Total pages in book: 767
Estimated words: 732023 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 3660(@200wpm)___ 2928(@250wpm)___ 2440(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 732023 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 3660(@200wpm)___ 2928(@250wpm)___ 2440(@300wpm)
It was cold and black at the bottom. I shivered uncontrollably as he reached the final rung of the ladder and jumped the rest of the way. Never go down if you don’t have to, Father had said. You won’t be able to reach the ladder to get back up.
This was it. I was at Cristiano’s mercy now.
On solid ground, he took a few slow steps, feeling for a wall. When he found one, he squatted. “Sit here,” he said. “Don’t move until they come for you.”
I didn’t let go of his neck. The scent of his sweat and my tears mixed with the soil around us. I’d never been worried about the dark before, but I couldn’t even see my own hand.
“What if nobody comes?” I asked.
“They will. And by that time, I’ll be long gone.” He pulled at my arms. “You’re brave. Let go.”
I released him. The next thing I heard was his retreating footsteps. I sat against the wall, wrapped my arms around my knees, and held my breath. Tears flooded my eyes, overflowing onto my cheeks.
I’d always known the love and protection of my parents and their titles. Being the daughter of one of the most powerful drug lords in Mexico meant I’d been in danger since the day I was born—and also sheltered from everything.
No longer.
As the threat of Cristiano receded, I was left alone in the dark with the realization that my mother had kissed my cheek and tucked me in for the last time. Her lyrical voice would never again lull me to sleep and end each night with, “Te quiero mucho, mariposita.” There would be no more of her famous homemade “Talia taffy” for the rest of my birthdays, no more riding horses into town to shop for fabric or spices.
That morning, impatient to go, I’d hugged her waist and asked her to hurry up as she’d done her makeup. Now, I wished only to stay with her a little longer. I wished for more time.
But the parade was over.
Death’s day had come.
Natalia
Eleven years later
I ducked out of the helicopter and into dry desert air as the blades whipped wind through my hair. My father’s head of security offered a hand and helped me down. “Bienvenida a casa, señorita,” Barto called over the whir of the rotors.
Welcome home.
The pilot carried my bags to a black Suburban waiting on the tarmac. Somehow, the Mexican heat felt stronger than in California, the sun intense and unforgiving. I slipped my sunglasses into place and followed Barto to the car.
“How’s it feel to be back?” he asked.
No words could properly convey it. Leaving home for a boarding school in the United States had been my choice, but Father would’ve shipped me off even if it wasn’t. I both dreaded and anticipated coming here. California was safe, clean, easy. Nothing like this place, where danger haunted the streets. It was the thought of seeing Diego that lifted any sense of dread that came with getting into a car headed for home.
Barto glanced at me in the rearview mirror. “If I can say so, you look more and more like señora Cruz each time I see you.”
I had my mother’s light eyes, and her small, sharp nose, but our physical similarities stopped there. “I’m more like my father,” I said.
“But you have her grace.”
I swallowed. Regal was how my father often described her.
“And that determined look she often wore,” Barto added.
I didn’t doubt that. I wasn’t only home to spend time with my dad, catch up with friends, and celebrate Easter. I was here for Diego—my best friend and my love. The boy who knew all my secrets because he’d been there for many of them, if not physically, then a phone call away. But with the distance between us, we’d done enough talking for a lifetime. I couldn’t wait to just be close to him for the first time in a year.
Next summer, I’d be graduating, and I was dead set on having Diego in Santa Clara with me by then—permanently. But since my dad wanted the opposite, it would take some convincing.
Barto steered us up the long, winding drive lined with imported banana leaf trees. Men with AR-15s stood along the side of the dirt road, waving us on, smiling at me through the blacked-out windows.
Barto handled my luggage and sent me straight upstairs to see my father. At the threshold to Papá’s study at the south end of the mansion, I stopped when I heard his raised voice. “Do you have any idea the magnitude of what you’ve committed us to?”
“We can handle it.” When Diego spoke, a kaleidoscope of butterflies erupted in my stomach. “We’ve been refining our operation for over a decade, and it’s as close to perfect as it gets.”
“‘Close to perfect’ is not perfect,” came my father’s grave response.