Cristiano turned to me. “This is where you get off the ride.”
That was it? I’d come for more, though I couldn’t say what exactly. Was I willing to witness torture? And if so, what holes would it fill within me to watch men crucified for a decade-old crime?
Even as their gazes burned into me, Cristiano and I locked eyes—until the eldest of the four shook his chains. Cristiano turned to him. His gray eyes morphed from dull to expressive as he tried to tell us something from behind his gag.
Alejandro and Eduardo exchanged a look. Cristiano nodded once. “Let him speak.”
Eduardo ripped the tape off his mouth. The man stretched his jaw but otherwise seemed unphased. “Soy Vicente,” he said hoarsely. “I am—”
“Vicente Valverde,” Cristiano said. “The patriarch.”
“Sí. I knew Costa. I can tell you everything you want to know, since I made the cursed deal myself.”
At the mention of my father’s name, I stepped forward. “What deal?”
“I must say,” Cristiano said, taking my elbow to draw me nearer to him, “knowing your reputation, I thought you’d be the last to crack. Not the first.”
Vicente grunted. “I’m not getting out of here alive. There’s no point trying to save myself.” He twisted in his restraints to make eye contact with the other two men his age, and an agreement seemed to pass between them. “I’ll tell you the whole truth on one condition.”
Eduardo laughed with such exaggeration, he showed off a missing molar. “He’s setting conditions, boss. This should be good.”
Cristiano cocked his head at Vicente. “Go ahead.”
“Kill me quickly once you have what you want—but spare my grandson and brothers. They’re the only remaining members of my family.”
Eduardo laughed again, and Alejandro joined in.
“Why would I agree to that?” Cristiano asked.
“My family advised against my strategy. They warned me it could fail and backfire—but I was in charge, and I made the call.” With a curt nod, Vicente added, “My grandson was just a boy when this happened. He’s only seventeen.”
Seventeen? My palms sweat, but I kept from wiping them on my shorts so I wouldn’t appear nervous.
“All his life, he’s been forced into hiding and poverty,” Vicente said, “and he has potential. Let them live, and they would be indebted to you. They could be great soldiers.”
“Fuck you,” Cristiano said, his back going rigid. “Tienes huevos—you have the nerve to ask for mercy? I spent eleven years of my life in hiding, and I started them in poverty, because of you.”
The teenager twisted in his chains. I wasn’t used to seeing such fright in someone’s eyes. Most people in this world had already been inured to this kind of thing, but like me, he was clearly in new territory.
“My grandson is fascinated with this world but has never been allowed to be a part of it.” Vicente became more animated as his pride shone through. “Instead, he put his energy into computers. He can’t fight, I admit. But he can find things on the Internet.”
Cristiano wouldn’t kill a teenager who’d done nothing wrong. I wouldn’t let him. Would I? As my eyes moved between each of them, I couldn’t help seeing the poetic justice in taking from Vicente as he’d taken from me.
Cristiano walked toward the wide-eyed teenager and looked him up and down. “What’s his name?”
“Gabriel.”
“Tell us everything,” Cristiano said, turning back to Vicente, “and my wife may decide Gabriel’s fate.”
Had I been alone, I would’ve gulped. I wasn’t strong enough for that yet—to pull the trigger when there was gray area, even when it needed to be done. Was that what it meant to stand by Cristiano’s side? To deal revenge where it was owed, and make decisions that I may never discover to be right or wrong?
It was those things, but maybe it was also about knowing when to pull back. There was strength in walking away, and in forgiveness, too.
For the boy, maybe—but not the others.
“Unchain me,” Vicente said.
“Keep his wrists and ankles bound.” Cristiano grabbed a lightweight, plastic patio chair from one corner of the room and stuck it in the spot where Vicente had been standing.
The old man eased into it, rolling his neck a few times. “Come closer, Natalia Cruz,” he said.
My hands tingled. He said my name like un abuelo beckoning his granddaughter, as if he’d always known me. Cristiano returned to my side and put a hand to my upper back to guide me toward the old man.
Vicente peered up, looking between the two of us. “When your parents fell, Cristiano, there was nobody to take over the cartel. You boys were too young. I wanted de la Rosa’s territories. But Costa had the same thought. So we went to war over them.”
“I remember,” Cristiano said.
Cristiano’s presence, and his big, warm palm on my back, gave me the security to ask questions. “Who won?”
“It’s not so simple,” Vicente said. “Costa was more powerful, and he succeeded at first, taking jurisdiction over enough turf to push us out—but with his own business expanding faster than ever, and your grandfather no longer around to help, it became too much for him to handle. He started losing control. We got hungrier, fought harder, and at one point, we held the majority. Then we lost it. Back and forth, this went on. An epic turf war that lasted eight years.”
My jaw dropped. “Eight years?”
I looked to Cristiano, who confirmed the story with a nod. “You were only one when it started,” he told me.
“And nine when it ended,” I said quietly. Nine years old when I’d looked up from the floor at blood-splattered boots. When I’d said goodnight to my mother for the last time.
“For eight years, I watched my men die,” Vicente said. “First, mules, runners, then hermanos, cousins, friends, their parents, their children. It had to end. I was losing too many people. My livelihood suffered.”
I shifted feet. “How did it end?”
He glanced at the ground, lifting up and resettling in the chair. “Your father’s no saint, you know. He has taken out entire bloodlines.”
Cristiano slid his hand up to my shoulder. “Answer her.”
Vicente raised his haunted gray eyes to me. “It was business. It wasn’t personal. Until, of course, it was.”
Chills spread down my bare legs. I stuck my hands in the pockets of my hoodie. “What do you mean?”
“Everyone knew Costa had one weakness, and one weakness only. With my cartel dwindling and on the verge of collapsing, I had to make a bold move and take it all, or we’d die off.”
I knew what was coming. Despite craving answers for so long, looking brutal truth in the face proved difficult. I wanted to turn away until Cristiano squeezed my shoulder reassuringly, even as his voice carried threat. “Continue,” he ordered.
“We took out the hit on Bianca,” Vicente said. “We hired the sicario, and we saw it through to the end.”
His confession thickened the already dank air in the small, grimy chamber. That was it. The final pieces in the puzzle of her death. Nothing all that remarkable. An explanation too small to do her vibrant life justice. A story I’d heard too many times—a grab at power that resulted in lives lost. I gulped around the lump rising in my throat. “Why?” I asked, hating how my voice cracked. “Why did she have to die?”
“To incapacitate your father,” Vicente said simply. “Everyone knew how much he cared for her, and that her death would cripple him. So I formed my plan around that.” The chains around his wrists clinked as he rested his elbows on his thighs. “Immediately after the hit, we expected Costa to do one of two things. One, he’d fall into a grief so deep, he’d barely notice our invasion until it was complete. And by then, it would be too late.”
“And the second?” Cristiano asked.
“Draw him out.” Vicente slowly lifted his eyes to my husband, tilting his head as he peered at Cristiano.
When
he didn’t proceed, Cristiano asked, “Meaning?”
“What would you do if someone took your Natalia from you? How far would you go?” Vicente asked, pausing. “And how easy of a target would you become?”
Cristiano stiffened behind me, taking a moment to respond. “Bianca’s assassination would send Costa into a tailspin. He’d lose control,” he said slowly, working through it. “React out of passion, not logic—lash out, become vulnerable, and get himself killed.”
Vicente nodded. “I admit, I violated an unspoken rule amongst cartels back then—you don’t touch a fellow kingpin’s family. But I was desperate. I did what I had to do to save my people.”
I fisted my hands in my pockets to try to stem the tremble making its way through me. I understood his reasoning better than I should. Being a liability to Cristiano and to my father had almost gotten me killed. “Look around,” I said. “You didn’t save them.”
“No. Because Costa didn’t expose himself to retaliation as we’d hoped. He holed up in his castle to grieve, but he surrounded himself with guards and advisors”—Vicente shifted his eyes to me—“keeping his young daughter close in the aftermath.”
Cristiano’s hand moved to the back of my neck, under my hairline. I pulled at my collar. Cristiano was sweating, too, but Vicente most of all. “That doesn’t explain why you left,” Cristiano said.
“Costa’s business carried on usual,” Vicente said. “It got even stronger, as you both know. And we grew weaker. We’d missed any opportunity to attack, and going up against him at that point would’ve been a losing battle. So it made sense to pack up what was left of my family and relocate . . .”
“Relocate.” Cristiano snorted. “You disappeared, practically overnight.”
He nodded. “Because there was evidence tying me to Bianca’s murder.”
“That was reason enough to flee?” I asked.
“Think of your husband,” he said to me. “Of how he’d react in Costa’s shoes. If he’d do all this to avenge you mother, what would he do for you?”
I didn’t have to consider it too hard. Cristiano had pursued the sicario for a decade so he could bring him to my father’s feet to get his head blown off.
“I’d weed through every person I had to, yanking out the rotting roots of the cartel responsible—until they were gone,” Cristiano said, and under his breath, added, “as I will do to Belmonte-Ruiz.”
Vicente nodded. “When I learned the evidence existed, I knew we had to get out of town as fast as possible. If the truth came out, Costa would hunt me, and every member of my family, until we’d been eradicated.” He paused for a hacking cough against his shoulder. “It was the right choice. Especially since I heard, later, that Bianca was raped that day. I’m sorry, Natalia. That was never supposed to happen.”
I swayed, or the ground underneath me did. I’d suspected that. Truthfully, deep down, I’d known it. Over time, I’d come to understand her ripped dress and the signs of her struggle for what it was. But nobody had ever said it to me outright.
Cristiano’s held me up by my biceps and said against my ear. “Stay strong. For that alone, Vicente will die. Today, if he’s lucky. Or over time, if you decide he’s not.”
Vicente glanced over at his brothers. “I’ve told you all I know. I’ve answered your questions.” He turned his face forward. “So will you meet my condition, Natalia? Spare my family. Please. Gabriel is innocent. My brothers opposed the assassination.”
Still reeling from everything I’d just learned, my legs threatened to give out. Mercy? He was in no place to ask for it. I was in no place to give it. I’d gotten what I’d come for. What Cristiano had sought for me. Closure. But it didn’t feel as if anything had ended. I could finally picture clearly what had happened in my mother’s final moments, and it sickened me. The fear she must’ve felt—it moved through me now, leaving my stomach weak and my head swimming.
A stranger in the bedroom she’d shared with my father.
“I’ll take her upstairs,” Cristiano said, somewhere in the distance. “We won’t decide anything now.”
“Claro,” Alejandro answered.
Cornering her. Violating her.
Before or after he’d raided the safe? And why?
Where had he found her? In her bathroom, by the bed? Had she been in the closet when he’d suddenly appeared from the tunnel . . .?
I let Cristiano guide me toward the exit, unable to see through my haze of mounting questions.
Until . . .
“Wait.” I halted before we reached the door, planting my feet where they were. “Wait.”
“¿Qué pasa, mi amor?” Cristiano asked. “What is it?”
I turned back to face Vicente. Cristiano released me but stayed close. “Only my mother, father, and I knew about the secret passageway the assassin used to enter the bedroom. How did you discover it?”
“Ah. Well. That part is simple.” Vicente’s gaze traveled up, over my head, and fixed on Cristiano. “Someone was more than happy to leave the secret door unlocked for us. To carry out the hit, we needed a little help from the inside. And we found it—in a de la Rosa brother.”
No. Goose bumps started at my scalp and blazed over my skin. Cristiano, my mind said. He’d had some of the highest security clearance at the time. For more than eleven years, I’d blamed him for this crime. I’d had no other explanation. It would be easy for me to slot him into the role as guilty. I turned my head over my shoulder to look at him—my husband.
Cristiano stared back at me. He swallowed but didn’t deny it. I was learning to read him better. A blank expression that once might’ve come off as indifference, was now patience for how long it’d taken me to get here. Anguish that I might not. Struggle not to declare his innocence—and belief in me that I’d arrive at the truth on my own.
My parents had trusted him. He’d been loyal to them. He’d brought me all of this to avenge my mother’s death. I could make up some of my faithlessness in him by having confidence that he’d never have cooperated with the Valverdes.
But if he hadn’t, that left only one answer. And not only did it turn my life into a lie—it called everything about me, as a person, into question. My choices, my feelings, my judgment.
The ache of the truth permeated throughout me, numbing my hands, stiffening my neck as I turned forward again to address Vicente.
I barely heard myself speak the name that I’d once revered, but which continued to fall even further from its long smashed pedestal each day. And now, it seemed, it had finally hit the bottom.
“Diego.”
13
Natalia
In the dark and dank underbelly of the mountain, Vicente Valverde confirmed the truth. “Diego de la Rosa let us into the Cruz compound,” he said from a plastic chair that wobbled on an uneven dirt floor. “But then, he turned my plan against me.”
“How?” Cristiano’s question rumbled through the small room.
“An assassin only works for the highest bidder. He sold your brother proof that I was behind the murder, and Diego threatened to expose me if I didn’t leave.” He took a rattling breath as his expression darkened, the first flame of anger I’d seen in him yet. “I should’ve known if the bastard would betray Costa, the man who’d taken him in as a boy, he’d turn on me, too.”
“And us,” Cristiano said.
Vicente was only another in the long line of those Diego had wronged.
But at least with him, it’d been business. Not for me. This was deeply personal.
“One of the biggest mistakes I’ve ever made was underestimating Diego de la Rosa,” Vicente said. “We spread rumors of our deaths and hid our identities so he’d never come looking for us.”
“You were a liability to him,” Cristiano said. “If anyone found out Diego had helped . . .”
“Diego’s life would be over.” After another coughing fit, he turned his head and spit in the dirt. “With Bianca’s death, Diego ingratiated himself to Costa,” he said
and wiped the corner of his mouth with his bare shoulder. “He rose in the ranks of the Cruz cartel. Became a trusted advisor. And wrapped his grip so tightly around Costa’s daughter that she’d do anything for him—including turn against her father if he pulled the right strings.”
My face heated as all gazes turned to me. I’d happily tangled myself in a snake’s grip and had never even felt the squeeze. Everyone in the room knew it, too.
Including Cristiano.
I’d been a fool.
With my mortification, tears heated the backs of my eyes. I couldn’t stay in that room any longer without breaking down. And I’d never give the Valverdes the satisfaction.
I’d heard enough anyway.
I turned and walked past Cristiano, hurrying down the underground hallway that too closely resembled a tunnel, through the proverbial museum of body parts, and climbed the stairs.
My fists shook. I didn’t think of going anywhere, but my feet carried me toward the house.
How could it be? How?
Diego had held my hand at my mother’s funeral and many times since. He’d picked out my dress for the service and worked with the state to get paperwork in order. Later, he’d helped Papá with the details of arranging the elaborate mausoleum that would become my mother’s final resting place.
Maybe my blindness to his true character could’ve been excused then, while I’d been grieving.
But for the eleven years after? What excuse did I have for that?
I reached for the door handle to walk in the house. My hand trembled along with the rest of me, the threat of sobs immobilizing me. I fought to hold them in. I couldn’t break down here, in front of the staff, and where anyone from the Badlands could come across me. They, and Cristiano, depended on me to be strong.
They were fools to depend on me at all.
If I believed this to be true about Diego, then I had to admit a much scarier truth.
I’d been tricked and manipulated to the point I didn’t even know what parts of me were real, and what had been molded by Diego.
Violent Triumphs (White Monarch Book 3) Page 13