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  The doctor wouldn’t speak to him about anything that wasn’t medical. He had no idea where he was, how long he’d been here, or if anyone even knew he was alive. He doubted anyone did; surely he’d have seen Cora by now if that was the case.

  Unless she was dead. One of his more persistent memories was her blood-smeared face, so close to his as she wept over him. Had she survived that ordeal, whatever it had been? Or had the person responsible made sure she wasn’t alive to spread word of what had happened?

  Every time he asked the doctor or one of the nurses, they would murmur apologies under their breath and leave as quickly as they could. Sometimes in the middle of whatever task they were doing if he became insistent.

  So he’d stopped asking.

  And now he just waited.

  Waited, and tried not to think the worst.

  He was alone most of the time—there was only enough space in this room for his cot and the stands with their medical equipment. There was a single window in the room. Sometimes, a nurse would open the slats so he could look outside. All he could see was a strip of sky and the square roof of a concrete building.

  Crows would land on that roof. So free, so uninhibited, it made him ache to have the strength to leave this place.

  He’d been given a long time to think and, as his cerebral function slowly returned to him—like an old car that had been idling long enough to warm the engine—he began piecing things together. Once he stared at the shape of the construct he’d built in his mind, he was shocked at how fucking blatant it was. How it had really only taken a few parts of that dissembled jigsaw to put everything together.

  Puta madre, it was an ugly thing.

  There were three crows on the roof the day Javier returned. He’d been watching them sparring with each other like brothers too close in age vying for their mother’s attention.

  He heard the doctor’s voice first, gently protesting. “...needs to rest, Don—”

  “He’s had long enough.”

  A shock went through Tony at the sound of Javier’s voice. An uneasy anticipation trickled into him. Coming conflict, as obvious as the threat of storm clouds on the horizon. The door to his room opened, and Javier stepped through.

  He’d always admired the man’s style of dress. Never casual, always in a suit. White, or pale tan. Sometimes black when he was in a particular mood. It was linen today, and as white as the smattering of clouds that hung behind his family of roughhousing crows. When Javier smiled, his teeth rivaled the pristine whiteness of that suit. It made Javier look more tanned than he was, but perhaps that was his intent.

  And here he lay in nothing but a thin cotton robe, a small splash of blood on one sleeve where a nurse had struggled to find his vein.

  “The doctor tells me you are growing stronger every day, Tony,” Javier said, ambling closer as if he had nowhere else to be. He probably didn’t; Javier delegated to a fault.

  “Where’s Cora?” he asked in a voice raspy with disuse. As his body healed, the doctor and nurse visits had become further and further apart.

  “Eleodora?”

  Something about the way Javier pronounced his daughter’s real name rankled him. He’d never minded the man’s mannerisms—not enough for it to affect him anyway—but now even the way he pronounced that word felt like sandpaper against his nipples. He shifted in his cot, and murmured, “Where is she?”

  “At this hour?” Javier glanced at the small window. “Probably still in bed. She’s taken to sleeping in these days. Drinking, too. A little excessively, if I do say so myself.”

  The heart monitor beside Tony let out a low-key beep as if something had changed. He wished more than anything he could take those controls from his chest; he didn’t want Javier to know the man was riling him. Instead, he forced calm through his body like he had so many times before. “She’s safe?” he asked, hating how his voice wavered.

  “Of course, Tony.” Javier came to stand beside his cot and laid a hand next to his leg. He itched to move it away but didn’t.

  “It was all you, wasn’t it?” Tony asked.

  Javier’s eyes brightened, and his smile turned indulgent. “I see you’ve had some time to think, old friend.”

  “Don’t call me that,” Tony whispered furiously. “You have no right—”

  “When did we suddenly become enemies? We’ve been friends for more than three decades.”

  “I don’t think we were ever friends,” Tony said. And how it pained him to admit that now. He’d believed they were. He’d invited this man to his house. They’d run a fucking cartel together. Yes, for decades. And how many of those shared memories could he now truly look back on as being genuine? Javier may have smiled and laughed and joked with him...but what had the man been plotting all that time?

  “Of course we were,” Javier said, his smile vanishing. He grabbed a hold of Tony’s arm, squeezing where the IV needle pierced his flesh.

  Tony winced, but managed not to cry out. He’d had his share of pain—recently and throughout his life—and it was something he’d always been able to put aside with relative ease. Other tortures...some of those caused a different kind of pain. A pain that the child in him still remembered, and that was something he could never withstand. He wouldn’t be surprised if that weakness had been the reason Cora had been leaning over him with her bloody face, weeping.

  If only they’d killed him before he’d weakened so.

  “Yes? So when did you turn against me?” Tony asked through his teeth.

  “When?” Javier released him, turning briefly to the window as if he had to search through the years for the exact moment. He tapped his lip for a moment—pure theatrics, of course—before spinning back to the cot an instant later and whispering, “I believe it was the day you asked Naomie to marry you.”

  Tony opened his mouth, but there was nothing to say. His carefully constructed vision of what had led to this very moment fell to pieces in his mind with a clatter that resounded through his soul.

  “Naomie?” It came out a murmur. “But…why…? I don’t—”

  “A picnic? So romantic.” Javier plucked at the sleeve of Tony’s gown, as if trying to scrape away that spot of blood. “There was champagne. A ring.” Javier’s black eyes flashed up to his. “Some passionate fucking.”

  A desperate need to get away from Javier’s dark eyes filled him. His pulse quickened, and the machine beside him bleeped in warning. Would the doctor come, or had he been told to keep away regardless of what alarms sounded?

  But no…Javier wasn’t going to smother him with a pillow. He wouldn’t inject something into his IV to make him sleep forever. During the years he’d spent on the receiving end of Javier’s fake friendship, he’d witnessed—more than once—just how sadistic the man could be.

  It had chilled him back then.

  It absolutely terrified him right now.

  He worked saliva into his mouth. Cleaved his tongue from his palate. “You were watching us?” he whispered.

  “Oh, not me,” Javier said airily. “My falcons. They had been for a long time. Naomie, you see...she was mine, Tony.” Javier leaned closer, his palms pressing into the thin mattress. “You stole her from me.”

  He let out a soft, incredulous laugh. “You’re fucking insane. How could you think, even for a minute, that—?”

  “She gave her heart to me,” Javier cut in. “Told me it was a matter of days before she left you to be by my side.”

  Tony shook his head, half-smiling as he murmured, “You’re delusional. How could she ever have—?”

  “Loved me?” Javier whispered.

  Tony fell silent, staring up at Javier’s face from a few inches away. The years had been kind to the man; he had crow’s feet and laugh lines, but most of his face was still smooth. No deep frown lines except a small crease between his thick black brows.

  “You had the proof right in front of you, my friend. She shared your dinner table. You read her stories at bed time.”

>   Tony’s skin prickled urgently. The beeping on the monitor became frenzied.

  There came an urgent tap on the door. “Don Javier! Por favor, sen—”

  Javier pushed away from the bed and strode over to the door. For a moment, Tony thought he’d rip it open to let the doctor in. Instead, he keyed a code into the small control panel beside the door frame, slapped the door with his palm, and turned back to Tony with a face so smooth it could have belonged on a store mannequin.

  “That’s impossible,” Tony said. “What you’re suggesting—”

  “This is what Naomie thought, too.” Javier cocked his head and lifted his hands as if in surrender. “Thank god for paternity tests.”

  The machine’s bleeping slowed, but his skin was still on fire. He swallowed, and reached for the glass of water beside his bed. Javier got to it first, snatching it away from his grasping fingers. “There will be no relief for you, Antonio. Not now. Not ever.”

  Javier upended the glass, pouring the water onto the floor. Tony dropped his arm, watching Javier with scowl. “If this—” he washed a hand down his body “—is supposed to be your revenge, then you should stop wasting your time and just kill me.”

  “Revenge?” Javier barked a laugh. His arm dropped to his side, glass still between his fingers as if he’d forgotten about it. “Revenge is for idiots and fools. No, old friend...I have something much more special planned for you.”

  He glared at Javier, but the man seemed not to notice. He just smiled at Tony as if he could taste what was coming, and was savoring the flavor on his tongue.

  Tony’s mind scrambled, working back the years he’d known Javier as it tried to put some semblance of order to his memories. If what Javier said was true, Naomie had been unfaithful to him. Not only before they were married…but for several months thereafter. Unless Javier was crazy enough to fabricate a fantasy so detailed. He’d known the man was a tinder box—the smallest spark would set him off on a rampage that usually ended in the most violent and sadistic shedding of blood—but could the man be so delusional?

  “You won’t hurt her,” Tony said, having to force the words out. “If she’s yours.” It was supposed to be a statement, but there was the slightest hesitation in his words.

  “That’s where you’re wrong.” Javier lifted the glass, studying it for a moment. “You see, Antonio, my daughter stopped being mine the day Naomie turned me down for the last time.”

  There was a knot in his throat. He tried swallowing it down, but his mouth had turned sticky with thirst. “You’re lying. Cora is my—”

  With a yell, Javier threw the glass against the wall above Tony’s head. Shards rained down on him, and a dart of pain on his ear told him that he’d been cut. Glass glittered from his bed. A few pieces tinkled to the floor in the sudden silence that followed.

  Javier clenched his hand, and then smoothed down the front of his suit as if concerned he’d damaged it. When their eyes met again, Javier’s were as black as the shadows lurking behind a gaping basement door.

  “She’s all you ever cared about, isn’t she? Your precious Cora…” Javier’s mouth twisted like that name tasted of acid. “Eleodora Rivera is now the face of El Calacas Vivo. By tomorrow, everyone in the cartel will know,” Javier said quietly. His hand paused on his belly, before moving to straighten his lapels against his chest.

  Tony pushed himself up. A shard of glass ground into his palm, but the pain became a welcome resonance through his numb body. “Javier, please, she never wanted any part of—”

  “No, Antonio! You never wanted any part of this!” Javier drove his fist down into the mattress, sending a few fragments of glass to the floor. “I would have been more forgiving if you’d once—just once—committed to this cartel. But you were always running. Taking Naomie away from me. Taking my daughter away from me.”

  “If that’s true, then you would never have let it go on this long,” Tony grated in a cracked voice.

  “Oh, I didn’t. I fucked Naomie every chance I got,” Javier said with a sneer. “Did you never smell me on her, Antonio? Did you never stick your dick inside her and wonder why it felt so stretched out?”

  Tony made a grab for Javier’s wrist, but the man snatched his hand away with a curt laugh. “No, of course you didn’t. You’ve always been a dreamer. Living in your own little cage. So paranoid you might find a knife in your throat that you ended up turning your back on everyone.”

  Javier’s hand shot out. A sliver of glass pressed against Tony’s throat, piercing the skin just below his Adam’s apple. He tried desperately not to swallow.

  “You forget, my friend...” Javier pressed the glass deeper. “It’s so much easier to put a knife in someone’s back.”

  “Please,” Tony whispered. “Don’t do this. She’ll become the target of every rival cartel—” He cut off at a stab of pain from his throat. There was a furious tickle on his skin as blood traced a line down his throat.

  “That’s.The.Fucking.Point,” Javier said through his teeth. “Your precious Cora will never be safe again. I’d be surprised if she sees her twenty-first birthday.” Javier straightened, dropping the bloodstained glass to the floor. “Which reminds me,” he said, his face brightening behind a resplendent smile. “I’d very much like to give her a fitting birthday present. But what can I possibly give a girl who has everything…?”

  Tears filled Tony’s eyes. He blinked them back forcefully, but more came to replace them. “Por favor, vato—”

  “I was thinking an engagement ring.”

  Tony blinked hard, confusing drying his eyes in an instant. “You want to marry my—” he cut off, and said instead, “Eleodora? You want to marry—?”

  Javier laughed one of his deep, infectious belly laughs. For the first time since he’d met the man, Tony didn’t feel compelled to join in.

  “Of course not, Antonio. A young thing like that has no notion of how to please a man. I would bore of her ten minutes into our wedding night.”

  Tony’s stomach turned, unwelcome thoughts filling his mind like sludge from an overflowing sewerage drain.

  Javier leaned close, as if confiding a dark secret. “She will marry my son.”

  “That’s incest! You can’t force them—”

  “I can do whatever the fuck I want,” Javier cut in with a sneer. “And you’re in no position to stop me.” He tapped Tony on the arm, pursing his lips. “And, as soon as they bear a child, I will dispose of her.”

  “Why wait?” He lifted his thumbs as his mouth turned down at the corners. “Why put her through all of that if you could just kill her?”

  Javier’s smile faded. “Because I know you, old friend. You’ve always been too clever for your own good, haven’t you?”

  “I—I don’t know—”

  Javier tapped a finger to his own temple. “Too clever. The money goes into a trust, doesn’t it? One she can only access when she’s twenty-one. No one else can touch it. No one…except her heir.”

  Blood drained from Tony’s face, leaving pinpricks of unease in its wake. “You still won’t be able—”

  “How deep did your paranoia run when you made up those documents?” Javier cocked his head. “Hmm? Was that before…or after you made me her godfather?”

  Bile filled his mouth, but he swallowed hard enough to force it down again. His lips quivered, but he couldn’t force another plea from them. He knew Javier never showed mercy.

  “All my money…” Tony murmured. “It will become yours if her child dies.”

  Javier cocked his head, as if impressed he’d been able to work it out. Then he smiled. “That’s correct. Of course, Eleodora has to be dead as well.”

  “Why should I care?” Tony asked in a deadpan voice.

  Brief confusion pulled the skin between Javier’s brows into a crease. But he waved a hand as if dismissing Tony’s statement, and instead turned the back of his hand to face Tony.

  “My son has terrible taste in jewelry,” Javier said as he let
out a heavy sigh. “I will of course have to find something suitable as an engagement ring. Something memorable.” Javier waggled his fingers. “You’ve always loved rubies. Shall I give her one of those? This one, perhaps?”

  Javier took off a ring from his pinkie and set it down on Tony’s stomach. The sight of it wavered as Tony blinked away his tears. For a moment, there were two rings, until he fumbled for the trinket and realized one of those red circles was a drop of blood that had dripped from his throat.

  He blinked hard to clear his vision.

  Lifted the ring.

  Shook his head. “No,” he rasped, with almost a laugh in his voice. “This is...you couldn’t have...”

  “She was wearing it when she was taken, yes?” Javier said. He took the ring from Tony’s fingers, turning it around. “Aww…It still has your inscription on it.” Javier traced the inside of the ring with a finger. “‘Mi corazón.’” Javier’s eyes flashed up to Tony’s. “You’re so unoriginal. Naomie was your heart, Cora was your heart. The only woman you neglected to call your heart was Sofia.” There was emphasis on the last name, but Tony’s writhing mind couldn’t figure out why.

  None of it made sense. It was madness. He was mad. Javier was mad. This was a dream, and he’d wake any second to the smell of Naomie’s freshly washed hair, spread on the pillow beside his.

  “Next time,” Javier said as he shoved the ring back on his pinkie finger, “set your heart on your own woman, not another man’s.”

  A sob wracked him. He was powerless to stop it. Incapable of letting it shake his shoulders. A piece of glass scraped the small of his back, trapped there by the violent movement.

  He hoped it would spear into his organs and kill him.

  “She was fond of this ring—Naomie. Refused to let it go. But such delicate little hands. Her skin came off how she struggled.” Javier rubbed his thumb over the stone, a fond smile touching his mouth. “When I finally got it off her, it was bathed in her blood.”