Page 69 of Bad Blood

She’s a little girl playing with a box of matches and a can of gasoline.

I forced myself to walk away tonight, but next time…

Next time, I won’t have the control.

Next time, I’ll fan the flame and toss us both into the fire.

* * *

I wake to the sound of incessant ringing.

Rolling over, I land a heavy hand onto my nightstand, searching for the source while managing to knock over a half empty glass ofAñejo.

“Son of a bitch…” I mutter, swiping my phone into my hand seconds before it swims in tequila. Rolling back over, I glance at the flashing screen and groan.

RJ…

And how the hell is it nine o’clock already? I just closed my eyes.

“This had better be important,” I say with a growl into the mouthpiece.

“What are you doing?”

“Having a goddamn tea party.” I drop my forearm over my eyes.Fucking sunlight.What do you think? I’m sleeping—or at least I was.”

“Get dressed. You need to come to Elizabeth right now.”

Elizabeth Marine Terminal—the Carrera owned Newark shipping port used for cocaine import and distribution. Two years ago, when my father handed me New Jersey on a silver platter, I flipped it over and launched an attack on Red Hook Terminal in Brooklyn—Santiago territory.

The Carreras lost eight loyal men, and I lost something it’s taken me two years to regain. Valentin Carrera’s trust.

It was a hard lesson in reckless ambition.

However, it’s this same lesson that allows me to catch the subtle shift in his tone. He sounds rattled. In twenty years, I’ve never known RJ Harcourt to be anything but apathetic to the unforgiving reality of cartel life.

I sit up, fully alert. “What’s happened?”

“Santiago diverted a hundred kilos of an incoming shipment from Guadalajara. Three dock workers were found nearby with their throats slit.”

“Are we sure it was a Santiago hit?” There’s a hesitation I don’t like. “RJ?”

“An ‘S’ was carved into all three chests,” he says quietly.

The scorpion calling card.

Memories I’ve tucked away for eighteen months rise to the surface. Ones of sitting across from Lola at a pizzeria in Camden, New Jersey, my heart impaled on the jagged image in my hand. A picture she begrudgingly took of the “S” for slut some frat boy cut into her hip after spiking her drink.

Only it wasn’t any frat boy. It was Sam Sanders.

And the “S” wasn’t for slut. It was for Santiago.

That bastard branded my sister with the same mark I’d found carved into a dead dockhand not twenty-four hours earlier.

Unstable feet carry me toward the shower as my lungs fight for air. “I’m on my way.”

Before I can end the call, I hear my name. “Santi?”

I freeze, my hand on the shower door. There’s that tone again. That unfamiliar rattled lilt giving conscience to a killer. “What now?”