I Wouldn't Regret It: Aaron's Perspective

A/N: Hey all, I've decided that when I do bonuses on the weekend, they are going to be from Aaron's perspective, so that way we all have insight into what's going on with him :)  Hope that's okay!  If I need a bonus from Aleah, I'll post an additional one during the week, and as always, give you guys a head's up!  ~A

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"Lorenzo, over here, brah," Jose called out to me.

I took one last, long look at the stargazer lilies and strode over to him.  "Sorry, man."

He raised his eyebrow at me and snickered.  "Didn't know you were so into flowers."

I shook my head.  We were at the store picking up groceries.  Jose and I usually went shopping for groceries on Sundays for our small apartment.  To our knowledge, Tito didn't know where it was, but we weren't sure, so we couldn't ever talk about personal things there.  That's why we talked (quietly) about real life when we shopped.  Still didn't use real names, and spoke in code a lot, but it helped being away from our families. 

Jose had been under for a lot longer than I had.  He had been more than a year when I came in.  This operation was originally for guns.  There was a huge illegal gun ring out of Omaha, ran by Tito.  I got brought in because it was discovered that there was also a secondary drug cartel, also being ran by Tito.  His big one was coke.  From what I'd learned so far, he would sell anything for the right price, but he mainly stuck with blow.  The story was that I was Jose's second cousin from Chicago, where I deal, though not quite as big time as Tito.  I was brought in, because before I was on the homicide unit with Brad, I had worked briefly in the narcotics unit in Lincoln.

Jose's real name was Brian.  He's really from LA, and on the PD there.  He's married and has a now 3 year old.  Luckily, for him, being more involved with the gun side, he got to fly around the country, and to travel to San Bernardino and Santa Barbara, so he would a lot of times leave his phone in the hotel room, in case it was tracked, and go overnight to see his family.

Originally it was thought that I would fly "back" to Chicago often, since that's allegedly where I'm from, giving me time to really go home and see Aleah.  However, turns out Tito really likes me and trusts me and asked me to stay out this way to be his right hand man.

We were part of the way through the store.  "Hey, 'Zo.  What was up with the girl in the bar a couple weeks ago?"

I rolled my eyes.  "When is Tito going to get off that?"

"No shit answer."  That was Jose's code for he wanted the truth, and he knew there was more to the story than I was letting on.

"Ok, so this is really fucked up," I ran my hand through my hair, then grabbed a bag of chips and threw them into the cart.  "It was my girlfriend."

"Are you fucking me?"  he looked at me incredulously. 

I shook my head.  "In the flesh."

Although we knew a lot of personal details about each other, one thing we kept private were names of anyone we knew, and our last names.  That way if something were to go down and the other was tortured, we didn't have to worry about personal details coming out.  We trusted each other, but it was just better this way.

"That's why I need Tito to let it go, and I keep blowing it off."

"Dude, he must be suspicious of something, because he asked me to find her."

I widened my eyes at him.  "Are you shitting me right now?  You can't do it."  I was starting to panic a little, internally.  "How would you anyway?  I had her leave there shortly after I spoke with her."

He sighed.  "He took a picture of her friend's license plate.  He said he thought you two looked at each other differently.  He didn't say he thought you knew each other, but he thought you two had a connection.  He said he 'just had a feeling' about it."

"What are you going to do?"

"I already contacted my home station.  They're getting me some fake papers with names, and it's going to trace to your girl with a fake name and she'll be living out on the east coast somewhere.  Don't worry, I got you.  I didn't want to involve some innocent girl in this, but now knowing who it really is, I'm definitely going to make sure all bases are covered."

I nodded at him, remaining cool on the outside, but internally I was still freaking out.  I decided I would somehow get a hold of Brad the next time I was meeting with my superiors, so he could look out for Aleah.

Because if anything happened to her, at the hands of Tito, I would kill him.

I wouldn't regret it.