Page 4 of Bad Blood

The boy in the snow unleashes a rush of angry Spanish at him.

He doesn’t look scared. Not like us.Maybe he’s a knight, after all.

Another bullet bounces off the trunk. A hundred feet away, men are still fighting and killing.

Men includingpapá.

But he’s invincible, right?

Are the Carreras invincible, too?

Carrera.

I spell out the word under my breath:C-a-r-r-e-r-a.

Sam’s wrong. He doesn’t deserve to die. He tried to warn me. He tried to save me.

“Come with us!” I reach out my hand to him as Edier revs the engine in warning.

The boy shakes his head, his dark eyes blinking something unreadable into mine. “I can’t. I won’t… This isn’t our war yet. But it will be soon.”

I open my mouth to ask for more, but he swings his foot out and kicks my door shut. Sam pulls me back just in time. Edier hits the gas with the sound of police cars rising above the gunfire flames.

No one speaks until we reach the bridge.

We plot our alibis before Manhattan.

All the while, I’m thinking about a knight in the snow and a war that’s coming for me.

Chapter Two

Thalia

Present Day

Living up to your parents’expectations is a losing game.

The dice are loaded. The odds are stacked. But when you’re the daughter of a Colombian cartel king and an American angel...? That’s like surviving a snake pit with a fading flashlight and a water pistol.

Maybe that’s why, at nineteen, I find myself stranded on the island of Manhattan, somewhere between breaking all the rules and doing the right thing.

Stranded between doubt and determination.

Fear and fury.

“He wants to speak with you, Thalia,” comes a gruff voice as I’m attempting to slip into the apartment I share with my older sister, Ella, undetected. “And just so you know, he’s called three times this morning already.”

—Stranded between my father’s oppression and the keys to my freedom.

Spinning around on last night’s heels, I find the tall figure of Reece Costello bruising up my shadow. He’s our head of security in New York—a tough Irishman in his fifties, who lost any trace of an accent around the same time he lost his hair.

He’s holding out a cell to me, but it may as well be a loaded gun.

“Call him,” he urges.

“At least let me have a double espresso first.”

“Not this time.”