Violent Triumphs (White Monarch 3)

Max started to nod, then coughed and sputtered, turned away, and puked.

Cristiano looked at Alejandro. “Find Diego, and execute him. Now. Throw him over a cliff for all I care. I no longer need to watch the life drain from him.” Cristiano lowered his eyes to mine. “Do you?”

I shook my head. “I just want him gone.”

“My wife demands his death,” Cristiano said. “So kill him—and make it swift.”

Max, panting for breath, cringed as he hunched over, his hands on his knees. “We—we can’t kill Diego.”

“Why not?” Cristiano ran his tongue back and forth over his front teeth. “Give me one goddamn reason I shouldn’t—”

With great struggle, Max lifted his head. “He’s already dead.”

20

Natalia

Max lay in a dark guest bedroom, freshly bathed and gripping a bottle of painkillers. The nurse Doctor Sosa had arranged for us placed a damp towel over his swollen eyes, careful of his cheeks marred with cuts and bruises. He thanked her.

Clutching my mother’s rosary, I fell into a chair and pressed my thumb to the crucifix.

Diego was . . . dead.

What was I supposed to feel about it? Triumph? Pity? He could’ve had love, and offered forgiveness. Instead, he’d chosen hatred and revenge—and it’d been the wrong path. Nostalgia tinged my relief that he was gone. There’d been good times. Genuine moments of laughter and fondness. Riding the property line on our horses, racing from one end of a fence to the other. In my mother’s art studio, turning our yellow-painted handprints into chickens by adding red feathers and beaks to the thumbprint. And taking turns with the telescope, pointing out constellations to each other. I remembered his wide smile, patient eyes, and his concern for my wellbeing whenever we’d spoken on the phone—but was any of it real if it’d all been built on a lie?

It didn’t matter anymore. He was out of our lives, and that was the way it had to be. I’d thought maybe I’d want to face him at the end, even taunt him—but I didn’t need it. It was enough to know he was gone.

Max removed the cloth and set his pills on the nightstand. The nurse helped him ease into a sitting position, then arranged his pillows against the headboard.

“How do you feel?” I asked.

“Sore,” he answered, “but grateful to be alive.”

At the rasp in his voice, the nurse refilled his water from a pitcher on the nightstand.

Worry etched lines around Cristiano’s eyes as he dismissed her with a nod. “What happened?” he asked when we were alone.

Max looked at me and then picked at a blackened fingernail. “I’ll tell you everything later. For now, the thing to know is that Belmonte-Ruiz put Diego in the ground.”

“Are you certain, Maksim?”

Even with Max’s puffy eyelids and the bloated, Byzantium-purple welts around his lips, I could see his expression tighten. “I saw it with my one good eye. Diego is gone.”

“I want to say I’m not surprised,” Cristiano said, looking from me to Max. “But I knew, in the church, that when I turned my brother free, he wouldn’t make it as long as I had out in the wild. I underestimated him, but in the end, I was right.”

“How’d it happen?” I asked.

“When I learned Diego was dead, I said I wouldn’t deliver the message to you unless I could be sure. They allowed me to see the body before they disposed of it. Diego was cold and lifeless in a body bag. Involuntary overdose . . .”

The hair on the back of my neck rose, and I crossed myself. Even as my stomach somersaulted at the thought of my childhood best friend’s decaying body, I welcomed the confirmation of his death.

Cristiano covered his mouth with his fist. “Reason?”

“An offering to make peace with you and Costa,” Max explained, “but there’s more to it than that. From what I gathered during my time there, Diego was costing them money, making promises he couldn’t keep.”

“Like with the Maldonados,” Cristiano said. “History repeats itself. Diego never learns. What kinds of promises?”

Max’s face contorted as he shifted. I stood to help him fix his pillow. “My guess?” Max said. “Based on what I picked up from the guards and other prisoners—Diego told BR he could get you working for them, not against them.”

“Why the fuck would I ever work for them? No dollar amount could convince me, nothing on the planet would—” Cristiano ran his hand down his face as he shook his head. He sighed. “Natalia.”

“What?” I asked.

Max nodded up at me. “I heard about the security breach here the same night they attacked us at the hotel. Could they have been trying to kidnap you?”

“Sí,” Cristiano said through his teeth. “They would take my wife. For payback and for strategy.”

“Strategy?” My palm ached as the rosary beads dug into it. I looked between the two of them. “To do what with me?”