latro
https://www.facebook.com/pages/AN-Latro/1436838543270424
Edited by Brianna Shrum
Cover design by Melissa Stevens of The Illustrated Author
Cover art copyright©: AN Latro
Ebook Formatting: Gonet Designs
Table of Contents
Excerpt from Black Collar Empire
Miami, Florida, August 3, 2012
Waiting is the worst. Waiting, and the heat. Outside, the sun has barely breached the horizon, but already Seth Morgan is shirtless and sweating. After a year and a half spent in tropical locations, his New York City blood still boils with each sunrise. A year and half – has it really been so long? He hears his colleagues chattering in fast Spanish outside the boat shack, and scrubs a hand over his face, feeling stubble along his jaw that he would never would have let grow in the clean cut world of his other life. He slumps against the high-backed stool and lets his head fall back as his legs stretch to prop onto the table top.
Their yacht docked in Miami in the smallest hours of morning, beneath the cover of darkness. The product on board has been unloaded and packed away into safety to avoid prying eyes – mostly from curious coast guard patrols or marina agents. Now, they're waiting. The call to confirm delivery was scheduled for dawn, and it's late. Late in this sort of operation is never a good sign, but Seth knows better than to think they will give him any details if he asks. He's just a grunt in this world, just a gun and a mule – not quite the royalty he is at home.
He pops the clip out of his .40 caliber Springfield without looking at it, idly fingering the first round. He's been on plenty of these runs by now, so many trips shuttling top grade blow from Cuba to Miami, each time with the shuddering fear of the DEA, the ATF, the CIA and who knows what other US agencies. The American “war of drugs” has been after Seth's mysterious boss since well before Seth was old enough to play the game. If anyone can wonder how the kingpin has stayed out of trouble, it's not Seth. No, he is not surprised at all, because though he is the son of a powerful stateside syndicate, even he has not yet met the man known simply as Havana.
A cell phone rings outside, and Seth thinks fleetingly of his family to whom he hasn't spoken since he left. It's a matter of trust, a test from this foreign syndicate that he have no contact with his other life, no chance for split loyalties. He will never admit it aloud, but the silence from home is crushing in moments like this. A flurry of Spanish curse words dulls the moment, and a few beats later, someone rushes into the shack.
“Let's go,
yuma
, the plan has changed.”
It's Miguel, the closest thing to a friend Seth has found during his stay. The lithe Cuban is the same age as Seth, separated by just a few months, and he is Seth's direct superior on this job. The words “plan” and “changed” snap Seth into action, and he shoves the magazine back into his pistol. He stands with inherent grace, snatching his white t-shirt from the table top in the same movement. It's never a good thing when the plan changes this late, but he knows better than to ask for any details he has not already been given. Old habits die hard, or something like that. Even after so long, the brat in Seth chews at the corners of his mind when someone gives him orders. He savors the indignation that sours on his tongue, and follows his boss out into the stifling morning.
The two of them load into an early '90s model Camaro as the others take the van with the false cleaning company logo on its side – the van with enough keys of coke hidden inside to send them all to jail for life. Miguel trails the van for several blocks, but turns off to an alternate route. Seth runs through possibilities in his head as the radio blares a Spanish advertisement for a nightclub on the beach. Even though Seth has been embedded with the Cubans for so long, a moment never passes without the nagging fear that this is the day they will kill him, that somehow he has angered them – he, or his family in New York.
He swallows his nerves as they riot in his chest and try to rise in the back of his throat, and he forces long, steady breaths. He has performed unerringly in his duties, of this he is sure, but there's always that haunting possibility that somehow his family has betrayed the shaky alliance he has worked to build with the Cubans. He backs himself out of his thoughts and glances at his reflection in the passenger side mirror – shades covering the dark spaces beneath his eyes, his skin so brown from his time in the sun, his once-manicured hair creeping close to his ears in neglect. Gun metal is hot against his lower back. He has become a ghost of himself, a quiet, pensive shell of his extravagant nature. He's just a shaggy nobody whose tendency toward haughtiness is dangerous in this world that isn't his.
Miguel drums his fingers on the steering wheel as he waits for a light to turn green, sighing in aggravation. He smashes the button on the blaring radio and the car interior falls to heavy quiet. Seth glances at his friend, taking note of the hard-set jaw, the tension lines along brown arms, and his nerves stir again. The light changes, and Miguel takes a hard left. He lets loose a string of nasty Spanish insults toward a car that nearly cuts them off. Seth recognizes the street, and that it's the usual route to one of Havana's warehouses.
It seems like a year in itself before they roll through an open bay door, and the mechanical sound of the garage door closing behind them is a harbinger of something dark. Miguel throws the car into park and shuts off the engine. In New York, Seth would strut his ass through the place like he owned it, but here he must make sure to stay behind his boss, and to keep silent. In New York, he
would
own the place.
They stalk deeper into the bowls of the warehouse, and as they do, Seth can hear the muffled sounds of struggle. He's heard those noises before, and so is not entirely surprised to find three muscled Cubans surrounding one man duct taped to a folding chair. The man's face is a mess of blood and swelling, and Seth can only presume that he is also Cuban from the dark tousled hair and the brown of his skin. The man is whimpering, and bleeding, and still doing his damnedest to pull against his bonds. Despite the intensity of the scene, cool relief blossoms across Seth's nervous system. It's not his day to die, and business is easy when it doesn't include him dying. He summons his poker face, and the deadly calm of his father.
Miguel stares down at the offending party for a long stretch, his dark brown eyes blazing. Then he sighs again, and turns to Seth. The eye contact is like electricity in Seth's veins, and Miguel's accent softens the curve of his words when he says, “This man has stolen from us, skimmed product that did not belong to him. And we don't tolerate thieves.”
Seth is silent and still, and he is sure he can hear the ticking of a clock from somewhere. Maybe it's actually his heart, rising again into panic. He's smart, knows he's smart, but Miguel's words are slow to sink into sense. He blinks, swallows, feels the sweat roll down the small of his back. Miguel's gaze softens just a fraction, and he puts a steady hand on Seth's shoulder and continues.
“Word from the top named you to deal with the problem.”
The riot that has just calmed in Seth's gut erupts into another round of pitting nerves. Now, it makes perfect sense. This is a test. Every day is a test. And yet this test is unique. For all the clout Seth's name carries, for all his experience as a king's son, his own family has never made him put a gun to anyone's head with the intention of punishment. Suddenly, his stomach violently churns, but to show weakness now would destroy the name is he has worked so hard to make for himself, so he mechanically unholsters his gun with a nod.
He turns his attention to the fucked up foreign face, barely recognizable as a face at all, and he takes a steadying drag of oxygen. For the moment, he's glad the man's eyes are swollen mostly shut so that Seth can't see the terrified certainty of what comes next. He chambers a round, praying to some god – any god – that his hands don't shake too much. Sure, Seth has buried a bullet between the eyes of the man who shot his father, but face-to-face with an unarmed stranger, this is an entirely new horror. Yet, he cannot hesitate, cannot be considered weak. He bites his own tongue, lifts the pistol and pulls the trigger in one fluid movement. No time to think, or to hesitate. Thugs don't think.
The percussion ricochets around the small space until it becomes a ringing in Seth's ears. Hot blood sprays across his face, and he can't stop himself from jerking back as though he's the one who's been hit. Trauma threatens his resolve, not from the present, but the memory of his father's blood on him, the first time he killed. In the wake of the shot, there is no sound, just the snapping backward of the stranger's head, and the slumping of his body as the back of his skull explodes. A wisp of smoke wafts from the gun barrel, and the remaining Cubans shift and relax. Seth looks to Miguel, then his gaze drifts down to his gun. There's blood on it, and on him. He blinks.
“Come on,” says Miguel, “I'll show you to the bathroom. Get you cleaned up.”
Miguel always prefers to practice his English on Seth, rather than let Seth practice his Spanish, and since he is of higher rank, Seth must honor that. Sometimes, though, it's a small comfort to speak his own language, even if the answers are heavily accented. He nods, turns away from the tragic story and spilled brains. It's someone's tragic story. Not his.
