The guilt of leaving the infant motherless along with the guilt of cheating on Sylvia had overcome Nico. He’d backed off and left the child alone to be raised by her grandmother. Until that day when Sylvia said she could not have children.
After begging Sylvia forgiveness for the affair, Nico said he’d recently gotten word that the girl was on her way to the United States. She might, in fact, already be there. He wanted Sylvia’s permission to bring the girl back to their home so they could raise her as their own.
To his surprise, Sylvia said that not only was it a wonderful idea but also that she would personally fly to California to meet the girl and bring her back to Mexico safely. Such a precious and important package could not be left to the lackeys who worked for Nico in the states, she said.
At her words, Nico thought he could not possibly love her more.
Anthony advised against it. When Nico disagreed, Anthony insisted on going to California to oversee the hand-off.
Meanwhile, Nico stayed home running the daily operations of his massive cartel, which were surprisingly similar to the tasks of the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Dealing with supply issues, personnel issues, taxes, manufacturing snafus … the list went on and on. Nico learned early on the importance of delegating, so it wasn’t as overwhelming as it could have been. But it kept him busy. Despite this, he spent the entire time that Sylvia and Anthony were gone in nervous anticipation.
It was only when Sylvia walked into their Mexican fortress alone that he learned what had happened. His daughter had been killed when one of his men—a Mexican-American named Garcia—had drawn attention from authorities cracking down on a child-trafficking ring.
Garcia, behind his back, had been selling unaccompanied children who crossed the border into America. If Garcia hadn’t already been dead, Nico would’ve flown to San Diego himself, risking the loss of everything, just to strangle the man with his own bare hands. The fury was nearly impossible to stifle. And underneath it lay a deep shame that he had entrusted so much to a fool.
Along with the crushing blow of learning his daughter was dead, Nico was beside himself that a man under his reign had been abusing and harming children. His own dead mother’s love may not have stopped him from being a criminal, but it would ensure he never harmed a hair on any child’s head.
Each year, he anonymously donated $2 million to organizations that helped children in his country. He tried to keep it secret, but rumors had swirled after one particularly large donation. That was why, despite being the most powerful drug lord possibly in the world, old women in Mexican churches still knelt to pray for his soul every day, working their worn and smooth rosaries through gnarled fingers and asking the dear Lord to bless Nico Morales.
But all of it had been a lie.
His marriage now seemed like a farce.
For years, Sylvia had taken to her bed and cried each month when her period came.
Now he knew that, years before, she’d secretly undergone surgery to have an IUD implanted.
Marriage was based on trust.
She’d lied to him for years. And she’d lied to him about Rosalie being dead. She’d sat there stonily and watched him grieve for a daughter he would never meet.
It was unconscionable.
The woman must never have loved him.
And in some ways that hurt the most.
4
I studied the woman on my laptop screen. There was nothing familiar about her. And she wasn’t trying to hide her face, instead looking right up at the camera pointing down at her.
But the fact was that somehow this woman had gotten into my secure building without any alarms sounding and made it to the fourth floor, ringing the fucking doorbell at midnight like it was a social visit.
If I hadn’t known better, the woman would have come across as a doddering grandmotherly type. She had on slacks, ballet flats, a cardigan sweater, and wire-rimmed glasses. But I could tell by the way the woman stood, poised and alert, that there was nothing weak or soft about her. I zoomed in. The tendons on the woman’s arms signified that she was in extraordinary shape. And there was a slight bulge under the cardigan on one side. She was packing heat.
I pressed the intercom button.
“The check’s in the mail,” I said.
The woman did not smile. I left the intercom open.
“Your downstairs neighbor might live if he gets help right away.” She had a slight accent. Nearly undetectable.
I released the button. “Fucking bitch.”
In one motion, I grabbed my cell phone and dialed 911.
As I did, I kept my eyes on the screen. The woman’s mouth was moving. She pressed the button to open the intercom again.
“…because seconds count, you might want to know where his body is hidden.”
“Fuck. You.” I said it as slowly as I could.
Behind me, I heard Rosalie’s door crack open. I turned. A sliver of Dante’s face poked out the open door. It swung open wider. He was holding a baseball bat. Django’s snout appeared at knee-height. He gave a loud sniff and then a small whine, sensing the tension in the air.
“911? Where is your emergency?” The voice in my ear startled me.
“There is an intruder in my building,” I said and reeled off the address. “The person is outside my front door and claims to have seriously injured one of my tenants. Please send an ambulance right away.”
Two people lived downstairs. Chris, who worked a 9-to-5 job, and Jonah. It was probably Jonah, who worked a late shift driving an Uber and would have been coming home right about now.
When the 911 dispatcher reassured me that police and emergency workers were on the way, I hung up. The whole conversation had felt awkward and strained.
I never brought the police into anything. Never.
I’d been betrayed by corrupt cops too many times.
If it wasn’t for Rosalie and Dante in the bedroom behind me, I would’ve opened my heavy steel door and faced the woman. I wasn’t afraid of anything she could do to me. If she had a gun, I’d shoot her first. If she had a knife, good luck with that. I was going on my third year of training in Italian armizare and gladiatura moderna. They were ancient Italian martial arts styles that incorporated daggers and longswords.
The only possible threat I couldn’t counter would be if she had an explosive device strapped to her chest and intended to blow us both to Kingdom Come. But her cardigan wasn’t that thick. The only thing it could possibly be concealing was a handgun.
I knew I could take her, but I held off, instead calling the police.
With her revelation that one of my tenants had been injured at her hands, I’d had no choice.
But I vowed that she would pay for that.
5
Not long after burying his wife, Nico decided to throw a party. The compound was lonely without Sylvia’s laughter and the trail of perfume she left behind her in vacant rooms.
He would invite the hoi polloi of Mexico City. The mayor. The police chief. A famous modern artist. His old friend who now ran the Mexico City Zoo. A few other random politicians. Several prominent businessmen. CEOs. Movie stars.
After the party, he would leave the fortress and retreat to his seaside hideaway. It wasn’t as heavily guarded, but it was a secret home that only Anthony and the most trusted members of his security detail knew about.
Even though there were at least two dozen armed men patrolling the grounds, each guest still was patted down and forced to walk through metal detectors to enter the property. They were led to a pool straight out of Hollywood casting. Nico had been inspired by the pool at Hearst Castle, but he’d adapted it to blend into his country’s terrain. The infinity pool seemed to pour off the side of the cliff. It was surrounded on one side by a jungle of wildflowers and tropical plants.
On the opposite side, a massive colonnade rose twenty feet into the sky, giving framed views of the valley where Mexico City lay, miles away.
Beyond the jungle area
surrounding the pool was a stone wall and an additional fence— electric—that enclosed five acres of wild terrain and contained one of Nico and Sylvia’s most prized possessions. While there were always rumors about what lay beyond the fence and wall, only very special guests saw it with their own eyes.
Tonight’s guests would be treated to something even more astonishing.
Waiters in tuxedos circulated, carrying trays of aperitifs and hors d'oeuvres. Music filtered out of speakers throughout the estate and its grounds.
Once everyone had arrived and had a drink in hand, Nico asked them all to be seated in the plush gold and pink chairs scattered around the patio.
Nico stood, facing his guests.
“Thank you for coming. As you know, I am still in mourning for my wife, Sylvia, who was taken from us too soon,” he said, looking down. “I have decided that the most fitting way to honor her is to take the money from her life insurance policy and do something that will benefit the children of Mexico City.”
People exchanged looks. He saw but did not falter in his speech.
“As you know, our city zoo is in dire need of both renovation and funding.”
The head of the zoo, Valeria Flores—an old friend, was sitting in the corner. She nodded, looking surprised. Several other people glanced her way.
“I intend to fix that.”
Flores smiled.
“But,” Nico continued, “there is something else about the zoo that needs to be fixed. I know that it has struggled to stay afloat over the years. It is exceedingly expensive to feed and house the creatures we have there. Our animal population has dwindled. And yet we are forced to charge the children of our country an exorbitant amount just to come view these remaining specimens.” He turned toward Valeria. “This is no fault of yours. I know you have worked hard to keep the zoo open, even sacrificing your own below-standard wages to do so.”
The woman nodded, tears clearly visible in her eyes.
“To honor Sylvia, who loved animals more than anything,” he said, thinking to himself, even more than people. “I have bought the zoo from the city. It will now be free to all residents of Mexico City.”
The applause began softly at first, then rose to a crescendo as people stood, clapping heartily.
“Thank you. Please be seated. There is more,” he said. He nodded. Men rushed in and set up red velvet ropes separating the stone walkway from the seated guests.
“With the help of our top wildlife experts,” Nico said, “we’ve traveled the world to procure animals that were injured or captured and can no longer live safely in the wild.”
The lights dimmed so the backyard was lit only by flickering fairy lights that cast it in a warm glow. The music dropped to a low, soothing murmur of instrumentals.
The crowd fell silent as a man came around the side of the house, dressed in a zookeeper’s uniform and leading a white Bengal tiger by a heavy gold leash. People gasped.
A woman dressed the same followed, leading a rare Mexican wolf whose eyes glowed gold as it surveyed the crowd.
Other animals were paraded before the guests, some led by leashes, others drawn by cages on wheels—a red kangaroo, a miniature sun bear, and a baby giraffe.
In the middle of it all, Nico got a text. It was from Anthony, who was sitting near a large bush of red and purple flowers. He glanced over at the man before reading the text.
“We think we found her. San Francisco. Carmela is on it.”
Carmela was one of his top operatives in California. She was ruthless and intelligent and blended into any crowd or any situation.
He sat back in his chair and relaxed, knowing with her on the job, his daughter would soon be home where she belonged.
6
Confident that the police and an ambulance were on their way, I opened up the intercom line again. “What do you want?”
“I mean you no harm.”
“You hurt one of my tenants.”
“The girl. She is coming with me.”
“Fuck you,” I repeated, this time with venom in my voice.
But my heart raced. This was about Rosalie. One of my greatest fears was suddenly knocking at my front door.
“She is not yours.”
I didn’t have an answer for that one. She was mine more than anything else in the whole world had ever been mine. And yet, this stranger was right. She wasn’t really mine.
“Leave before I take that gun you have under your cardigan and fucking shove it straight down your throat,” I said, keeping my voice low and calm.
The woman laughed. “Well, this wasn’t exactly how I thought it would go. Let’s talk woman to woman. Mother to mother.”
“Nothing’s stopping you,” I said.
“I want this to be as peaceful and easy for the child as possible,” she said.
“Well, you shouldn’t have fucking hurt my tenant. And you should’ve called before you showed up at my front door at midnight.”
“I wanted to wait until the girl was sleeping. This was the only time I knew for sure we could talk without her listening.”
I glared at the woman’s face on the screen. She was staring earnestly up at the camera.
“Who are you?” I said.
“I come as an envoy for the child’s father. To ask you to make this as easy a process as possible. We don’t want the child to be traumatized or feel as if she is forced to come home. The ideal situation is that nobody dies and that she realizes she has your blessing to go to her father’s house.”
My heart beat double-time. Rosalie’s father? The most powerful drug lord in the world, head of Mexico’s most deadly cartel, a man whom our government had listed on its Most-Wanted list, had found out that Rosalie was alive.
Icy fear raced through me.
The man was a ruthless killer. Why had he sent an older woman to come knocking on my door, asking nicely for Rosalie? It didn’t compute. The woman claimed she wanted to spare Rosalie any trauma. And maybe that was true. But still.
“Why would I give her to you? Why would he want her back now after all these years?”
“If you just open the door, we can talk like civilized people.”
“Hey lady, you started it this way, you can finish it this way. The time for civility is long past. That ship has sailed. You fucking hurt, maybe killed, one of my tenants to get into my building. I don’t trust you or believe a fucking word you have to say. Get the fuck out before I send a bazooka rocket through that steel door.”
I watched her carefully as I spoke. About halfway through my threats, her head turned, and she glanced behind her as if she heard something. I looked at another of the small windows on my computer screen and saw that an ambulance had just pulled up in front of my building. I reached over to unlock the front door of the building remotely. When I glanced back at the window showing the woman, she was kneeling down and placing a small, white piece of paper outside my door. She stood, then turned and ran down the stairs.
I watched as she rushed past the emergency personnel entering the building. One of the young guys gave her a look but then turned back. I punched the intercom button for the lobby about to scream for them to stop her, but as I watched them standing in the lobby, unsure of where to go, I realized my tenant’s life was more important right then than stopping that crazy bitch. Besides EMTs were there to help people not stop them. Where were the cops when you needed them?
I flung open my door and reached down for the piece of paper the woman had left, reading it as I raced down the stairs. It had two things written on it:
The first said, “Storage room.”
The second was an international phone number.
7
Long after the guests had left his party, Nico stood naked on his balcony, smoking a cigarette and looking out over the infinity pool. His phone dinged with a text. He looked down. It was from Anthony.
“We have confirmation. It is your daughter. It is only a matter of time now. I will keep you posted.”
Nico felt his chest swell with excitement. He wanted to pump his fist in the air. He wanted to pack a bag and leave for America right then. But he knew that it would take time and patience to bring the girl home to him. This was simply step one. But it still brought a wide smile to his face.
“Who is texting you in the middle of the night, viejo?” The word meant old man, but the way Valeria used it was also a term of endearment. He wasn’t offended. He was only fifty-three, after all. “Should I be jealous, El Jefe?” Her voice came from the darkness of his bed where the zookeeper was probably waiting for round two.
“Only if you think I prefer smelly old men like Anthony to you,” he said, jumping into bed and reaching for her with a growl.
She squealed in fake fear.
Later, when they both lay in bed staring at the ceiling in the dark, she pulled herself up on her side and lightly traced his lips with her fingertips.
“Is it really true that the girl’s mother is the only other woman you were with during your entire marriage?”
“Yes.”
He’d told her about Rosalie. It had been tough for him to share the news, and she’d held him so tenderly that he’d wanted to weep.
Now, she kissed his brow before saying, “Wow. So, if I was the last woman you made love to before you married Sylvia, that means you’ve only made love to three women in fifteen years?”
“Yes. You done asking questions yet, woman?” He reached over and started to caress her inner thigh.
“I guess. I was just worried that making love to you again after all these years would be weird…”
“Was it? Did I lose my moves?”
“Oh hardly,” she said, reaching down under the covers until she found what she was looking for. He groaned with pleasure. “In fact, I quite think you’ve perfected them.”
Stone Cold Page 2
