Cigar Barons

Chapter One

Chapter One

Present Day

Estelí, Nicaragua

Sofia ran her fingers over the huge lacquered humidor that sat on her father’s desk. A simple brass name plate was etched with one word: Huerta. It was the only adornment on the humidor. Its importance wasn’t its size, but the wood that constructed the box. Sofia’s great-grandfather had saved a few boards when he watched his small shanty be demolished. He’d built the rickety thing when he’d arrived in Nicaragua. All she knew was that her grandfather, Alejandro, hadn’t intended to live in the wretched house as long as they had. According to the stories, her grandmother had conceived within days of their arrival, so the need for a roof over their growing family’s head had been paramount. Lucky for him, the plot of land was cheap enough and that would be the start of the Huerta legend. Her father had built a small chapel on the site for his mother, the first extravagance in a life full of frugality. He’d been happy to witness the end of that part of his life and revel in the small success he was enjoying at that time. The humidor was the only reminder of his childhood he kept close.

Pushing the lid to the cedar-lined box up, scents of tobacco and cedar mixed, filling the air around her. Tears surfaced and quickly clouded Sofia’s view of the contents. “Oh, Papa.”

She caressed the toothy wrapper of a Negrilla Diabla, Bold She-Devil. The dark maduro wrapper earned the robusto cigar its name. The humidor was divided into thirds, with a third dedicated to his favorite Huerta cigar, The Reserve. Another third had her Angel Blanca, or White Angel, due to its Connecticut wrapper, and the last third held the Negrilla Diabla. The only cigar from her line missing from the humidor was her Conundrum, so named because it was such an enigma. Its traditional leather and creamy flavors at the start gave way to more chocolate and coffee undertones. She’d had a hard time branding it, so she went to the source to name it—her father. She’d shared a sample with him for his opinion. She’d never forget the look on his face as he smoked the first third. The creamy smoke eased out of his nose, and then he let the rest escape from his pursed lips.

“Well?”

Sofia held her breath as she watched him take another mouthful and hold it, his lips barely parting, letting the smoke escape, before he answered. “This is…”

She bit her lip and waited for the rest of his answer. He’d smoked thousands of cigars in his lifetime, so he was a consummate authority on all types.

“Got a delicate flavor that really…” He closed his mouth and pushed air through his nostrils. “It’s very nice, mija.”

“Nice?”

“It’s…” He smiled. “It’s very good.”

Sofia controlled the urge to jump up and down at the compliment. Her father was known to be light on the praise, so a “very good” was great.

“It’s really a conundrum, mija. It has such complex flavors that are really delicate, yet grow bolder toward the end. A conundrum.”

“Then that’s what I’ll call it. Conundrum. Thank you, Papa.”

They had sat in companionable silence smoking a few Conundrums.

“What are these, Sofia?” Manny asked, lifting one of the Negrilla Diablas to his nose and sniffing. “Are these yours?”

She nodded, wiping at the tears threatening to fall. “Yes, this is the Negrilla Diabla—”

“Ah, Bold She-Devil. Nice.” Manny twisted the stick between his fingers, looking at the rounded triple cap, something that distinguished a Cuban cigar from others. “The size is perfect.” It was a Robusto size, a ring gauge that was small enough so that women didn’t think they were sticking a huge cigar in their mouths, but still big on flavors and guaranteed a good thirty minutes to smoke. She’d seen the oversexualized pictures in cigar magazines, models with big sticks in their mouths, or hands. Definitely a phallic symbol, she surmised, that appealed to the male gaze. She loved beautiful women, but had decided on more of a pinup-style label with a female devil and female angel on their respective cigars. Macho advertising wasn’t an uncommon image, but it wasn’t one she wanted to emulate in her own marketing campaign. Some of the new cigar companies were going with an urban, hip approach. She was leaning toward a sophisticated and polished package that promised being part of an exclusive community of like-minded individuals. She wanted to appeal to both men and women, their sense of style, and the cultural mystique surrounding the cigar industry. While she knew the romanticism of cigar history was important and robust, she also knew how cigar culture was evolving. Gone were the days of cigars being the sole property of wealthy men’s clubs filled with smoke and crystal tumblers filled with high-end bourbon, where talk entailed stocks, bonds, mistresses, and backroom deals.

No, the industry was bigger than that, and she was breaking through beyond those smoke-filled lounges—or at least her cigars were.

Picking up the Blanca Angel, she ran it under her nose. The Connecticut wrapper would give it peppery notes. The thought made her laugh. It should have been the Negrilla Diabla, but they were named because of their wrappers and not the flavors when smoked.

“And this one?” He pointed to the one she held.

“Blanca Angel.”

“White Angel. Fitting with the Connecticut wrapper. So, you have an Angel and a Devil. What are you saying, mija?” He gave off a belly laugh, picking up the Blanca Angel and sniffing it. “These are fantastic. Do you mind if I take one of each?”

“Not at all, Tío, please. I’d be honored to hear what you think about the line. I have one more, the Conundrum. I’ll have it sent over to you.”

“Conundrum. I like it.” He ran his hand across her shoulders and pulled her in for a hug. “Your father would be so proud.”

“Thank you.” More tears fell.

“Oh, Sofia don’t cry.”

“I didn’t know he had these in here,” she said, wiping at the tears.

Manny wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close. He whispered in her ear, “He was so proud of you.”

“Thanks.” A few sobs let loose.

“Oh mija, don’t cry. We are Huertas, and Huertas are proud Nicaraguans. We face the demon and fight it head-on. We do not surrender to our grief. We use it to build us up and propel us forward.” Manny leaned back. “Conundrum, por que?”

Sofia smiled. “If you are fighting between the Devil…” She raised a Negrilla Diabla. “Or an Angel…” She held the other cigar in her right hand. “You have a conundrum. ¿Verdad?”

Manny gave of a raucous belly laugh so deep it shook his pony keg of a belly. “Si, Si. That’s very clever, Sofia. RJ, isn’t that clever?”

They both looked at RJ, who was pouring another liberal helping of rum. “Right, clever.” He soured after tossing back another mouthful.

“Hey compadre. Slow down. You still have guests out there, and I’m sure Lina is tired of making small talk.” Manny grabbed the bottle from the iron grasp RJ had on it. “Besides, we need to share some of Nicaragua’s finest rum with our guest. Sí?”

Sofia wanted to shake some sense into her brother, but his actions right now were one of the reasons their father didn’t trust RJ. Chances were he’d sell the business—or worse, lose it in a card game—putting all of them out on their asses. All of her father’s sweat equity, time, and money gone just like that.

“I’ll bring some Huerta cigars from our reserve collection. We should toast Father appropriately.”

“Agreed,” Manny said, spinning RJ in the direction of the door. “Come on, let’s celebrate the life of Don Roberto, huh?”

As the door shut behind them, Sofia plopped down into the huge leather chair reserved for the head of Huerta cigars. This was the view her father saw every day when he sat here, but now he would never see this again. Her heart seized at the thought and her mind flooded with all the good memories courtesy of her father. Now she was nearly an orphan, with only her grandmother left. It would be long before she took her place next to her parents in the family crypt. Sofia needed to steel herself when that time came. She buried her face in her hands, grief overtaking her. Just as she thought she’d controlled it, another wave washed over her. She stood, wishing she could give into it, but as Manny had said, Huertas pushed it down and used it to fight off the demons.

There was only one problem. Death was an evil mistress no one divorced.

Her brother’s message had been cryptic. “Sofia…uh…there’s been an accident…uhm…Father’s fallen off his horse and he’s in hospital. I think you need to get home, now.” When she called him back it had gone to voice mail and RJ hadn’t returned her call. A call to the house and a quick discussion with her grandmother had confirmed her worst fears. Her father had been hurt in a horse-riding accident and wasn’t expected to make it.

Her race home from Tampa had been quick. She’d had just enough time to get a rented corporate jet, toss her bags on it, and command the pilot to take her home the quickest way possible. Her father lay in a coma—the prognosis…she couldn’t even go there. She prayed as she’d never prayed before. She begged, she bargained, she even promised to convert if that would save her father’s life.

“We’re on approach, Ms. Huerta.” A flight attendant offered a sympathetic smile and patted Sofia on the shoulder. “Can I get you anything?”

“No, thank you.” Sofia’s mind was elsewhere. A hospital room. Her father on life support. She imagined standing next to him, his warm hand clasped firmly in hers. The beeping heart monitor. The squish, squish of the ventilator as it helped him breathe.

God, just get me there quick.

Don Roberto Huerta had been life-flighted to Managua, where he could get the best care money could buy. Looking down at the familiar landscape far below, Sofia calculated the time she had left to get to his bedside. Maybe twenty minutes. Forested land transitioned to tobacco fields and then to the cityscape of Managua. The plane skidded across the runway and taxied toward a waiting car. Julian, her pseudo-uncle, stood next to the company SUV. His stoic face gave nothing away.

Wordlessly, he opened the door to the backseat.

“How is he, Julian?”

He shook his head and looked away, obviously choked up. “Señorita Sofia…”

Fear crushed the air from Sofia’s chest. She wondered if she was having a heart attack. “It’s bad,” she concluded flatly.

Julian lowered his gaze. His white knuckles confirmed the worst.

“I’m so sorry, Ms. Sofia.”

Stunned, she sank into the back seat. Her father was dead. How was that possible?

Beyond the noisy thud of her pulse pounding in her ears, she heard her bags being stowed, the driver’s door closing, the tires gathering speed on the tarmac.

“What happened?” she asked numbly.

“They took your father off life support this morning. The doctor said he had no…” Julian tapped his head and mumbled something.

“No what?” When no answer came, she said, “Take me to my father, Julian. I want to see him.”

Sofia tucked a few errant strands of hair behind her ear. The warm, moist breeze had picked up and Sofia could smell rain. The small chapel suddenly seemed huge in front of her. The golden flicker of candlelight danced through the windows taunting her, beckoning her to enter. Sofia stood frozen in place and wondered if she could handle seeing her father, dead. A man so loving and full of life when she left for her trip to the United States, now lay beyond the simple wooden doors, never to take another breath. The priest had honored her request and promised to leave the church open so she could pay her respects in private. Now, her lips quivered, her feet refusing to move forward as her reserve started to crumble. While Sofia had a reputation for being made of ice when it came to business—a reputation she wanted to maintain—her inner composition was far from cold. This would be the only time she could grieve her father in the way she wanted.

Privately.

The small gravel crunched and popped under her high heels, each step louder than the last, until finally she reached the tile steps that led up to the church. She looked down at the red and blue serpentine pattern, boxed in by the cement grout, the pattern repeating until it finally met the wall of the church. She knew she was trying to distract herself as she admired the tile, but she knew what she had to do. She had to force herself to focus as she struggled to put one foot in front of the other until she stood before massive barriers between her and her father. Sofia jammed her purse under her arm, wiped her eyes, and stiffened her spine. She wrestled with the bulk of the door, heaving its weight against her shoulder. A sliver of light peeked out between the slabs of oak and leaked past the barrier, memories flooding past her with the smell of incense. She could see a younger version of herself in her youth kneeling on the prayer bench every Sunday morning. The door rested on her back, the weight of it pushing her farther into the church as if the hand of god was moving her toward her destiny. It closed with a thud behind her. The cool, cavernous interior was a sharp contrast to the warm, humid night that was being held at bay outside.

Eighteen pews lined the left and right sides, framing the large center aisle. She’d counted them repeatedly, squirming on those Sunday mornings. By twos, by threes, forward and backward, anything to keep her mind off the constant humming of prayers offered for the living, the dead, for good fortune, and penance that occurred the week before.

She recognized the large velvet clad confessional booth like a good friend, having spent a good many hours confessing her youthful indiscretions. The dark box with heavy curtains hid the occupant from the prying eyes of other church parishioners. Inside the dark room was a prayer bench and a pull screen opposite her face. When she knelt in front of it to confess her sins, she never saw the priest on the other side. Only hearing his voice was scary for a young child. All of this just so she could get a tiny wafer the next day. As she aged, so did her confessional sins. Hitting her brother, spitting in the fields, and when she had little to confess she started to make stuff up. Then she had something to confess the next time she sat in the confessional. The guilt had been too much, so she finally had to come clean. The priest admonished her for lying and gave her six Our Fathers and twelve Hall Marys, then asked her why she’d made up sins to confess. She sat in the confessional and shrugged her shoulders. The silence finally weighed on the priest and he dismissed her. The truth was something she wasn’t ready to divulge—at least not to a priest—and she wouldn’t for years.

Her gaze traveled to her left and to the simple casket directly in front of her, just in front of the altar. A small wooden prayer bench sat in front of the casket. She’d expected to pay her respects at home, but RJ had them move their father from the house to the church for the funeral tomorrow. His reason was bullshit: he didn’t want his kids disturbing their father, or accidently knocking him over, or some other crap. If he acted like a parent, he wouldn’t have to worry about accidents. RJ was an ass and his kids, well… She shook her head and pushed his family drama from her mind.

She was deliberately stalling.

A tight swallow, squeezing her lips together, she walked forward. The heady smell of incense burned her nostrils. A cold sweat swept over her body and the click of her heels on the polished tile cut through the silence of the church. The prayer candles were all lit, in memory of her father she was sure. Her chest heaved as she struggled to take a breath as each step moved her closer to her father. The lid had been left open and she could start to see his soft features. If she didn’t know better, she would have just thought he was resting. She’d seen that face before. After a long afternoon in the factory, he’d catch a quick nap—resting his eyes, he often told her when she’d caught him in his office asleep.

Her hands rested on the end of the casket. At first, she could only stare at her father. She couldn’t find anything wrong with him, and then she shifted her gaze and looked over his shoulder to the right side of his head. A dark bruise, trying to hide under a thin layer of makeup, had etched its way just behind his ear. Her stomach lurched and she fell to the prayer bench. She crossed herself and her head dipped, and her shoulder sagged under the weight of the final acknowledgement that her father was in fact, gone.

“Oh, Father,” she whispered. Her plea, soft as it was, echoed around her. She rose on her knees and reached for her father’s hand and clutched it tightly. “What am I going to do without you?”

She rested her head on her arm and sobbed as she still clutched his hand. He’d been the one to encourage her to start her own cigar line, to tell her that the only way she’d be taken seriously was to work her way from the bottom up. He’d shared stories of his father’s life in Cuba as a young man, and his migration from the communist state to Nicaragua and the culmination of that journey. His greatest accomplishment, as he was always asked and answered, was finding someone, the love of his life, that would marry a poor upstart such as himself and the beautiful children she gifted him. Her father felt the same way about her mother, and told Sofia many times she would feel the same way when she finally found the love of her life. Doubtful, Sofia thought, looking down at her father. He always said the same thing whenever they talked about family: every Huerta was born with cigars running through their veins.

Thirty-five years wasn’t enough. She felt cheated.

She stood and walked around the casket, then leaned down, kissed his forehead, and stroked his thick, graying hair. A tear fell on his face and then another, and another. Her throat tightened, almost choking her. Fear fingered its way into her thoughts. Whom would she turn to for advice, for help, for the fatherly hug he offered without judgment when she doubted her decisions?

Her head tilted back, and before she could stop herself she offered god a demented groan and screamed, “Why? Why would you rip someone so loved from their family?” A damnation was in order but her father, a godly man, wouldn’t allow it, even in death.

“Why?” she said again as she threw herself over the casket, sobs spilling out of her.

RJ stood at the window of the church watching his sister expel her grief. He wanted to feel bad, but he just couldn’t raise enough emotion. Besides, he was the one who’d had to make the tough decisions when the doctors broke the bad news about Don Roberto’s brain damage. His father could have been kept alive by machines, but for what? He was not going to awaken and greet his daughter, so RJ could not see the point in delaying the inevitable. He looked down at his hand and let an evil grin cross his lips. He had held his father’s life in his hands, and he took some satisfaction knowing it was a circumstance that the old man would never want to find himself in.

Sofia’s hands, yes.

His, no.

A man’s decision was left to the only man in the Huerta household and he had made it, whether Sofia liked it or not. She’d always been their father’s favorite; now, she had no one. Through a cruel twist of fate, the playing field had been leveled and now they stood as equals. He would finally have an equal say in the business empire their family had built over two generations. Their holdings went beyond Huerta Cigars and the plantation established almost over three-quarters a century ago. There was a rum plant, and Crema, the ice cream company their father had started.

RJ had been a glorified errand boy for all of the companies at different times, but he’d shown his father he was leadership material. RJ had turned the rum plant around and made it into the profitable corporation it was today. Negotiating export deals with twenty different countries and a huge agreement with a big-box beverage company in the United States had seen it through the downturn in the world economy. Several other companies hadn’t survived the crash, and RJ had seized on the opportunity to buy them for pennies on the dollar. Expanding Huerta’s holdings and moving the needle on their influence in Nicaragua was all his doing, not Sofia’s, and he had to remind his father often. RJ had finally twisted his father’s arm into admitting he’d been right and could handle a Huerta business venture. He had pressed his father to let him run Huerta Cigars, but the old man wouldn’t relent. Instead, he’d cut RJ off from the business, telling him to be happy with what he had because it could easily be taken away.

Bastard.

Now, one of them would have the opportunity to prove the old man wrong and he was certain once the will was read, he’d be victorious and Sofia would be out. She couldn’t manipulate their father anymore. Those days were gone, and with them, her power. The business world was all about winners, and he would finally be able to prove to everyone he had what it took to lead Huerta to bigger things. RJ sat up straighter. He knew all eyes were on him. People would be coming to him for advice just as they had with his father. If they were lucky, he’d do business with them, but only if they paid him the respect he was due. The days of him being a doormat were over, and he was going to let the world know that fact once he assumed his rightful place on the Huerta throne. He wasn’t above flaunting his newfound position under some people’s noses. In fact, he would take great joy in watching them grovel, begging for his scraps.

As for Sofia, perhaps he would ship her off to the US to work on market expansion or send her on a publicity tour around the world—s**t, he didn’t want her acting like the company rock star. If she was lucky he’d let her keep her cigar brand, but only if she fell in line. Otherwise, he’d help her find a role she could live with. Perhaps he’d get her one of those little push carts for ice cream and she could hawk their product to tourists along the beach. Naw, that might be too good for her. He’d love to see her in an apron cleaning toilets at the factory. In fact, he’d pay to see her on her knees scrubbing the porcelain god.

RJ hesitated, tempted to stay in the church a little longer and revel in his sister’s pain, but he had a speech to prepare for the funeral tomorrow. Once they’d dispensed with the will, he’d take his place as the rightful heir to the Huerta Company and then he’d dispense with his sister’s nonsense.