Страница 10 из 115
She can’t be more than nine or ten years old. I Reluctantly, I release the trigger. No, I can’t. My first kill won’t be her. I want to tell her to get back in the car, but I can’t find my voice. I’m too wrapped up in those rosy, wind-bitten cheeks. She looks like an angel lost inside the walls of a white jungle. I want to look away. Instead, I watch, mesmerized as she draws closer, snowflakes dotting her long dark hair like a domino. The shouts from the church are escalating. This time, it’s more than a clash of egos. Something doesn’t feel right. Blood instinct, my father calls it. Still holding my gun, I grab my phone from my back pocket. Something bad is about to happen. I can feel it in my bones. And despite what my father thinks, I’m ready to take charge. I’m going to lead a sicario ambush inside that church. I have to get my father out of there. I glance back at the girl. I have to get her out of here, too. She tilts her chin. “Did you hear what I—?” “Go,” I snarl, eating up the distance between us in a couple of strides and shoving her backward. “Get out of here. It’s not safe!” She stumbles, those soft brown eyes widening in shock. She doesn’t understand. “Leave her alone!” the older boy shouts. That’s when all hell breaks loose. Out of nowhere, engines rev—plowing at full speed through the dense white curtain, just as gunfire erupts inside the church. My heart slams against my chest. Loyalty tells me to run inside. But this girl… Unfamiliar men pour from the cars as more shots ring out. Before I know it, I’m barreling straight toward her. Gripping her waist, I shove her to the ground, her small frame sinking deep into the snow as I shelter her with my body. Choices have consequences. I’ll face mine. If I live that long. More squealing tires. More bullets fly but I refuse to move. I won’t let this little girl die. Not tonight. Not ever. “Bug!” I look up to find the older boy swinging the sedan alongside the sidewalk we’re lying on. A spray of bullets hits the trunk. “Shit!” The back door opens, and another boy about my age leaps out, frantically digging in the snow until he finds the girl’s hand. Glaring at me, he tugs her toward the car. I’m wrapped around her so tightly he’s dragging me with her. Then logic kicks in, and I roll to the side, releasing her. She came here with them. They’re taking her out of here. To safety. Away from me. I’m not prepared for the knot those three words twist inside my chest. My head knows she’s better off with them, but there’s something ingrained which hates them for it. It hates them for being her heroes instead of me. The second boy pauses before he lifts her inside. She locks eyes with me again, an unspoken question on her face. “Go,” I repeat. “You don’t belong here, muñequita… Go!” The boy yells something at her, but their argument is muffled by another vicious blast of wind. As it clears, I watch him turn toward me. “He’s a Carrera,” I hear him say. “He’s their look-out. He gave the signal. Don’t you see? This whole meeting was a trap. He deserves to die like a dog for that.” The hatred in his words gives him away. Many fear my family. A few loathe us. But only one lives to see us suffer. Santiago. “¡Hijo de tu puta madre!” I curse at him. He’s a lying son of a bitch. Whoever they are in Santiago’s organization, they live in a bubble. That pendejo knows nothing of my world. Nothing of what I just sacrificed. Tonight, I chose a stranger over my own family. Surprisingly, the boy’s lies don’t seem to affect her. Instead, she reaches out her hand to me. “Come with us!” I In that moment, I know I’ve made the right choice. I may be a boy, but I’m also a Carrera. There will never be a place in Heaven for me, so when an angel falls at my feet, I have two choices: clip her wings, or help her fly. In another time, in another place, maybe I’ll be selfish, but not tonight. Shaking my head, I offer her a parting gift—the truth. “I can’t. I won’t… This isn’t our war yet. But it will be soon.” She doesn’t get the chance to answer. The door slams shut, the sedan speeds away, and I watch as it’s swallowed up by the storm. Everything feels colder suddenly. Heavier. Darker… For the first time since landing in New Jersey earlier, I shiver. Gathering every thought of her together, I lock them in a box at the back of my mind. It’s time to be a Carrera. It’s time to prove I am my father’s son. Coolly and methodically, I rise from the sidewalk and walk, stone-faced, straight into the line of fire.
“You did well tonight, Santi,” my father says, lifting his glass. He looks so blasé and unaffected sitting there, sipping tequila at forty-one thousand feet, as if nothing has happened. As if he doesn’t have eleven new stitches holding his right side together. As if we didn’t lose four of our best sicarios tonight. As if a bullet didn’t graze my shoulder. As if his thirteen-year-old son didn’t just take his first life tonight—he took five. In the end, the lit match was dropped from Irish fingers. Sean Mahoney, boss of the New Haven Irish Mob, was tipped off about the meeting and wasn’t too thrilled with his lack of an invitation. He crashed the party and, as a result, not one damn Mahoney made it back to Co “Thanks,” I say, tonelessly, anticlimax choking out the last of my adrenaline. “I never meant to bring you into the cartel this soon. You’re thirteen, Santi. That’s too young to understand the consequences of this life.” I think of the locked box tucked safely away in the back of my mind. That’s what he thinks. “Then why did you bring me with you?” Why did you give me this choice? It’s a question that’s been eating at me since we left Mexico. “I’ve made no secret of my intentions. I expect you to take over one day.” “And I’ve made no secret of mine. That’s what I want.” His hand tightens around his glass. “Eventually, everything will be yours—the cartel, the Carrera name, our legacy, and the responsibility that accompanies all three.” I arch an eyebrow. “Responsibility?” “La Boda Roja.” The three words roll off his tongue in a twisted mix of reverence and disgust. He doesn’t have to explain. La Boda Roja has been drilled into my head since I was a toddler. “Nuestra lucha no tiene fin. Our fight has no end, Santi. It’s a vicious circle that will be handed down for generations to come. So to answer your question, I brought you to New Jersey to show you what lies ahead. To bring you face to face with Santiago, so that circle will burn just as brightly for you as it does for me. “I hate him.” Hate isn’t a strong enough word for what I feel for the Colombian. We locked eyes the moment I stormed through the doors of that church and he looked right through me. Bullets flew past his head like torpedoes as he dismissed me like I was nothing more than a kid in the wrong place at the wrong time.