Page 1 of Bad Blood

Prologue

Mexican folklore callsitLa Boda Roja, the Red Wedding—a day meant for celebration, but one that ended in death and betrayal.

Once the toasts were made, the bullets started flying, though who fired the first shot remains shrouded in mystery. Valentin Carrera loyalists claim that the ill-fated truce between the two most powerful cartels in the world was severed by a Colombian trigger finger, while Dante Santiago’s men maintain that war was declared by Mexican treachery.

Others say that there are two sides to every story, and somewhere in the middle lies the truth.

To the next generation, their hate became a new hate. Their pain became a new pain.La Boda Rojabecame as real to them as if they’d stood on the battleground themselves that day.

Eventually, they took their bad blood across the border.

New York fell to the new Santiago Cartel order. New Jersey fell to the Carrera regime.

Twenty years ago, two kings declared war…

And only one dark prince can end it.

Chapter One

Thalia

Ten Years Ago

It started snowing an hour ago.

Thick, swirling mists of white fell upon our stolen car like hungry animals with soft teeth. Edier switched the wipers on, then turned them off again when the curtains in the old house opposite started twitching.

Fast forward, and the storm is a never-ending eddy as we sit and wait—though what we’re waiting for hasn’t been explained to me, yet. The flakes on the glass are as big as my fist. Drifts are forming against the line of big black cars parked outside the abandoned church, a little way up the street. Our windows keep getting fogged up, but nothing much else seems to be happening out there anyway.

“Do you think they’re praying?” I ask doubtfully.

“Not unless they’re praying for their lives,” Sam jokes from the back seat.

“Zip it, shithead,” Edier mutters, folding a new piece of Juicy Fruit gum into his mouth. “Thalia’s nine, not nineteen. Don’t go giving her nightmares, or else.”

“Or else what?”

“Or else you can find your own way back to New York.”

“They’ve been in there forages,” I say, screwing up my face. “We watched them go in an hour ago.”

Edier shoots me a sideways glance. “You worried, bug?”

I shake my head. “I never worry aboutpapá. He’s indestructible.” I-n-d-e-s-t-r-u-c-t-i-b-l-e. I spell the word out a couple of times under my breath. I heard a man say it about him once, and it stuck in my head like a piece of Edier’s gum.

“Me either,” he mutters.

It’s not just mypapáin there; it’s his and Sam’s, too.

I’m tempted to tell him that I don’t really care what’s happening, and that I’m only here because sleep is boring. I saw them sneaking out of the apartment earlier and I made them take me. Otherwise, I told them I’d squeal.

I never would. These boys are my brothers by a different kind of blood.

Cartel blood.

C-a-r-t-e-l.

I didn’t understand what that meant until I saw ourpapásbeat a man to death last year—until I saw the same shade of crimson smearing their knuckles.