by Elise Noble
“Why is that such a difficult fucking question? And I know you can speak because you told me to drive the wrong way towards Miami.”
A third needle had no effect either, so Ana removed the cartridge from the Taser, jabbed the prongs into his skin nice and wide apart, and zzzzzzzapped for five seconds. Ten. Fifteen. Mercurio pissed himself, but he still didn’t speak.
What next? They could start sandpapering his skin off or rub cut chillis in his eyes, but Emmy had a horrible feeling that wouldn’t make a difference. She checked his pulse. Right now, her heart was beating faster than his, and if she started on him with a knife, he’d probably bleed out. The man was inhuman, and she felt a grudging admiration for him. If only he hadn’t shot Eduardo, she’d probably have invited him out for a beer.
“Alaric, could you be an angel and find a car battery and a soldering iron?”
“What the hell do you plan to do?”
Emmy tried a smile. “Look on the bright side—it won’t make a big mess.”
Alaric sighed and climbed the stairs, leaving Emmy to turn to Sofia.
“Go for the Sodium Pentothal.”
What did they have to lose? If he lost consciousness, they’d just have to wait for him to come round then try again.
“I thought you’d never ask. What’s the car battery for?”
“My backup plan.”
In truth, Emmy had just wanted Alaric out of the way. If Mercurio did start talking, Black’s secrets were none of her ex’s business.
Sofia started with a low dose of sodium thiopental, leaving the cannula in Mercurio’s arm to increase the amount as necessary. Ana sat cross-legged on a folding chair, looking bored. At one point, she gazed longingly at the electrical socket.
“Where do you live?” Emmy asked.
“Cali.”
The word came out reluctantly, whispered through lips that didn’t want to let it go. And it was a lie, Emmy was sure of it. But Mercurio had spoken, which was a step in the right direction at least.
“Whereabouts do you live? Which neighbourhood?”
“Aguablanca.”
“Who lives with you?”
“Alone.”
“And what do you do for work in Cali?”
“Student. English language.”
“What’s your name?”
“Lorenzo.”
“Lorenzo what?”
“Bonilla.”
“That’s the fucking airport, you prick. Where were you born?”
“Bogotá.”
“For an English student, you don’t seem to have much of a grasp of the language.”
Oh, they were back to glaring again. Fia depressed the plunger on the syringe, and Mercurio got another hit of the good stuff.
“Maybe we should just try a bottle of Patrón,” Ana muttered. “Men never shut up after tequila shots.”
“Do you want to feed him the lime, or should I?”
Mercurio’s eyelids drooped slightly, and Emmy tried again.
“Where do you live?”
“Medellín.”
“Be more specific.”
“Sabaneta.”
A quieter neighbourhood outside of the city centre. That sounded more plausible.
“Who lives with you?”
“Justicia. My dog.”
A sicario with a dog named Justice? Oh, the irony.
“What do you do for a living?”
“I kill people.”
Okay, it was safe to say they were getting to the truth now.
“What’s your name?”
“Rafael da Silva.”
Silver? Quicksilver. That was a nice touch.
“And where were you born, Rafael da Silva?”
“Valento.” He began laughing. “But you’ll never fucking find it, because it’s gone. All gone. Everybody’s dead.”
His eyes slowly closed, and Mercurio fell silent once again.
“Oops,” Sofia said.
Holy fuck.
CHAPTER 21 - EMMY
SHITTING HELL.
NOW Emmy had a problem. A big problem. About six feet six and two hundred and thirty pounds, to be precise. Stuffing him into Alaric’s car boot hadn’t been an easy task.
And much as Emmy wanted to put a bullet through Mercurio’s head, she couldn’t kill him because he was probably the only person on the planet who might be able to shed any light on her husband’s past. Talk about an awkward situation.
“Now what?” Fia asked.
“I don’t know, okay? I’m thinking.”
“Genetics is a funny thing,” Ana said. “You turned out like your father, and you barely even met him.”
“I did not turn out like my father!” Emmy snapped.
“Psssht. You’re standing over a man with a knife in your hand.”
Okay, so perhaps now wasn’t the best time to have that particular argument.
“And Rafael da Silva is exactly like Black,” Ana continued. “Look at him.”
Emmy did. They weren’t identical in appearance—da Silva had a narrower face, a straighter nose, a sharper jaw, darker skin—but the eyes, the build, the mouth, those were all the same. And the attitude was identical.
“We could give him another dose of sodium thiopental when he wakes up,” Fia suggested. “If you want, we can carry on all day. He’ll feel like shit for the rest of the week, but it won’t have any lasting effects.”
They could, but everything had changed. If Emmy was to keep da Silva alive, she needed to change her tactics. Leaving him duct-taped to a weight bench for the foreseeable future wasn’t a viable option. He’d need food, and water, and bathroom breaks, and… Yeah. Not happening.
The pain thing wasn’t working so well anyway, and if the same blood pumped in his veins as in Black’s, that wasn’t entirely a surprise. Emmy needed to try a different tactic, one that involved negotiating with the man who’d tried to kill Eduardo, much as it pained her.
“No. No more drugs.”
She paced the basement until da Silva started to stir, then fetched another of the folding chairs and set it next to his head, straddling it so she could lean on the back and look down at his face.
“Welcome back, Rafael da Silva.”
He closed his eyes momentarily. “Joder.”
Well, at least they weren’t back to the silent treatment.
“So, Valento, eh?” Emmy took a deep breath and crossed her fingers. “Did anyone ever tell you about the twins?”
Despite all the tape, da Silva visibly jolted, and Emmy felt like punching the air.
“What do you know about the twins?” he whispered.
“Possibly a little more than you.”
“Tell me.”
Emmy shook her head. “That’s not how this works, sweetheart. Give and take. You have something I want, and I have something you want.”
“You are also an assassin, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Have you ever given up the name of a client?”
“No. But then again, I’ve never been duct-taped to a weight bench by three other assassins.”
“Sicarias? All three of you? Fuck.”
“I just want the name. There won’t be any comeback on you, because I’ll kill your client personally.”
“Why do you care about Eduardo Garcia? He’s a drug lord. They all deserve to die.”
“Because Eduardo’s the closest thing to a father I’ve ever known. When I was at the lowest point in my entire life, and I’d lost somebody very close, Eduardo went to war for me to make things right. No questions asked.”
“But he’s been responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent people.”
“Actually, he’s pretty picky about who he kills.”
“What about the drugs he sells?”
“People choose to take those of their own free will. It’s supply and demand. Eduardo’s one of the better guys in the coke trade, and he’s getting out of the drugs game, in any case. Almost half of his business is
legitimate now. But do you know how many guys are fighting to take his place? He can’t just quit cold turkey because there’d be all-out carnage.”
“You sound as though you’ve discussed this with him.”
“I have. At length. Why do you hate him so much? Because what I’m getting from you is more than a simple cash-for-killing vibe.”
“Comparing one drug lord to another is like comparing a cobra with a rattlesnake.” Da Silva tried to shrug, but his shoulders barely moved. “It’s nothing personal. Drug lords, drug dealers—they’re all the same. Cogs in a machine that causes the deaths of millions. The world’s better off without them, and my goal is to terminate as many as I can before I leave this earth feet first.”
“That’s a suicide mission.”
“Nobody lives forever.”
“Why are you so bitter?”
“Because my family was wiped out by the drug war. They stole my life, my parents’ lives, my grandparents’ lives, so now I kill them in return. Why should they get to live?”
“The twins?”
“They disappeared during the first invasion. Nobody ever found their bodies. My father spent years searching the forest for their remains, and my grandmother never got over the loss.”
“Your grandmother?”
“Their mother.”
Holy freaking hell. Emmy had been right! And that made da Silva Black’s…nephew?
“And your father was their brother?”
“Yes.”
“You said the first invasion. There was a second? Was that what happened eleven years ago?”
He nodded. “The first invasion took my grandfather, the twins, and half of the village. The second took my parents and almost everyone else.”
“Almost everyone? Who was left?”
Now da Silva fell silent once more. Dammit, Emmy had been so close. Time to change tack again.
“What were the twins’ names?”
“You don’t know?”
“Not their birth names. Only their new names.”
Da Silva sucked in a breath, no easy task given his bounds. A spark of hope lit in his eyes. “They’re still alive?”
“One of them is. The other died three years ago. I’m sorry.”
And Emmy genuinely was. Rafael da Silva may kill people for money, and he may have shot Eduardo, but she saw now that he was human. And she felt his pain.
“And the other?” he asked.
“First, their names.”
Give and take, remember?
“Mathias and Emilio. The other?”
Emmy allowed herself a small smile. “I’m married to him.”
CHAPTER 22 - EMMY
“YOU’RE MARRIED TO one of the da Silva twins? My uncles?”
“I’m pretty sure of it, yes. Except he’s not called da Silva.”
Now Mercurio’s eyes narrowed. “Then how do you know this?”
“I didn’t until today when I sat in the interview room and looked you in the eye. You have the same damn eyes. I’m not sure if my husband realised the similarity or not—I mean, how often do we study our own eyes? I look into his every day, so it was obvious, but—”
“He was there? Today? At the precinct?”
Emmy nodded. “Behind the glass.”
“So close…” Those dark eyes closed again. “What must he think of me?”
“If you’d tried to kill anyone but Eduardo, he’d probably be pretty proud. He’s in the same line of business as we are. But as it stands, I’d say it’s a toss-up who he’s more pissed off at—you or me.”
“Me,” da Silva said. “Since I held you hostage.”
“No, sweetheart, you didn’t. He knows that was my fault as much as yours. Why do you think I left my pen on the table?”
“You knew what I planned?”
“As soon as you took that paper clip. Don’t worry; I’ve been at this a few years longer than you.” Why was Emmy trying to make him feel better? Mercurio had nearly killed Eduardo, for fuck’s sake. This was an interrogation, not a pity party. “And you still haven’t answered my question. Who else from Valento is still alive?”
He ignored that. “How did you end up married to my uncle?”
“If I tell you that, will you answer?”
Silence reigned for a full minute, but finally, da Silva nodded. Yes, he could be lying, but in situations like this, Black was a man of his word, and Emmy had to trust that his nephew would be the same. She’d deal.
“The twins were taken separately, one by somebody in the drugs trade, and the other by a CIA agent who raised him in America as his son. That’s the man I married. He didn’t find any of this out until two and a half years ago, and when we visited Valento, there was nothing left.”
“You went there?”
“Last summer.”
“I haven’t been for over a decade.” Another pause. “Valento was a staging point for drugs to cross the Amazon between Colombia and Peru. A flashpoint. There was often fighting, and perhaps we should have left earlier, but it was our home.” His eyes darkened, and memories swirled in the haunted depths. “Six of us survived that day. Mama was sick—malaria, we think—and Papa went back for her. We buried them both in what was left of the churchyard. Me and my sister carried our grandma into the forest, and three of our neighbours escaped too.”
“Your grandma? From which side of the family?”
“Our father’s mother.” Black’s mother. “The other side of the family got wiped out years before. Our mother grew up in an orphanage.”
“Is your grandma still alive?”
“Yes.”
“Where is she?”
“Now? In a safe house.”
“And your sister? Is she with her?”
A new expression flickered across da Silva’s face. A mixture of pain and, for the first time, fear.
“Rafael? Where’s your sister?”
“I have no idea,” he whispered. “Those men in the warehouse… They were really Mafia?”
“You didn’t know?”
“No.”
“I figured it was another drugs hit.”
He shook his head. “I’ve never worked outside Colombia. Those men, they have my sister and one of the others from Valento.”
Oh, shit. The dead man in the warehouse… The girl da Silva had gone back inside for… It had been a rescue operation, not a hit.
“And you were trying to find them?”
“Yes.”
“The girl you carried out of the warehouse?”
“I’d never met her before.”
“Why were you at the warehouse in the first place? How did you know where to go?”
“My sister was wearing a tracker in her bracelet. But she doesn’t have it now. I saw it broken on the ground right before I got arrested.”
“You’re gonna have to start at the beginning with this.”
So he did. Over the next ten minutes, Rafael da Silva told the story of Isabella Morales and how Corazon had offered herself up as bait to rescue her. The girl was ballsy, Emmy had to give her that. And so was Rafael himself. He’d travelled to the US with no network and no backup and taken on the fucking Mafia. Maybe ballsy was the wrong word. Insane. Insane was a good word.
And he ended with a plea.
“I don’t care what you do to me. Whatever you hand out, I can take it. But please, let me find my sister and Isabella first. You have my word that I’ll come back afterwards and accept my fate.”
“No deal.”
Now Mercurio deflated. Before, he’d been tough, steely in his resolve, but Emmy had finally broken him. Victory didn’t feel as sweet as she’d anticipated.
“Here’s my offer. I’ve got the manpower and I’ve got the connections to help you, but in return, I want the name of the person who hired you to kill Eduardo.”
Fury still burned in Emmy’s gut, but deep down, she understood Mercurio was just a tool. She needed to redirect her anger, and she couldn’t make Corazon da Silva s
uffer for her brother’s mistake.
A full minute passed before he nodded. “Okay.”
“And my husband’s gonna want to meet his mother.”
“Okay.”
Thank goodness. Tempting though it was to do a victory dance, Emmy needed to move on with the new plan. How long had Corazon been in the wind? Two days now? A lot could happen in forty-eight hours, and for a girl in that situation, none of it was pleasant.
“I’m gonna cut you loose. You may be bigger than me, but it’s three against one.” Ana and Sofia had been standing silently, sentries by the door for the duration of Emmy’s questioning, but now they stepped forward. “And I assure you I know how to use this knife.”
“I believe you.”
“I also have a billion-dollar private army at my disposal, and if you cross me, I’ll hunt you to the ends of the fucking earth.”
Emmy slit the tape along each side of the bench, and Rafael rose to his feet, a giant mummy covered in silver bindings. The faint smell of urine drifted on the air, and Emmy realised they had a new problem.
“Where are my clothes?” Rafael asked.
She pointed to a tattered pile in the corner, and Ana held up the hotel mending kit.
“I may have been a bit cross when we first arrived,” Emmy said. “Sorry about the Taser. And the, uh, needles.”
He stared down from a foot above her, managing to look somehow majestic despite the circumstances.
“In your position, I’d have done the same thing. And my mentor used wood splinters instead of metal needles. Those stick.”
“Vicente? The dude with the plane? La Parca?”
“You have done your homework.”
“He trained you?”
“Along with my grandma.”
“Your grandma?”
Rafael smiled for the first time. Just a quick flash of teeth, but it was there. “She was a sicaria too. But I should probably mention that she relies on a wheelchair now. Her spinal cord was damaged in the first invasion. She can stand with sticks, but her muscles no longer work properly, so she can only manage a few steps.”
“La Leona?” Emmy guessed, recalling the details from Mack’s research.
“Get within two feet of her, and she’ll still kill you.” Rafael pulled at one end of the duct tape, grimacing when it tore out a clump of chest hair. “How am I supposed to get this off?”