Of all the things I thought he would say, that wasn't one of them.
“Dad!”
“I don't want to know the specifics! Whatever you and those guys get up to is your business. One of them, all of them, I don't care, but if they do anything stupid and you don't kill them, I will.” He hangs up the phone before I can even get my head straight.
“DID YOU KNOW THAT MY FATHER KNOWS?”I put my phone away and get my food, but I can feel it going crazy in my pocket. I grab one of the pre-packaged salads and a soda, after I pay, I go to one of the far tables in the corner.
“What exactly does he know?”Scar.
“Like know-know, or just has an idea?”Pyro.
“I am sure that he doesn't know. Surely, we wouldn't still have all of our appendages if he knew.”Bell.
“How are you going to say something like that and then stop responding?”Scar.
“I stand by my appendage comment, also I heard you met Lex today. How did that go?”Bell.
“He knows. Surprisingly he doesn't seem mad but that doesn't mean you shouldn't be worried about a few of your fingers. And yes, I met Lex, it went okay but I don't like that guy. Seems like the type of person to steal your information to make himself look better. I wasn't expecting to see someone from that family working as a TA in one of my classes though. So that was fun.”
“I don't like the guy either, he seems like a snake.”Pyro.
“That's exactly what I thought! Silent and willing to take you out when you aren't looking.”
“Dude is good at his job though. Try not to piss him off too much, I would hate to explain to Mr. Rojas that I killed his future son-in-law because you’re a brat.”Scar.
Damn. Maybe I might be nice to the guy. I have only met Camila a few times, but she isn't the type of person that you want to upset. People that get on her bad side end up disappearing, she has been given a label of an innocent bystander in her father’s organization, but I know that she isn’t. People might think of her as nothing more than a protected mafia daughter, but she is dangerous, I know it.
“What did your dad say to you? Why do you think he knows?”Bell.
“I didn't say that I thought he knew. I'm telling you that he knows. He would have found out anyway, might not have been like his though.”
“How do you know though?”
“He told me to let him know a week in advance if he has three bodies to clean up and a need to replace you three. He knows. But he is trusting me to protect myself and outside of that, he says that he doesn't want specifics. Which is fine with me.”
“Damn, he does know.”Pyro.
I leave the chat alone after that, the guys go back and forth about going home and talking to him. Making sure that everything is okay and that they still have his trust considering they didn't tell him that they were in love with his daughter. If my father had an issue with us being together then he would have brought up that he knew a long time ago, he also wouldn’t have allowed it to go on this long without the guys disappearing.
Come to think about it, they wouldn’t have been allowed to come here if he was bothered.
When I am done with my lunch, I pull my computer out and work on my writing assignment for my public speaking class. I haven't declared a major, so I just signed up for whatever classes that I wanted, trying to keep them close to the criminal justice side of the line. I can't wait for the day my father asks me what I am studying, and I can tell him that I think it would be cool to be a profiler for the FBI. It probably won't ever happen, but can you imagine the things you would fucking see, and I know a little about how some of those people think so it might make it easier for me.
Public speaking met one of the requirements that I needed and as far as classes go it's pretty freaking easy. The professor doesn't even care if we show up every day, as long as we are there on the presentation days.
I haven’t always been a great student but I have learned quite a few ways to get my brain to focus on the task in front of me and it helps that I haven’t been obsessed with getting a man or a social life since I got here.
***
“You look nice! Where are you headed?” Bayleigh asks from my doorway.
“I have a date, but I can't decide between this dress or the red one!” I don't know the last time that I went on a date, so in turn, I can't think of the last time that I was nervous or worried so much about what I wore.
“WHAT? For as long as I have known you, you have never gone out with someone! Do we know this person?” I notice that she doesn't say ‘he’, but even before Raven said something I was pretty sure that some of the sisters thought I was into women.
“No, he doesn't go to this school.”
“This is so exciting! Also, I think you should wear this one,” she goes into my closet and comes back out with a pale pink spaghetti strap dress that I bought but never wore. The color never felt right for me, but when I saw it on the mannequin it was so damn cute that I couldn't help myself. I have probably put it on a dozen times but always ended up changing.