Violent Triumphs (White Monarch 3)

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.”