Chapter 27
Caio
My thoughts, usually a comfort, were a chaotic swamp. I tried to focus on botany, on the potential alkaloid properties of the Flor da Lua, but the logic dissolved into waves of nausea. The Sussuron—a hollow prize now that we had missed the full moon.
A single, deliberate footstep sounded on wet leaves nearby, and I inhaled sharply. Someone was moving with a hunter’s patience, someone who knew how to walk in the jungle without announcing their presence.
Luzia’s body went rigid. Her hand crept to a loose, heavy rock at her side.
A silhouette blotted out the faint light from the entrance. He didn’t storm in. He ducked under the hanging moss with an air of theatrical triumph. It was Silva. His clothes were torn and mud-stained, but his smug smile was perfectly intact. He held a pistol, and it was aimed squarely at my chest.
“A commendable effort,” he said, his voice smooth and utterly out of place. “Truly. I almost admire the tenacity.” He gestured with the pistol towards the Sussuron. “But the game is over. Hand it to me.”
Luzia didn’t move. “You are trespassing on sacred land,” she said, her voice a low growl.
Silva laughed a short, ugly bark. “Sacred? It’s a patch of dirt with overgrown weeds. A resource. And you are a trespasser in my operation.” His eyes flicked to her, dismissing her. “Now, the Sussuron. Before my patience wears thin.”
That was his mistake. He saw her as an obstacle. He didn’t see the centuries of rage she was channeling, the fury of a people whose home had been violated one too many times.
She moved in an explosive motion with a speed that defied the cramped space.
Silva, so confident, was caught completely off guard.
He squeezed off a shot, but she was already on him.
The bullet went wide, the report deafening in the enclosed cave.
The rock in her hand came down hard on his wrist, and he cried out as the pistol clattered to the floor.
She was on top of him, a whirlwind of righteous fury.
Her hands were at his throat, her thumbs pressing down.
Silva’s face began to turn a dark, mottled red, his eyes bulging with shock and terror.
She was going to kill him. She was going to crush his windpipe and leave him here to rot.
And a dark part of me, the part that had just fought for breath on a muddy riverbank, thought. Good. He deserves it.
But that wasn’t who we were. It couldn’t be.
“Luzia!” I yelled, my voice cracking. I pushed myself forward. “Don’t! Don’t kill him! You’ll be no better than he is!”
She looked at me, her face a mask of pure, undiluted hatred. For a second, I thought she hadn’t heard me, that she was too far gone. Silva’s legs kicked feebly.
“We survive,” I gasped, repeating my own words back to her. “That’s how we win. Not like this.”
Her grip loosened but only slightly. The dilemma hung in the air, thick and suffocating. We couldn’t kill him, but we couldn’t let him go.
“He’s right. Killing him here is messy.”
The voice came from the entrance—calm, steady, and full of authority. We both looked up. Zé stood there, flanked by two of the local guards. He wasn’t looking at us. His eyes were fixed on the sputtering, gasping form of Silva on the cave floor.
Luzia scrambled off him, her chest heaving.
“What is the meaning of this, Zé?” Silva coughed, pushing himself up and clutching his throat. “Your timing is impeccable. Help me secure them!”
Zé took a slow step into the cave, his expression one of pure disgust. “You have been a noisy guest, Silva. Your men crash through the jungle like drunken tapirs. Your boats churn up my fishing spots. You bring the eyes of the Federales to this river. You are bad for business.”
Silva’s face, already mottled red, darkened with fury. “Your business? You work for me! You are a company asset!”
Zé laughed, a dry, humorless sound. “The ‘company’ is a fiction you tell your investors in S?o Paulo. This river has its own economy. My economy. And your little war over this… woman… is disrupting it. You have drawn too much attention.” He gestured with his shotgun, not at us but at Silva.
“My associates and I are here to ask you to take your hunt somewhere else. Permanently.”
It was a turf war. We were caught in the middle of it. Silva stared at Zé, his mind clearly racing, weighing this new, unexpected threat. The standoff was absolute, the air thick with the promise of violence.
And in that moment of distraction, as the two predators faced off, I saw our chance. I met Luzia’s eyes and gave the slightest nod toward the back of the small cave.
She understood instantly. While Silva and Zé were locked in their power struggle, we faded back into the deepest shadows of the fissure.
I grabbed the Sussuron. There was a narrow opening I hadn’t seen before, barely wide enough to squeeze through, hidden behind a curtain of rock. It was our only way out.
“They’re getting away!” Silva roared, finally noticing our retreat.
Zé didn’t even flinch. “That is your problem,” he said, his shotgun still leveled at Silva’s chest. “My problem is you.”
I scrambled through the opening, pulling Luzia with me and tumbling out onto a different, lower ledge.
The angry shouts of Silva and the cold commands of Zé echoed from the cave behind us.
There was no looking back. I plunged back into the jungle, the sounds of the hunt replaced by a new, more complicated danger—freedom—followed by the crushing realization that I had never been more lost.