Read Murder and Mayhem for Free Online

gotten breast cancer. They’d laughed when one of Manny’s friends shaved his head before he lost it all, and they’d held a funeral for his then shoulder-length curls, flushing the locks down the toilet like a dead goldfish. Having survived the rigors of treatment, Manny’d bounced back, his squat, plump body and smiling face nearly a mirror image of his older sister, Dante’s mother.
    And much like the days when his uncle and mother slept on the living room floor of their childhood home, they shared the same taste in clothes too.
    “ Tío , you’re going to burn somebody’s eyes out with those pj’s,” Dante teased in Spanish, picking up a cloth to dry a serving platter Manny placed in the drainer. “I’m going to have to start wearing sunglasses inside the house soon.”
    “Hah, you’re the one who gave them to me,” his uncle scoffed. “Last Christmas.”
    “I’d still have burns on my hands if I’d touched those in the store.” Dante eyed his uncle’s clothes. “I gave you a Vespa and gift cards for the mall.”
    “And this is what I bought with them.”
    Manny reached for a glass a few feet away, and Dante noticed his hand shaking slightly before his fingers closed around it. Catching his nephew’s suspicious look, Manny frowned.
    “Don’t give me that look. I can be a walking stereotype if I want to. So I like loud colors. So what?”
    “And loud people. My ears hurt from tonight.” Dante nudged his uncle with his elbow. “And the pajamas are fine. At least I don’t have to worry about you sneaking up on me in the dark. You and Mama, both of you dress loud enough a blind man can feel you coming.”
    “Ah, your mother.”
    His uncle tried to put on a casual face, but Dante caught the edge of need in his eyes.
    “How is she? Has she called you since last week?”
    “No.” He started on the stacks of clean butter containers Manny used to store food in, carefully drying the lids one by one. “It’s harder for her to sneak a call to me right now. Papa’s business is down, I think. She’s not talking about it, but I can tell.”
    “Still, she should call you. You’re her son. Your father being an asshole, well—he likes being that hard-nosed macho stereotype. I’m glad you take after our side of the family.”
    It was a familiar argument. One they’d had ever since Dante moved to Los Angeles and bullied his sick uncle into living with him. Thrown out by his own Mexican family, Manny hated seeing history repeat itself in Dante. Every chance he got, Manny pushed Dante to reach out to his parents—the same parents who’d shown him the door when he confessed to being gay.
    Maricón was the least offensive thing he’d been called that night.
    He sported a scar on his jaw from the beating his Cuban father’d given him before physically tossing him out. A beating he’d not fought because, back then, Dante felt like he’d somehow deserved it. His uncle’d felt the same way once and welcomed Dante with open arms, glad for a companion in his exile. Manny wore his own scars, and they’d cried over their family’s betrayal one night, piss drunk from whiskey shots and brandy-filled chocolates. But the person Manny missed the most was his sister, Dante’s mother, the woman who said nothing as her husband beat their eldest son nearly to death.
    Dante still couldn’t drink whiskey without tasting tears and blood.
    “The case you have, it’s a bad one?” Manny handed Dante the last of the dishes, a mug he’d gotten from a Korean gentleman’s club in Garden Grove.
    “They’re all bad, tío . This one is… complicated.” He stood fast against Manny’s assessing gaze. “We arrested someone I’d tried to bring down before. With Vince. It was our last case. Don’t know if you remember that one. You had a lot going on then.”
    “I was sick, mijo . Not unconscious.” His uncle turned around to lean against the counter. “That’s the one Vince… he gave up, no? Dios , what was