“Brett,” Mamá said low in warning.

“Mamá,” Brett said firmly in denial.

They went into staredown.

Boone was not surprised when Cisco then turned to him and spoke.

“I have three siblings,” he announced.

That wasn’t what Boone was expecting.

“A brother and two sisters,” Cisco continued. “My brother is a radiology tech at National Jewish. One of my sisters lives up in Alaska. Her husband is in salmon. And my baby sister, who used to be a bookkeeper and lived here in Denver, now lives up in Alaska with my older one.”

Seemed Cisco was the definition of a bad seed.

“As much as I’ve been dying to know details about your family, at this juncture this doesn’t mean dick to me,” Boone returned when Cisco quit talking.

“Cabe,” Mamá said quietly.

Upon which Hawk, whose real first name was Cabe, murmured, “Boone, rein it in and let the man speak.”

In the genealogy stakes, Hawk was a mutt. There was Puerto Rican in him, Cuban and Italian. Hawk, and his top guy Jorge, had a thing with Mamá Nana. A good thing.

Hawk treated this relationship like it was what it was to a man in his business.

Pure gold.

But it went deeper with Hawk and especially Jorge.

Jorge worked for Hawk because of Mamá Nana. A long, complicated story that ended with a young kid on the road to becoming common street thug turning his life around to become Hawk Delgado’s top lieutenant.

Something none of the men questioned that Hawk felt indebted to Mamá for, rather than the other way around.

Jorge was that solid of a guy.

Mamá saw that when he was young, turned Jorge onto the right path, and gave Hawk a man he and his men could trust with their lives.

And they did.

But that wasn’t the only reason Hawk had mad respect for the woman.

Boone had that respect too.

Everyone did unless they were idiots, worked opposed to her purpose, or she could help someone and the information she had on you allowed her to do it which made you not dig her all that much.

In other words, Boone shut his mouth.

“What I’m trying to say is, their efforts are escalating,” Cisco said.

“Efforts at what?” Boone asked.

“Trying to get me to come forward and take the rap for the dead cop so that can be swept away, and no one will look too closely at that murder or what that dead cop was doing before he got whacked,” Cisco explained.

There it was.

Tony Crowley had been looking into Bogart and Mueller and they’d put a very definitive stop to it.

“And why did you share about your family?” Hawk asked.

“Because my baby sister is in Alaska due to the fact she got herself a stalker who made life unlivable here in Denver. Her stalker was an ex-con Kevin Bogart arrested five years ago. My guess, they have something on him. So, probably like the guy today, he had no choice but to be their puppet. My problem with that is, him being their puppet scared the fuck out of my sister, to the point she quit her job, gave up her apartment and moved to Alaska.”

The kitchen was dead silent after this information was shared.

Because that was not good.

But they all knew what had come next.

“You know what happened to Corinne,” Cisco reminded them of what came next.

Oh yeah.

They knew.

And this gave new meaning to why Cisco had that man killed on Ryn’s back deck instead of handling him in a less final way.

That guy had not been there to freak her out.

He was there to do a lot worse to her.

Boone felt his skin begin to itch.

“Ryn is not your sister or your attorney,” he said in a voice he barely recognized, it was vibrating audibly, and he could feel that in his throat as the words came out. “She’s nothing to you.”

Cisco shook his head and Boone didn’t miss the fact that he did not agree that Ryn was nothing to him.

He said, “I’ve given you what you need. You know what’s happening. You know how desperate men like this can get. Now you need to run with it.”

“Are you saying that man was at Ryn’s today to kill her?” Boone asked.

“I’m saying, after what they did to Corinne, I’m not taking any chances.”

Boone sucked in a breath.

Hawk moved in. “Now that you’ve said all that, tell us what you aren’t saying.”

“You have what you need.” Cisco leaned forward. “Run with it.”

“Is it just Mueller and Bogart?” Hawk asked.

Cisco looked to Mamá.

Everyone looked to Mamá.

“I am not in this,” she said.

“Mamá,” Hawk rumbled.

She leveled her eyes at him. “I’m not in this, Cabe. I don’t need the attention of bad cops.”

“What do you know?” Hawk pressed.

“I won’t repeat myself, vato,” she replied.

“It’s bigger than Mueller and Bogart,” Hawk surmised.

She shrugged.

It was bigger.

Mamá Nana was scared of nothing.

Untouchable.

It wasn’t just her bodyguards and the loyalty of her community that made her that way.

It was people like Hawk, who was hers by circumstance of birth. Or Kane Allen, the ex-president of the Chaos MC, who was hers because she did him a massive solid, the kind of marker that could never be repaid. Not to mention the dozens like them she’d collected along the way.

And bottom line, the woman simply had huge balls.

But she was scared of this.

“Right then, you,” Hawk said to Cisco. “Are there more? How many are there? And who are they?”

Before Cisco could reply, Mamá broke in.

“I took a risk, having this meeting,” she stated.

Fucking fuck.

“If they find out you were here, and Brett was here, their target would be me,” she finished. “You need peace amongst you, Cabito, so Brett can clear his name and you can hold safe this girl you protect.”

“My boys and I cannot do our work without knowing the full picture, Mamá,” Hawk told her, and Boone could tell by the tone of his voice he was losing patience.

“And do you think Brett is keeping this information to himself because he wishes to be difficult, or perhaps remain in hiding for a longer period of time?” she shot back. “There are things you must find for yourself, mijo. It cannot come from me and it cannot come from Brett. If it does, they’ll know and Brett will no longer be wanted for a crime he didn’t commit, he’ll be hunted to be put down. And I will lose everything.”

Hawk had no reply to that.

Though everyone in the room knew that Mamá Nana losing everything not only meant a good woman being pulled down, but a lot of other people losing hope and that could not happen.

And Boone felt his gut sinking because this was clearly a fuckload bigger than they thought it was and it wasn’t good to start with.

“Brett should not have kidnapped your women, though he could not know that would put them in the line of fire.” She turned to Cisco. “Apologize for that, querido.”

And it sucked, but Boone had to give it to the man.

Cisco didn’t hesitate before he said, “You know I’m sorry about that. Now, more than I was before. But I was in a bind.”