Page 19 of Cartel Rose (Jorge)

The fight was epic.

I thought he might have a stroke from how red his face got. I thought I was having a heart attack from how hard mine was beating. I nearly quit, and I think he nearly fired me.

PoorMutti—Mama—knew not to intervene, but she tried for a calming presence. She’s the only reason we weren’t screaming at each other. I don’t know that I’ve ever been that livid or myfather’s ever felt he had to justify himself that much. I’m getting heated just thinking about it.

I turn my shopping cart to avoid an older woman’s, and I spy a dark-haired man with his back to me. He seems familiar, but I can’t think of anyone—except for Jorge—who’d fit his description. He walks away after picking up a bunch of bananas.

I follow him.

But I can’t spot him once I get near the crowded cheese counter. Fuck the French. We produce more cheese than them, and it seems like every person in Frankfurt is getting theirs from this store right now.

“You only got the cabbage?”

I shift to see Bastian approaching me.

Fuck.

“Yeah. I just thought about getting some Limburger and didn’t want to forget. I’ll go back for the rest of the produce.”

He buys the lie. He loves the stinky cheese, and he knows I hate it. He thinks I’m doing it just for him. It’s the first cheese I spotted when I looked at the display. I sweep my gaze around the parts of the store I can see, but I don’t spy the man who reminded of me of Jorge before Bastian and I go back to the produce.

“Watch out.”

I barely skirt the trash can my sister points out. I already tripped over the curb a mile ago. I blamed that on an untied shoelace, so we needed to pause our run, anyway. It gave me a chance to look around. I’m fucking certain this time.

I saw Jorge.

“You’re in la-la land, Anne.”

I definitely can’t tell my sister who’s really living rent free in my head. I can tell her part of what’s distracting me.

“I know, Heidi. My mind’s still locked on the argument Papa and I had again right before I left work yesterday.”

Bastian and I had a great weekend together. I pushed Papa and Jorge out of my mind, and I enjoyed time with my boyfriend. Then Papa burst that high when he stopped me when I arrived and told me he wanted to speak to me. I got to dread the conversation all day. He did that on purpose.

“Muttisaid the last one was really nasty.”

“It was. We barely kept ourselves from saying things we couldn’t take back. He’s put me in a shit position with other clients now that they know information doesn’t stay secret with us.”

“You’re certain Papa’s the one who leaked it?”

“He’s all but said the words. If it wasn’t him, he ordered someone to do it. I can’t figure out who. I had Michael comb through the server to see where every email for the past two weeks came from and went.”

I’m certain he thinks less of me now that he’s surely read my exchange with Jorge. At best, he thinks Jorge’s a pervert.

“The IT guy Papa hired, so you’d break up with him?”

“We weren’t serious. We were friends who thought we might be more. He and I both know he’s better off as the head of our IT department than being my boyfriend.”

“True. And you wouldn’t be with Bastian if you were with him. Bastian’s definitely the better of the two.”

Yes, my sweet pediatrician boyfriend who works for Ärzte ohne Grenzen e.V. It’s the German division of Médecins Sans Frontières—Doctors Without Borders. We met two weeks after he returned to Germany after a year in Burkina Faso. He’s leaving in two months for six months in Eswatini. I had to lookthat one up. It’s formerly Swaziland—a small country bordered by South Africa and Mozambique.

He’s off to save children in dire poverty, and I’m fantasizing about a narco-trafficker.

What the fuck is wrong with me?

“He is amazing. I’m lucky I met him.”