“It can if I move slowly, carefully, and strategically,” I said.
“You’ve run out of time for that,” my brother said. “You’re being targeted, and you need everything in the States immediately.”
Cristiano had to comprehend the scope of that operation, even for a company in supply chain management. To mitigate risk, product was stored all over town, then moved in small batches across the border, mostly by individual vehicles. “I can’t just send it across all at once,” I said.
“And what if another stash house falls tonight? Tomorrow?” Cristiano asked. “You’d be a dead man walking. You, and everyone associated with you. Including Costa.”
I pulled at my collar feeling suddenly parched. The situation was dire, yes, but Cristiano was just trying to rattle me. “That won’t happen,” I said after gulping some water. “I’ve called in all our security and alerted them to the gravity of the problem. It’s all under guard.”
“By men who have inside information about where everything is kept,” Cristiano pointed out.
“You have inside information,” I shot back at my brother. “And you were the last to show up around here. So how the hell do I know you’re not behind this?”
“Tranquilo, Diego,” Costa warned. “Calm down.”
Cristiano took a slow sip of his mezcal, watching me over the rim. The Cristiano I’d known had never touched alcohol and wouldn’t have cared enough to distinguish top-shelf tequila from sludge. Then again, I’d never seen him in a suit until his return, either, and definitely nothing near the fine, custom-made ensemble he currently wore. What was the point of a gangster like him in a bespoke suit that’d surely be ruined by the blood of his enemies? He could show off all he wanted, but while some of us did what was necessary to get by, Cristiano thrived on being a natural killer.
“I’ve spent the past decade trying to get back in Costa’s good graces,” Cristiano reasoned. “Why would I immediately turn around and jeopardize that?”
“That’s what I intend to find out,” I said.
The corner of Cristiano’s mouth ticked. “There’s no ruse. I can tell you the truth of it. It’s that I’ve missed this—strategizing under fire. Enjoying a meal with the great minds at this table. Spending time with mi familia.” He said family with an edge that Costa seemed to miss. That, or he didn’t want to see it. Cristiano looked between both of us. “It has been too long.”
“It has,” Costa agreed.
I bit my tongue. What Cristiano missed wasn’t family—he’d given that up long ago. It was the prestige and power he could gain by partnering with Costa.
Prestige and power I would earn by pulling off this deal.
“Your brother is right,” Costa said. “You need to get every last kilo over the border as quickly as possible.”
That was easy for Costa to say. He had nothing but constraints to contribute to the process. He was asking for complete accuracy on an impossible schedule. It wasn’t as if he’d be down in the trenches with us. “Even with a full crew, I don’t have the manpower,” I said.
Cristiano drank some mezcal and studied his glass. “I do.”
Of course he did, but I wouldn’t allow him to insert himself in my deal. “I’ll make it work.”
“Then at least let me try to reason with the Maldonados,” Cristiano said. With his elbow resting on the back of his seat and a passive expression, he could’ve been discussing anything from wine varietals to horse racing.
“Why would that make any difference?” I asked.
“We have history,” he explained, “and they need my guns more than I need their money.”
As Cristiano and I locked eyes, his plan began to take form before me. His timing wasn’t a coincidence. Cristiano wanted in on this deal. But if I knew him, it wasn’t about the money. He wanted the credit. By saving my Maldonado deal, he’d be the hero. He’d win back Costa’s favor. And he’d undercut me in the process. Everything he wanted with one fell swoop.
“I can’t guarantee anything,” Cristiano continued, “but perhaps it’ll help ease the sting if I tell them they might not get the results they were promised.”
The results I had promised was what he meant. Results that were challenging but should’ve been attainable. Unless someone with a motive to bring me down had interfered.
Costa nodded along as if Cristiano spoke the word of a patron saint. “That’s a generous offer, but a last resort,” Costa said. “I’d rather not get the Maldonados involved until we have to. We’ll take you up on help consolidating what’s left, though.”
“I’ll make some calls,” Cristiano said. “Get your most trusted men together, and I’ll get mine. We can store the product in one of my warehouses. Nobody will know the location, and if they do, they wouldn’t dare cross me.”
Cristiano was hijacking my deal in front of my eyes. How would it look to Costa that I needed to be rescued? How would it look to Natalia? With a deep ache in my jaw, I unclenched my teeth. “You expect me to trust my livelihood to you and your unhinged cabrónes?” I asked.
“Cristiano is offering to help,” Costa said. “Where is this warehouse?”
“At the border of town where the desert starts,” Cristiano said and glanced at me. “Nothing to do with the Badlands if that’s what you’re referring to.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Costa said. “With both cartels working together, we can pull this off.”
“With our two cartels working together,” Cristiano said, returning his gaze to Costa, “we can pull anything off.”
I narrowed my eyes on him. Aha. There was more to it than I’d thought. The Calaveras had their own solutions for trafficking, but if they joined forces with us, they could move double the volume and restrict their competitors from our services.
But that would mean a merger—one I’d be excluded from.
And not just any merger, but one between the de la Rosas and the Cruzes.
Anyone at the helm of both the Calavera and Cruz organizations would be afforded a power few others could match. Did Cristiano feel he was owed that after the decade he’d lost? Was it not enough that he’d taken our parents from me? Now he was back to take the rest? If so, his endgame was bigger than I’d guessed.
He had reason to push me out . . . but no—it was impossible for him to know that. I was nothing if not careful and always had been. Cristiano would’ve gone to Costa by now, and this conversation would be happening atop a fresh grave.
“Perdón.” Cristiano rose from the table with his cell phone in hand. He started to turn but paused. “You may want to consider putting Natalia on a plane, don Costa. In case things get any worse.”
I wondered, not for the first time, why Cristiano was concerned with Natalia at all. I hadn’t missed the way he’d looked at her at the costume party, first predatorily from the balcony, then later, the way a man regards a woman who has something he likes.
I recognized his interest in Natalia because I shared it as well.
She was more than an interest to me, though. I loved her. She was my weakness.
Did we share that as well?
Did Cristiano have a tender spot for her that he might not even be aware of . . . until someone stepped on it?
As Cristiano left the table, Costa turned to me. “Are things going to get worse for my daughter, Diego?”
He said everything he needed to in that one question. It had nothing to do with how the Maldonados could hurt her, but how I could. “Natalia is my best friend,” I said carefully. “I’d do anything to protect her.”
“That won’t be necessary. The best thing you can do is put her safety above all else and release her.”
I didn’t have to be explicitly told to stay away from her—that had always been implied. But it was the closest Costa had come to acknowledging my relationship with her. I wasn’t going to get his blessing. Which turned the question from how to get his approval . . . to whether I needed it.
“So I ask you again,” Costa sa
id. “Are things going to get worse for Natalia?”
I shook my head, looking into my glass. “No, señor.”
“Good. As for your brother,” he said. “He wants to help.”
“And you don’t wonder why?” I asked.
Costa sucked his teeth, charting Cristiano from across the restaurant as he made a call on the patio. “No. Because he is grateful I have welcomed him back to his home,” he said. “Finish your drink. Then go and express your gratitude for your brother’s offer to help.”
Cristiano wasn’t here to help. He was here to hurt. Or worse . . .
No doubt he thought I’d turned my back on him eleven years ago and blamed me for everything he’d lost. It occurred to me that I hadn’t even considered the worst Cristiano could do.
It was true that by saving my Maldonado deal, he’d get credit for it, win back Costa’s favor, and potentially replace me. I’d assumed that was the fastest way for him to get everything he wanted.
But perhaps I’d been looking at the wrong side of the coin.
He could sabotage the deal instead.
If it failed . . . the Maldonados would see to my demise quickly and swiftly. Cristiano wouldn’t even have to get his hands dirty.
And I’d be removed from the picture entirely.
Natalia
Art belonged to my mother. Trying to read brushstrokes or create my own wasn’t something I understood. I learned about the world from books or travel, found nature by cantering a horse, and studied history by passing on legends through corridos—Mexican ballads.
Art, to me, was living in the world, not observing it. Floating on my back in the ocean on a hot day, finding shapes in the clouds. My aunt’s laugh when my nephew took a bite straight out of his birthday cake and came up with a face full of icing. Art lived in people.
It was the way one look from Diego could warm me to my core.
My mom’s studio spanned the top floor of the house. With a glass dome in the center and large corner windows facing southwest, it had the best light.
When I was younger, I’d hide in here to see how long it would take Diego to find me. We’d dip our hands in paint and make colorful prints on the tarp Mamá had put down. But most commonly, we’d look at the constellations with a telescope, our own private planetarium.
All the paint and easels had been removed, but the telescope sat on the deck. Tonight, I opened the doors and windows and watched the sun set while I waited for Diego.
When tires crunched dirt, I jumped up and leaned over the rail. A convoy of three cars kicked up dust as they wound up the driveway and parked out front. Cristiano and Diego got out, moving almost lethargically up the walk until my father stepped out of the house to meet them. It was strange, after all this time, to see Cristiano and Diego casually standing next to each other. I leaned out farther to try to piece together their conversation.
“. . . forty-eight hours.”
“No word . . . Maldonado.”
“Antes de que salgas . . .”
Before you leave? My heart dropped at the thought of Diego disappearing again when I hadn’t seen him in three days. As if sensing my anguish, he looked up, met my eyes, and winked discreetly. I watched until they moved inside. As tempted as I was to run downstairs, I waited where I was, knowing Diego would come to me.
Paciencia should’ve been my second name—it was all I seemed to do. Wait. Bide my time. Bite my tongue. A sitting duck, as Americans said.
I killed time by peering through the telescope, but it wasn’t dark enough to see much yet. Eventually, the door to the studio opened. I sprang to my feet, hurrying across the wood floors to meet Diego. He caught me in his arms and lifted me for a kiss.
“Why have you stayed away so long?” I rushed out in a whisper, even though we were alone. “I’m set to fly home in a week.”
“I’m sorry, Talia. I haven’t had such a bad week in recent history. I shouldn’t be up here, but I texted because I needed to see you, even for a moment, to get me through.” He set me on my feet and gripped my waist. “But if your father catches me here, he’ll put you on the next flight out of México.”
“He wouldn’t. Easter is Sunday.”
“Believe me, he would.”
Papá wouldn’t ruin our holiday for that reason. I touched the brown, coarse stubble on Diego’s face. He stank of alcohol, sweat, and cigars, but I was comforted just to be in his presence. “Where have you been? Have you even slept?”
“No.” He loosened his already sagging tie. “We went to the city for dinner last night, then flew back. Cristiano and I worked through to just now.”
To hear about cartel life over the phone was one thing, but the evidence of its non-stop demands stood in front of me. I hated to think of Diego overworking himself. “You need rest. Come. Sit and tell me everything.”
“I can’t stay, Tali. If Costa finds me here after dark—”
“He won’t.” I pulled him to the deck by his hand. Even his palm seemed rougher. “He never comes up here.”
“Your father’s serious about keeping us apart.” Diego sat in an Adirondack chair, following me with his eyes as I went to the linen closet. “It wasn’t an idle threat,” he said. “At dinner, Costa said he’s thinking of sending you back early.”
I stopped short, clutching a blanket. “But I’ve barely spent any time with you! I see you for a few hours, and then you disappear for a few days.”
He stood to take the wool throw from me. “Sit down,” he said.
I fell into the chair next to his. “He didn’t mention anything today, and we had lunch.”
“Does he ever? He keeps you in the dark to protect you. If he wants you gone, he’ll put you on a plane. He wouldn’t ask your permission first.” He unfurled the blanket over me. “I’m starting to think Costa will never come around to the idea of us. And then what?” He swallowed as he focused on tucking me in. “Would you still want me?”
I reached up to grab his cheeks. “Yes,” I said, forcing him to hold my gaze. “I’ll never give up on us. We’ll find a way.”
He searched my eyes. Though his were alight, the dark circles under them betrayed his lack of sleep. What had brought on his sudden doubts, and why did my father want me gone so soon?
“I have to ask, Tali . . .” Diego went as still and quiet as the sprawling night around us. “Could you be happy without your father in your life?”
To choose between my dad and Diego? It would be impossible. “He’s already lost too much,” I said. “If it came down to it, he’d be forced to accept us. I don’t think he’d ever make me choose.”
“But if he did?” Diego pressed his lips to my forehead before pulling his chair closer to mine to sit. “I just want you to start considering that possibility.”
I couldn’t imagine not calling Papá whenever I had a question, missed my mom, or simply had the urge. He always spent Christmas with me at school. And just because I only visited once a year didn’t mean I wanted to give up the possibility of coming home one day. Having one parent taken from me, I would never willingly give up the other. At the same time, I’d chosen to leave this life as much as I had been sent away.
But not once did I ever choose to be separated from Diego.
“And his approval is only half of the issue,” Diego added.
Diego didn’t want to be separated from me, either. It just wasn’t necessarily up to him. I opened the blanket, and he pulled part of it over himself, checking to make sure I was still covered. “You mean leaving the cartel,” I said.
“It’s not as if I can just put in my two weeks’ notice. If Costa thought I was abandoning the cartel without permission or trying to steal you away . . .”
My father raised the White Monarch, put it to the sicario’s head, and bang!
It was an image I doubted I’d ever be able to scrub from my mind.
What would it take for him to “handle” Diego? He’d leveled a threat in the kitchen days earlier, but I hadn’t taken
it seriously. Diego was practically family to him.
“He wouldn’t hurt you,” I said. “He has to know what that would do to me.” I believed that, but there was another truth I couldn’t ignore. Papá hadn’t gotten to where he was by letting offenses slide, no matter how sentimental he might feel.
“As long as he doesn’t take us seriously, he’ll go out of his way to put up a wall between us,” Diego said. “He has to realize this isn’t a game to us, princesa. That we’re in this for life.”
Diego spoke with such conviction that for life inspired a thrill in me. I was his princess, but I was also that to my father—and in his eyes, Diego was just a ward of the cartel, forbidden from entering the proverbial castle walls he guarded.
“Then we’ll have to make sure my father understands that if he doesn’t let you go so we can start a life together, he will lose me.”
“You’ve told him how you feel. I’ve tried to broach the subject, but he won’t hear me. What else can we do to get him to see?”
It would have to be something that couldn’t be ignored, dismissed, or stopped. I thought back to my conversation with Papá in the kitchen about loving one person and being willing to risk everything for them. About the ties my mother had cut for my father. About how marriage was sacred and should only happen once. With the person you were willing to die for.
“If we can’t tell him, then we’ll have to show him,” I said. “Even if it means something drastic.”
“Such as?”
My heart began to race. I looked out toward bruise-colored mountains as dusk swallowed the day. I was too shy to say it directly to Diego’s face in case it wasn’t anything close to what he was thinking. “We could always elope.”
When he didn’t respond, I finally chanced a look at him.
He stared at me with a tenderness that melted my insides and left me a puddle of need and longing. This was the art of life—the art of Diego—and what I would risk my father’s wrath for. Diego possessed a potential he would never reach here. He’d supported my decision to go away knowing he’d be left behind. And he wanted the best for me, even if it meant the worst for him. He would never make me choose between the two of them.
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