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)
Diego rested his hip against the counter. “That’s what he told me too.”
“Do you believe it?”
“I . . . I’m skeptical. I’m not sure how—” He blinked at me and shook his head. “I don’t know why I’m making excuses. No—I don’t buy the story. I don’t trust Cristiano, but I’ve never known Costa to be gullible.”
“Exactly,” I said. “My father isn’t gullible. He’s trusting his instinct with the evidence he has.”
“Something he’s known for,” Diego pointed out. “Strong intuition. But I’m afraid he’s too close to this.”
Like my mother had been? She’d trusted her life in Cristiano’s hands and had lost it.
“You heard what Costa said at the party—the prodigal son returns.” Diego balanced the mango on a plate and sliced a clean curve along the skin. “I think it’s obvious he has never been a good judge of Cristiano’s character.”
“What if Cristiano’s telling the truth, though?” I asked. “Why would he come back knowing my father’s been hunting him?”
“It’s been years. Maybe he thought the old man had softened.”
“Papá made it sound as if it took Cristiano that long to track down the jewelry and the hitman.” If that was true, I could see why my father had said Cristiano had proven his loyalty. But I’d spent so long hating him, acknowledging anything positive about him felt foreign. And disloyal to my mom.
Diego’s knife slipped, and I jumped as it slammed the plate. He glanced at the table, barely noticing, as if lost in a thought. “Whatever Cristiano’s reason for returning,” he said, “it must be worth risking his life.”
“But if the Calaveras are as successful as you say, what could he want from us?”
Diego resumed skinning the fruit. After a few moments, he responded quietly. “Once a man gets a taste of power, his need for it surpasses hunger. It’s a sickness that demands more.”
Papá had said something similar about Diego. Because he was somebody in this life, he couldn’t ever be nobody. “What’s the more that he wants?”
He twisted his lips. “He was Costa’s star quarterback, as the gringos say. Cristiano never failed at any task. Other cartels tried to lure him away, but he stayed true. He was the only one who could talk back to your father and not get punished for it.” Diego gently separated the mango’s skin, but his knuckles whitened around the knife handle. “Maybe Cristiano thought he’d one day partner with Costa—or even take over the cartel.”
Picturing Cristiano at the helm wasn’t that hard to do. He’d worked side by side often with my father and had sat with us at the family dinner table far more than anyone else in Papá’s business. “If that’s true,” I said, “then Cristiano probably felt he lost all that when he had to flee.”
Diego nodded. “And now he wants it back.”
Even if Cristiano hadn’t killed my mother, he’d been blamed for it. What did an accusation like that do to a person? He’d had eleven years to nurse his grudge. I’d never forgotten what he’d said to me before we’d descended into the tunnel: “Look what loyalty got me.” Those weren’t the words of someone who wanted to be accepted home. They were those of a man who felt he’d been wronged.
Certainly Cristiano’s definition of loyalty had changed that day.
And that made him dangerous.
Diego raised his voice as he ran the garbage disposal. “Do you know the real reason for the nickname El Polvo?”
The Dust. That was what some had called Cristiano when he’d worked for my father. “Because he arrives on a cloud of dust, delivering death before the dirt clears.”
“That’s what people say, but no.” He flipped off the disposal and washed his hands. “It’s actually because of how he executed his first kill.”
“How?” I asked.
“It’s gruesome.” He dried his hands on a dishtowel. “On second thought, maybe I shouldn’t say.”
At this point, I was in too deep not to ask. My curiosity was being stoked at every turn and fighting it just made my imagination run wild. “Tell me,” I said.
“He got a bucket of sand from the desert,” Diego said, rubbing his palms together. “Then tied up a man twice his age and poured it down his throat until he choked to death.”
I gripped my neck, suddenly unable to breathe. “No.”
Diego nodded. “I’ve seen him do it. No screaming that way. No blood. No marks. And the bonus of a slow death . . .”
My nostrils flared as I inhaled. I felt that sand in my throat, strangling me. Death by torture—that was worse than death itself.
“After the party, I started looking into the Calaveras more. I’ve heard all kinds of inhumane things.” Diego brought the plate of fruit to the table, removed his shoes, and sat across from me. “Apparently they have a soundproof dungeon where they keep one body part from each person who has betrayed them.”