Was that what was happening downstairs? A slow death for my father’s rivals? An enemy so old and obscure I barely remembered their name? Before the assaults, Cristiano had gone in search of a key to unlock everything he wanted. I’d been learning that his unmet need was me. Us. Our partnership. Our marriage. So why had an old guard family stood between Cristiano and me?
My pulse quickened as the puzzle pieces formed a bigger picture. He’d said it had to do with closure. Jaz had said it was proof. And as with everything here, revenge played a part—Cristiano had admitted that our last night alone before he’d left town.
Revenge in my name. In my father’s name. Closure for us. Proof. I curled my fists against the counter as the answer formed in my mind.
Papá had told me the morning after the costume party that my mother’s sicario had been hired by a rival cartel that was no longer in existence.
But maybe they were. And maybe there were here.
11
Natalia
I’d waited almost twelve years for answers about my mother’s death, and now, the people responsible were here. Close by. Somewhere under my feet.
Cristiano had asked me to hold on a little longer, but I squirmed at just the thought of more puzzle pieces waiting in some cryptic place Alejandro had called “downstairs.”
I pushed away from the bathroom counter, turned off the shower, and went to my closet. After zipping a hoodie over my tank top, I tightened my ponytail and headed to the ground floor and around the side of the house where Cristiano had disappeared.
What was I doing? What was I asking for by opening this door that had been locked to me for so long? What if I couldn’t handle it?
Cristiano had said I could. But if what I suspected was true, this family was responsible for more than my mother’s death. They’d take the blame for the eleven years Cristiano had been on the run. For his poverty and struggle, and the irreparable rift between him and his brother. For bearing the hatred of his mentor and future wife for so long.
And for all of that, they would pay.
Cristiano had exacted torturous death on many an enemy, and there might be no greater foe than the Valverde family.
The farther I walked from the house, the more wooded it became. Dirt began to soften as twigs crunched under my sneakers. Leafy tree tops blocked out the sky. Wings flapped as birds whistled. Ah, nature—
With the metal click of a gun, I froze.
“Alto.” Stop.
I looked around for the male voice but saw nothing—until a nearly completely camouflaged Eduardo stepped out from between some trees. “Natalia?”
My shoulders loosened. “¿Dónde está Cristiano?” I asked.
If Eduardo knew where Cristiano was, he didn’t answer.
“Get him for me,” I said with a sigh. “Now—it’s urgent.”
Eduardo removed the handheld radio attached to his bulletproof vest. “Jefe,” he said into it. “Natalia’s here.”
Cristiano responded right away. “Bring her down.”
Eduardo led me a few meters through the trees. When we reached the mountainside, he pulled on a rock that wasn’t a rock, but a steel cover disguising a keypad. He pressed his thumb to a fingerprint scanner, and part of the mountain in front of us slid open like the entrance to a vault.
Dios santo. The door was the mountain. I never would’ve found this on my own.
Eduardo went first, disappearing down a dark stairwell.
My feet wouldn’t move, though. Since childhood, I tried not to willingly go down into dark spaces. With the smell of soil, this particular staircase reminded me of the tunnel Cristiano had taken me into.
Unlike that one, though, he wasn’t going to leave me down there.
I forced myself to take the first step, then the next, until I stood at the bottom of a stone staircase and before another secure door. Eduardo entered his credentials, and once it opened, he breezed right in without a second thought.
My only company was the sound of my heart beat. I got the feeling once I stepped inside, I’d come out slightly changed. But I’d learned more during my metamorphosis since I’d arrived than I had years at university, and I took comfort that it was turning out to be for the best—even when it didn’t always feel that way.
This was the underbelly of an already gruesome world. I’d spent years running from it, trying to pretend it didn’t exist, and distancing myself from my childhood. Yet I was walking into it with eyes wide open now.
It would show Cristiano—and myself—that I was choosing this life. Choosing him. All of him.
And I deserved answers. I deserved the chance to look my mother’s murderers in the eyes.
“It’s not too late to turn around.” Cristiano materialized in the darkness, shadows turning his eyes into sockets.
Awe, and a hint of fear, mingled within me as I stepped into a cool, dimly lit steel room. Little green, yellow, and red lights flashed with the hum of machinery. Not appliances, I realized as my eyes adjusted. Computers and monitors. Combined with the glass cases of books and folders lining the walls, the space looked like a high-tech museum.