Chapter 1
Lili
“Manny, call Angel. Now!” The gun that Angel had placed behind the bar at Elísio when he gave me the job as manager was in my hands before I realized I’d grabbed it.
I heard my cousin moving, but I didn’t take my eyes off the man who was kneeling, hands on his head, in the middle of the empty dance floor.
Luis Rojas had been a ghost for the last year.
Felix Suarez had been named CEO of all of the legitimate Rojas businesses and, according to my brothers, all of the illegal ones too.
Not that the Miami commissioner would ever admit to that.
We’d all thought Luis was dead. It seemed to be the only plausible reason that a man like him would hand over his entire cartel to someone outside of the family.
You had to be suicidal to do something like that; especially since I knew the Rojas had dealings with the Venezuelan Syndicate and it didn’t matter who you were, you didn’t fuck with them.
Ever. Even my brothers, who had an alliance with the Cosa Nostra in New York and the Corazón Syndicate, wouldn’t touch the VS.
“I expected to see one of your brothers,” Luis said easily, almost cheerfully, as if he wasn’t being held at gunpoint. “I suppose my sources haven’t been the most reliable as of late.” He shrugged. “Cuando hay hambre, no hay mal pan duro.”
I clicked the safety off the gun. There was no reason to talk to this man: he was the source of a lot of pain for my family, and it would be all too easy to pull the trigger and make it all go away.
Except, Angel would be pissed if I did that, and while Omar had finally worked himself back into our older brother’s good graces, I wasn’t keen on being the next sibling to piss him off.
“Manny!” I called. “What’s the ETA?”
Coming in early to get some office work done and start on setup for the night was stupid, I knew that now.
Coming in with only Manny, my eighteen-year-old cousin, as backup was even more stupid.
Ever since my pendejo of a father and Manny’s spineless mother allowed him to stop going to school so that he could work and train with my brothers full-time, he’d gotten big, like most of the Castillo men, and he was getting better and better at handling a weapon.
Thank the fuck, Angel had been keeping him out of the worst of things; he was determined to let Manny be a kid for as long as possible.
“There’s no reason to panic, Senorita Castillo,” Luis said. “I won’t hurt you.”
Won’t wasn’t can’t, and I was smart enough to realize the difference. I kept the gun steady on him. “Everyone thought you were dead,” I said, unable to help myself. “Where have you been hiding?”
Luis’s face twisted in anger. There was a flash of the arrogant man that had rivaled my father for years. Cowed, but obviously not gone entirely. “I might as well be dead, Senorita Castillo,” he said. “I’ve lost everything to Felix Suarez.”
I snorted. “Tú te lo hiciste a ti mismo,” I spat. “Don’t expect me to feel sorry for you.”
“No,” Luis agreed. “I don’t expect that.”
“Then what in the hell are you doing here?” I shouldn’t be talking to him, but it was impossible not to ask.
Why in the fuck would he come to a Castillo club?
I’d heard of suicide by cop. Was this an extension of that?
Because I’d be happy to oblige him if my brothers wouldn’t kick my ass. But then again, it might be worth it.
Luis smiled in a way that sent ice down my spine. “I was really hoping that at least one of your brothers would be here,” he said. “But I am on a time limit, you see.”
“Wha—?” He reached down and spread his jacket open, and a scream crawled up my throat.
There was a black, wired device strapped across Luis’s chest that could only be a bomb.
I needed to get out of the building. I needed to get Manny out of the building.
But my legs felt like lead weights; I couldn’t gather the strength to get them to move.
“Jefe Suarez gave me one last task, you see,” Luis continued in that near-friendly way that made my stomach twist sickeningly.
I couldn’t tell whether he had snapped, or if he was so beaten down that this felt like some kind of mercy.
“I could go out serving a greater purpose…or he could shoot me like a dog.” He glanced down at his chest. “I decided this would be significantly less painful.”
I swallowed hard. “I thought you said you weren’t going to hurt me,” I said.
“I’ve been told so long as you’re in close proximity to the blast, it’s painless. You won’t feel a thing,” Luis promised and reached for his chest.
I pulled the trigger, and his shoulder exploded in a red mist of blood and meatier things. Luis screamed and hit the ground, and I was able to force myself out from behind the bar, gun still leveled at the man writhing in agony on the wooden dance floor.
“Lili, I couldn’t get a hold of—” Manny stopped short when he saw me standing over Luis Rojas.
“Go outside,” I told him, voice steady and firm despite my pulse pounding so hard that it was difficult to hear anything. Or that might have been shooting a gun indoors without ear protection. Or shock.
Manny didn’t move. “You too,” he said.
“I’m coming. Go.”
But my primo stood his ground. “I’ll go when you do.”
Luis let out a wet laugh and tried to sit up.
I squeezed down on the trigger again, and a hole was blasted into his thigh.
He let out another scream as blood gushed from his leg, but the sound petered into a sickening laugh.
“Shoot me again,” he slurred. He was already turning gray with blood loss. “Put us all out of our misery.”
“Not us, Rojas,” Manny spat, and he sounded far older than his eighteen years. “Just you.”
Luis kept laughing. “If my heart stops, the bomb will detonate automatically. Felix called it a failsafe, in case one of your brothers shot me on sight.”
Fuck. There was so much blood pooling beneath his body; I must have hit his femoral, which meant he had a minute or two, at most. Manny grabbed my arm and started running for the door. I went with him, gun still raised.
“Your son is alive!” Luis screamed after us, and although the words hit me like a kick to the stomach, we kept moving. Turning around, asking what he meant, would be suicidal.
Manny pushed the door of the club open, and we spilled out onto the sidewalk. I had enough time to think that there were too many people around before there was a roar, and I was flying through the air, thrown from the blast of the explosion.