Page 33 of Tainted Blood

“Because they’re operating as one unit,” Grayson says, staring at his phone. All conversation ceases as four pairs of eyes follow his hand as he turns the screen around. “A preview of our incoming Canal Street delivery. My men work fast.”

It’s a close up of a man’s bloody neck. Just like the one in the surveillance video, it bears an ax tattoo. Unlike the one in the video, a crimson key pin has been lodged deep in the center of it.

It’s true. It’s all fucking true. Ricci and Villefort have been a unified shadow darkening both our cities. All planned… All calculated…

“What about the timeline correlation?”

Every eye swings to where RJ has been sitting mute the whole meeting, taking everything in. Watching it unfold. It doesn’t surprise me. His silence is by design. While everyone around him wages war, he strategizes the counterattack.

“Who the fuck are you again?” Santiago drawls.

RJ returns his stony stare across the table. “A long-term casualty of La Boda Roja.”

The Colombian regards him with mild curiosity, as if he’s an irritating fly buzzing in and out of the conversation. But I know better. Behind RJ’s arctic stare lies two decades of hatred. Twenty years of scars. Twenty years of silence.

After all, the man sitting across the table made him an orphan at three years old...

That’s when the heart of his question hits me.

“Holy shit,” I breathe. “La Boda Roja.”

Santiago growls. “Not this shit again.”

“La Boda Roja,” I repeat again, this time through clenched teeth. “It happened around the same time as—”

“The fall of Villefort,” my father says thoughtfully, his jaw tightening.

“Despite what you both claim, there was a third party involved at the wedding from hell.” I swing my gaze from him to the Colombian. “They were Ricci’s men, were they not?”

No one answers. Not that I expected them to. Besides, it was a rhetorical question. I’m playing Connect the Dots, not Truth or Dare.

Black

Crimson

Ax

Key

All four lines intersect, forming a perfect square.

“It was a power play. Villefort was sinking. Tommaso Zaccaria was behind bars. Don Ricci was at the bottom of the Hudson. What better way to carve inroads through American, Mexican, and Colombian borders?”

“Pit the two greatest cartels against one another and watch them destroy themselves for twenty years, extracting the ultimate revenge,” my father adds flatly, as years of bloodshed and torment unravel on his face.

“Corazones sengrates,” I stiffen, my words soaked in blasphemy.

“Sí, bleeding hearts,” he confirms, commanding everyone’s attention. “Steal their beloved daughters and make them suffer a fate worse than death.”

“We could’ve been a step ahead of this if you hadn’t kept Bardi tied up in your basement,” Santiago roars, turning on me.

“You think Bardi is part of Villefort?” I scoff. “Come on, even sociopaths have standards.”

“The fact remains that if you hadn’t chained her to your side of the river with lies, she would have been under our protection. Instead, you were too busy trying to climb to the top of the Carrera mountain, you didn’t bother to look behind you.”

I grip the edge of the table, ready to flip it in his face when my father’s words come back to me.

“Santiago has built an empire on his ability to mindfuck the soulless. Don’t let him feed you a spark and let it draw you into an inferno.”