Birdy (Upper Echelon Duet Book 1)

painfully in the middle of his fine face, I have a feeling he’s been worried about me, too.
“Fuck,” he hisses, dropping his head between slumped shoulders. “I don’t like this. I don’t like seeing you in here.” He’s still staring downward as his large palm splays against the glass, the silver bands of all his rings clinking against the surface.
“Ángel, don’t,” my voice trembles. “I’m okay.”
I’m not; I’m far from it. Every minute of my life in here is pure misery, but I don’t want him to know that. “What are you doing here? How? What happened to you? I tried calling you and—”
He cuts me off. “It’s cover-up, mami. Makeup. Ever since they got you, they’ve been sniffing around harder. I’ve got the partners on lockdown right now, and I’m taking a big-ass risk being here, but I had to come see you…had to tell you how sorry I am.” When he glances up at me, only regret reflects back at me.
A regret so deep-seated and utterly raw that it overshadows everything else he’s just told me. I heard him, I did, and a part of me is sounding the alarm, but my heart aches, the proverbial strings tugging and fraying like a satin ribbon.
Lifting my hand to the glass, I hope and pray to Papá Dios for strength because if the rest of this conversation is going to be just as gut-wrenching, I’m going to need it now more than ever. “Sorry for what? There’s nothing you could’ve done. They had me in cuffs already, and they were going to book me regardless of what you—”
Ángel shakes his head adamantly, halting the words on the tip of my tongue. “You don’t understand. It’s my fault, all of this is my fault.”
The stress within his tone… It blares those alarms again, louder now, dotting my skin with ice-cold goose bumps as his words echo in my mind.
“Ever since they got you, they’ve been sniffing around harder. I’ve got the partners on lockdown right now, and I’m taking a big-ass risk being here, but I had to come see you…had to tell you how sorry I am.”
“How is this your fault?” I dare ask, clutching the phone in my grip for dear life.
I feel like my world’s about to shatter, and I’m not sure I’m equipped to handle the blow.
“They were onto you, Benni. Cesar caught them tapping one of our calls,” he stresses, eyes widening almost painfully. “He’s got my end secure, so they didn’t find anything except the number, but you… All they had to do was track and wait. They had to have been watching you on the daily, and you didn’t even know.”
And there it is...the shatter.
Everything just sort of implodes.
They were...onto me? And he knew?
“You k-knew?” I stammer, stomach churning violently. “You knew they were onto me, and you didn’t say anything?”
Please, God, tell me I heard that wrong.
“I was trying to. I wanted to get you out, mami. Wanted you by my side so I could whisk you away and protect you, keep you hidden from their eyes. But you were so stubborn...you didn’t want to leave with me and—”
“I was going to go after you, you fucking comemierda!” I whisper-hiss. These “calls” may not be recorded, but if I get too worked up, they’ll yank me out of here faster than I can blink. “Or maybe I’m the comemierda because I was literally going to drop my whole entire life for two weeks and go be with you, despite the fact I knew nothing about you except how big your dick is! Oh my god, I’m so stupid...” I mutter the last bit to myself, dropping my face into my hand to avoid breaking down.
I will, after this, no doubt, but I refuse to do it in front of him. He’s already made me enough of a fool. He doesn’t need to see me shedding a single tear on his behalf.
I should’ve just walked away...
“Benni, listen to me, please. I know how it looks, but I swear to you that—”
“Was anything you said even real?” I snap. Irrelevant at this point, I know, but I have to know.
“Every single word,” he vows.
The audacity...
Anguish morphs to acrimony with the flip of a switch, narrowing my eyes murderously. “Yet you waited until you knew they were onto us before telling me? Do you see why I’m finding it hard to believe? I just took a fucking plea deal for seven years! I have to be in here for seven fucking years, Ángel, because I didn’t rat anyone out. I kept you out of this shit. I protected you…fucking took the fall for you! Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I didn’t want to scare you! Por meses pensé en decirte como me sentía, day in and day out I thought about it. But I knew asking you to drop everything for me was a lot. Knowing they were coming for you lit the fire under my ass, though. I thought I was gonna have more time to ease into it and win you over, but they snatched you up before I could.”
More time to ease into it?
Is he for real right now? Does he not hear how ridiculous he sounds? How it’s clear that everything from that weekend last month was all bullshit.
He led them right to me.
He knew they were watching us, and he led them right to me! Didn’t tell me shit!
I almost fly out of my chair in my fury, in the hell of his betrayal, but catch myself just in time, latching onto the edge for support. “Just stop,” I grit in disgust. “You’re so full of shit, Ángel, and I’m the biggest pendeja alive for even believing a spec of it. I knew it…I fucking knew I didn’t mean anything to you.”
Venom splices through my words, burning on their way up my throat. He deserves every single one of them—and so much more—but I’ll admit that deep down, it still hurts