Chapter 1
CHAPTER ONE
NICO
No somos cobardes.
We are not cowards.
My finger curled around the trigger and aimed.
Thud.
My uncle dropped to the floor.
Thud.
My father dropped to the floor.
I’d saved Juan. I turned to tell him that.
But he was still bleeding. His white shirt was still seeping crimson.
Someone screamed. It could have come from me. I wasn’t sure anymore.
Juan drifted away from me. I rushed after him.
My hands slipped and trembled. I still tried to close the hole in his neck.
But it wouldn’t close. I tried to wrench the knife sticking out of it.
It wouldn’t budge, no matter how hard I tried.
His eyes darkened. Death pooled out of them.
I looked back, and my father and uncle were still alive. It was a nightmare.
“Fuck off,” I screamed. They only laughed at my ridiculous effort to keep him alive.
“It’s ridiculous,” Juan confirmed, and I turned back to him. He’d written AV all over the wooden planks with his blood. I looked past him at the slatted cupboards, and terror-filled eyes looked back at me. Accusing me.
“Eres un cobarde,” Juan muttered. You’re a coward.
I couldn’t look at him. So I closed his eyes with my trembling palm. I didn’t want him to see the truth anymore.
“Soy cobarde.”
I am a coward.
FOUR YEARS LATER.
Somewhere out there, a phone rang. Seven times, and then it stopped.
I sank back into my world. The one made of a dark, hollow cave that echoed with guilt and regret.
For some reason, the coldness touched me more than any other day.
I didn’t know why. One thousand four hundred and fifty-eight days had passed.
With each day, guilt increased like doom.
Coming for me with cold, black hands, hankering for the last bit of my soul.
The phone rang again. Seven times. Again, it stopped.
I didn’t even get to breathe a sigh of relief before it shattered the silence again.
For fuck’s sake.
Unclenching my fingers around the gun under my pillow, I groped for the phone.
“You better be fucking a woman to ignore my calls.” Enzo’s annoyed voice brought me into reality. The one where my father and uncle still lived, and Juan was a lost ache in my chest.
“No woman’s worth ignoring your calls, Brother.
” Sitting up, I threw the sheets off me.
They were soaked in sweat. I hadn’t had a good night’s sleep since that day.
Pinching my eyes, I walked to the shower.
The weather station on the console read fifty degrees.
Unusually bright and sunny for a New York January. Not that I noticed the change.
“Where’s the fire?”
“In our nightclubs, soon. The feds have an unannounced visit. Today.”
I turned on the water. “What’s the Don’s plan of action?”
“Don’t know. Can’t reach him. He’s in Marbella.”
My blood chilled. I forgot the running water. “Why? What’s going on there?”
“Who knows? He took off like a mad bull. Ever since we lost Juan, he can’t seem to keep up with the shit going on down there.”
Lost? We didn’t lose Juan. We killed him. In front of his daughter. We killed him under false pretenses.
“Fuck sake, Nico. Are you even listening?”
“I’m off to Marbella.”
“What the fuck are you going on about? I need you here. We need a paper trail, and I need to know what the fuck they already know.”
“I already have the paperwork. I’ll mail it to you. Get Stefano to help you with the rest.”
“I need the both of you. We’re the ones who’re going to run this shit soon. Nico—”
“You’ll get the paperwork. I’ll do the rest on the way to the airport.”
“Don’t you fu—”
I hung up on him. It rang again. Seven times. I ignored it. I’d face his wrath later. My hands on the counter trembled. Fucking juvenile. I released my breath. Dragged it in slowly. There were twenty-three grains on the wooden countertop. I calculated the length of each one of them.
Marbella. For four fucking years we’d stayed away. Now he had gone back. Why? I’d set off the alarm to protect her. Did he finally figure out he had left behind a witness? Just the thought of him being near Juan’s family made my vision go red.
I refused to allow it. This time it was going to go according to my plan. My mind ran through the Fibonacci sequence. Analyzing the computational complexity of a practical algorithm. My fingers stopped shaking. My heart rate eased. Any emotion I might have had washed down the drain.
I had been a coward then. Not anymore.