Desperado (The Blood Legacy #6)

Prologue

THE NEW RECRUIT

HADRIáN (TEN YEARS AGO)

“How does it feel to be the big man?” Manny’s gap is the first thing that breaks free as he smiles at me, slapping my back rhythmically like it’s some kind of drum.

“It’s alright.” Forcing a smile his way, I take in the two dozen recruits of the National Police Academy I just graduated from. Turning from Julio and Sebastian hugging their parents a minute too late, I can’t school the pain that crosses my features quick enough.

“Aye,” my uncle’s hard hand squeezes my shoulder. “Aye.” His tone drops like a boulder sliding down a hillside caused by a deluge to one way more somber.

There’s a warning there implying — Get your shit together, act happy even if you aren’t. You never know who’s watching. A lesson he’s drilled into from the moment I came to live with him and my tia four years ago.

“I’m good.” Flashing him a quick smile. He beams back, though we both know it’s fake as fuck on both our sides.

The only other choice is a toe tag. Same as my parents, Esme and our child ended up with. The other is to leave forever, never have your name mentioned again because you either died on the way to freedom or you’re no contact with your family because that would mean a death sentence for them.

My last contact with my sister, Ellie, was after she made it through to a small town in Alabama — Shelby-Love.

She made me repeat it five times so I wouldn’t forget.

It was a mantra in my head along with the account number taped to the back of a debit card she secreted to me a year after our parents were killed.

She’d escaped this place to join the U.S.

military. She couldn’t take me, barely seventeen at the time, but she got to that little town, and some people there showed her a path to citizenship.

I went to my uncle, who had a position with the police.

It was better than dying or being in the cartel, though we all know the police are the cartel, if not worse.

The cartels take care of their own. The National Police are so corrupt you can dine with them on a Monday only to be shot to death on a Tuesday. Just like Antonella and her parents.

“Excellent.” My uncle beams, turning so prying eyes see nothing but jubilant celebration pouring from us.

“Tonight we celebrate, yeah?” Again grasping my shoulder, banishing that moment of sorrow like a leaf on a humid breeze.

“Yeah, and maybe I can actually get some rum this time.” Giving him a slight nudge in his side, I let him lead me through the throngs of people.

It’s the least I could do. He took me in when my parents died, putting me on the path of as decent a life as possible.

Even if it was among the very bastards responsible for my parents’ and fiancé’s deaths.

“To Hadrián, who’s shown determination and courage this past year of training.” Tio Manny raises his glass high to the group of family and friends gathered for the celebration he and my aunt have been planning for the last month after I passed my last exam at the academy.

“Aye.” Cheers rise around me like waves crashing against the rocks of a cliff face.

Heat rises on my face as I stand in the center of the crowd. I’m not one for the spotlight. I know all too well where the wrong attention can lead. The same place it ended for my parents. In a pool of blood after a confrontation with corrupt officials.

“My bashful boy.” My tia, Paulina, smiles up at me, her dimples making her look almost like a cherub, as I bend to let her kiss my cheeks.

“Not a boy anymore, mi amore.” Comes my uncle’s gruff reply.

Looking past her to his proud but sorrow-filled gaze, it’s almost like we have a mind meld, so clear are his thoughts. “Never a boy again.” We both know what this career involves. Tio Manny said he would try to get me into admin like him as soon as possible.

I knew that reality faded as soon as the cadet commander assessed my sheer size and agility. There’s no way they’d put a six-foot-eight, two-hundred-and-twenty-five able-bodied male in anything but their most elite commando squad.

Both my guardians urged me to do the minimum to pass the tests but not be a standout, yet my ego wouldn’t let me perform at half measures. Papa’s demand for excellence in all things just wouldn’t let me do anything other than my best. Not even in this.

“You’re too much like Hector,” my uncle would say, not in a good way. He’d never forgive my papa for causing his sister’s death with his stubbornness in not allowing a corrupt planning official to encroach on the Wayuu, a nearby indigenous community’s land.

His frustration came from love, so I forgave him, but no matter how much grief eats at me like a parasite, the pride I feel at my father’s stand burns brighter.

“I will be a force for good.” I vowed. Not burying my head in the sand or paperwork.

“We are proud of you, son.” Tia Paulina gives me a soft smile. They never had kids of their own. Growing up, it was like Ellie and I had two moms.

“Te amo, Tia.” Wrapping her in my arms, I let her hug me as tight as she wants to. I soak up the mother’s love she’s determined to drown me in. I almost miss the insistent vibration at my side.

It’s my service phone. My tia’s arms drop. She feels it too. A small frown puckers her face as she steps away.

“One moment.” Stepping back, pressing the call button, I put the device to my ear as I move away from the festivities.

“Sorry to interrupt, Officer —” I can hear papers shuffle as the squad leader whose command I’m now under searches for my last name.

“Cabrera. This is Captain Cortez. I know it is rather last minute, and you have only just graduated from the academy, but we have green-lighted you for this mission because of your top standing in the last class. We are three men short, and we need you, son.”

“Yes, sir.” What else is there to say? Turning to look at all the people I’m about to disappoint. Duty calls.

“Group three, you take the rear.” Captain Cortez’s voice crackles over the walkie as we look on in the encampment.

Unease prickles along my spine. The encampment seems to just be clusters of families, not the cartel, or smugglers of any kind, like the intel in the official briefing showed prior to the mission.

“Does this seem right to you?” Júlio asks from my right.

I don’t respond. Just give him a hard glare.

Another officer beside us chimes in over his shoulder. “Yeah, it does. It looks like an illegal settlement. We have to root out these roaches before they breed and spread.”

My stomach sours at his words. I knew all that protect and serve bullshit was going to go out the window. Any grace period my uncle thought I’d have ended the moment I took the uniform.

The trial by fire starts now.

“Kill the men. Keep the women and children. Let’s go.” The sharp command comes from the captain, who moves into position.

“What are we going to do with them?” Comes the harried question couched in horror. Júlio’s too na?ve to hide.

“After we fuck them? Sell them, of course. How do you expect to make it on a police officer’s salary, hombre?” comes the snide reply.

I don’t allow myself to flinch as we creep towards the encampment.

There was rain in this area earlier, enabling us to approach the group of what our scouts said was about three dozen people.

From what I can gauge on our approach evenly split between men and women, with the children vastly outnumbering them.

No sooner than we reach the southern side of the group does the call go out. In the ensuing chaos, people either try to escape or fall to their knees in surrender.

Teens and young adults — mainly men — are dragged back. Many of them bloodied and tossed into heaps in the center of the camp.

Cries of “Souple,” along with a cacophony of other plaintive pleas of help I can’t decipher, arise from the group.

“Shut-up,” Commander Cortez kicks a teen not much younger than me in the midsection so hard that he immediately doubles over vomiting the food, the remnants of which we smelled cooking on our approach.

“There’s no call for that,” one of the older men yells from the group Commander Cortez has kneeling opposite us. Júlio and I stand guard in front of the women and the children.

His self-assurance and the way the people look at him even now leave no doubt that he governs them. Even from his humbled position, kneeling, he radiates a sense of strength.

“True.” Cortez agrees, walking over to the man. He drops to man’s level and mugs him, his face morphing into a sneer. “Just as violating our borders is uncalled for.”

“We’re just passing through.” The man’s face is impassive.

From my vantage point, I can tell his refusal to be intimidated is not sitting well with the commander.

“Hm,” Cortez rises with a swift motion, looking down at the man, who doesn’t break his stare. Whipping out his fist, he backhands the man with the butt of his Sig. Blood sprays from the side of his face as he crumbles to the side into a boneless heap.

Pandemonium spirals through the camp. Men kneeling lung forward, many springing to their feet. Several barrel forward, heedless of the fact that they are unarmed, facing an armed regiment of soldiers.

Women and children scream as man after man is cut down as bullets pepper the crowd.

“Papa.” Turning, I see a mop of cotton candy textured hair turned toward the man who confronted Cortez.

The sorrowful look of the woman holding her lets me know she’s her mother.

This man’s family witnessing his death viscerally reminds me of the position I was in just a few short years ago at the hands of men just like this.

What I have now chosen to become to save my own life.

Acid eats through my soul as I guard women and children watching the massacre of their fathers, brothers, and uncles. I know this is a stain that will never be scrubbed from my soul.