Page 1 of Cartel Viper (The Cartel Brotherhood #2)

Chapter One

Javier

“Are you sure this is the right one?”

I look over my right shoulder at my brother who shrugs and nods. We’ve had meetings with—shall we say “clients”—in some odd places before.

Some shithole places, some strip clubs we own, and some of the nicest resorts in the world. I don’t recall ever meeting at a three-star, run-of-the-mill hotel. It’s not quite nice enough to write home about, but it’s far too nice to be called seedy.

It’s the type of place a family from middle America would stay if they wanted a cost-efficient visit to New York City. I glance at the room number again and match my brother’s shrug. I tap the key card we got from the receptionist and push the door open with my left hand, my right holding my gun.

I raise it as I enter the room, not trusting anybody or anything because something feels off.

The sound of glass hitting the floor, then shattering makes me spin to my left where a woman stands cowering behind the kitchen counter in this extended-stay hotel.

She stares at me; her gaze darts between my gun, pointing at her, and my squinting gaze.

This i sn’t who should be in this room.

What the fuck went wrong?

I won’t assume anything until I get the all-clear from the men who came with my brother and me. I don’t take my eyes off her as the men fan out, checking the bedroom and the bathroom. Two remain in the hallway, prepared for anyone who unexpectedly joins us.

“Get out.”

The two words are spoken with authority that doesn’t match the woman’s shaken expression or how she continues to tremble.

“Where’s Luigi?”

Her brow furrows. “I don’t know, probably off with Mario.”

It’s my turn for my brow to furrow. Did she just make a video game reference? She cocks an eyebrow, and I see some of her initial shock wear off. Now, anger replaces it. She points toward the door.

“Get the fuck out of my room before I call the cops.”

Joaquin and I chuckle, but it’s hardly a mirthful sound. There’s no way she’s getting to a phone, let alone dialing any numbers before any of us stop her. Everyone here knows it’s an empty threat, but it’s not unexpected.

“Get out before I scream.”

That could be more problematic. She opens her mouth, and I lower my gun.

Since none of my men warned me of anything, I’m comfortable holstering it in my shoulder harness.

I put my hands out to the side, and I sense Joaquin doing the same thing.

The three men who entered with us make themselves unobtrusive near the windows and the bedroom door.

“Whatever you’re here for, I don’t have it. Leave, and we can pretend this never happened.”

There’s something about her voice, and the longer I stare, her face looks so familiar, but I can’t place it. If we’ve met before, it was years ago. I’d certainly remember her if it had been recently.

“I’m serious. Get out.”

She’s faster than any of us expect when she pulls a butcher’s knife from a block holding various sizes.

The way she handles it and how her stance changes—this is a woman who’s trained to use a knife, but in the process of grabbing a weapon, her shirt sleeve moves, and I see what are clearly bruised handprints around her wrist.

They’re easy to recognize when you’ve inflicted them thousands of times. Joaquin shifts, not stepping closer, but to get a better view. I’m certain he sees the same thing I do and knows someone hurt her. The bruises are faded but still noticeable.

When neither Joaquin nor I order our men out or make any sign we’re leaving, she grabs a second knife and draws it back. So, she’s prepared to hurl it at one of us. I’m not inclined to get stabbed today.

I also don’t want to take a woman hostage. And I won’t kill one who isn’t a mercenary. That puts me squarely between a rock and a hard place.

“Look, I’m not calling the police. And I haven’t screamed.

I don’t need any attention from anyone right now and neither do you.

If you kill me or take me, that’s what’ll happen.

I know there’re security cameras in the building.

If anything happens to me, you’ll be a suspect.

Leave, and we can pretend we never met.”

She’s said the same thing twice. I narrow my eyes at her, and the feeling I know her grows even stronger, but I still can’t place it. It’ll surely come to me later.

We can’t wait around much longer if we’re going to get out of here unnoticed. This meeting’s gone to shit. I’ll have men posted here to watch her. They’ll intervene if she calls the police or tries to go to them.

I take a step backward, and Joaquin follows my cue. With both of their leaders moving toward the door, our men know it’s time to beat a hasty retreat. Neither she nor I take our eyes off of each other as I’m the last one to back out of the door.

I pull it closed but don’t step away immediately.

Instead, I’m pressing my ear to it. I hear nothing through the door, but I suspect she’ll peek through the spy hole at any moment.

My men and brother have the same thought I do, as they press themselves against the wall, so she won’t see any of us.

I continue to listen for any sounds inside the room, but it’s as though no one’s there.

I look over at Joaquin, and he tilts his head toward the elevator.

We need to find out if the receptionist gave us the wrong room number on purpose. We head to the opening elevator doors as I pull my phone out and find the contact for the guy we were supposed to meet.

Me

What room number?

I shoot off the text as we head downstairs, and a second later, a reply comes through.

Sender

We’re at 552.

I turn the phone toward Joaquin as I follow him into the elevator. His hand shoots out to hold the door open. The room is in the opposite direction from where we just were, which was five-twenty-five. This is my mission, but I ask for Joaquin’s opinion.

“Do we leave, or go to him, or go back to the vehicles to regroup?”

“I say we check it out but be prepared to run.”

I don’t want anyone to see us because that would bring attention to us.

There’d be seven Latino men in tailored suits running through a Holiday Inn.

It sounds like the shittiest spy movie ever, but we’re all in excellent shape because these things happen.

We have to be prepared in case we need to bolt.

We step away from the elevator. Joaquin looks at Paco, and he knows to stay here. We all have earpieces in, so we can communicate without making calls. If anyone questionable approaches, he’ll let us know. He’ll also notice if the woman tries to leave.

The rest of us hurry down the hallway. I draw my gun for a second time before knocking on the door. I hate not having the element of surprise, since the key card is to the wrong room.

I don’t like people boxing me in, which is basically what waiting in a hallway is. It also means I’m not in charge of the meeting from the get-go. That’s not a problem so much as an inconvenience. It doesn’t set the tone the way I want it to.

The door opens a couple inches, and I raise my gun just like I did the last time.

Except since I’m not opening the door, I put my shoulder against it and shove the man on the other side.

He didn’t expect that, so the door swings open.

Joaquin, my men, and I flood the room. No sounds of shattering glass meet us, but my men do the same thing as before, sweeping the area.

This time around, they find two armed men waiting in the bedroom. These Chicago Mafiosos are no more thrilled to have guns pointed at them than the woman was. My men strip them of their weapons and force them onto their knees.

“This isn’t a good start to the meeting, Luigi. Having men hiding, ready to jump us.”

“They were watching the soccer game and staying out of the way.”

Fat fucking chance, but I let that excuse go. I gesture with my gun to the sofa and coffee table. Luigi nods and leads the way. I already saw the suitcase just inside the bedroom door. Joaquin fetches it and brings it over.

“What took you so long to get up here?”

Presumptuous fuck. I don’t answer to Luigi, so I ignore the question. I definitely don’t want to admit we went to the wrong room.

“Let’s see what you have.” I control this situation, not him.

Luigi glances around before hoisting the small suitcase onto the coffee table and sitting on the sofa. He leans forward to do the combination lock. He looks at Joaquin, then me, before unzipping the luggage.

“It’s all here, just like my boss promised.”

His boss. That fucker. I’m certain Salvatore Mancinelli doesn’t know Edoardo Rizzo is doing a deal with us. He’d shit a brick. Not only are we doing a deal with a Cosa Nostra family, we’re doing it here in NYC. Right under his fucking nose.

But little does Edoardo know what’s coming next.

If we fuck him over, then we fuck over his in-laws, the Vizzinis in Boston.

Why leapfrog to them? They fucked over my tía .

Tío Enrique isn’t done with Tommaso Vizzini for the shit position he put my soon-to-be Tía Elodie in just after my uncle and new aunt met.

It’ll be a long time before my family is good with his.

“Then let’s see. The longer you take, the less I trust you.” If negative trust is possible, that’s where we’re already at.

“Here you go.”

They don’t look like much, but the small Persian prayer rugs have micro-nano-chips woven into them and cumulatively are worth just shy of one-point-two billion.

I pick up a rug and unroll it, running my fingers over the fabric, knowing what I’m looking for.

It doesn’t take long before Joaquin and I verify the shipment is as it should be.

“Good.” I’m not known to be effusive.

I close up the suitcase but pull off the lock. I saw the combination, but I don’t trust Luigi’s, so I snap my lock onto it. I lift the suitcase off the table as Joaquin takes a messenger bag from Alvaro.

“It’s all here. Just like my uncle promised.” Oh, it’s all there all right.

Alvaro is Paco’s younger brother, and something like a second cousin twice removed.

He’s one of the few men we trust to carry a bag full of money.

Joaquin opens and tilts it toward Luigi for him to see.

My brother pulls out a stack and flips through them, picking three bills from the center and handing them to Luigi.

They’re the only three bills in there that’re legit.

Joaquin marked them before we left my place, so he’d be sure to grab the right ones.

Luigi holds them up to the light before nodding. “Thank you.”

Joaquin zips the bag and hands it over. I’m passing the suitcase to Alvaro while another one of our guys opens the hotel room door and checks the hallway.

“ Todo bien. ” All good.

We get the signal it’s clear for us to leave.

None of us waste a moment. Joaquin heads out before me, but he and I stand just outside the door with our weapons pointed at Luigi and his goons to make sure all our men can get out.

Once we’re in the hallway, we don’t wait around.

We’re not exactly running, but neither are we taking our time to walk down the hall to the elevator.

We don’t linger for the parting gift we left Luigi to detonate. It’s not a bomb per se, but we’re certainly not exploding die packs on the bills. Instead, when he opens the bag and rummages around inside of it, he’ll knock the cap off the bottle inside.

“Did you have any trouble with it?”

Joaquin will have loosened it a bit more as he pulled out the stack of counterfeit hundred-dollar bills.

“No. I prepped it this morning. It was easy to unscrew it the last bit when I reached inside.”

They may or may not realize what’s happening, but they’ll soon be dead.

The bottle contained highly concentrated hydrogen sulfide.

At an amount enough to make someone nauseated or give them a headache, it would smell like rotten eggs.

However, at a thousand parts per million, it’ll be scentless and immediately cause cardiopulmonary arrest.

Next, our team of men—our cleaners—will slip in and clean the room of bodies and anything else they left behind. There won’t be even a scintilla of trace evidence that any of us were ever there.

It’ll look like the Chicago Mafiosos left without paying their bill.

“Done.” Joaquin turns his phone toward me, much like I did mine earlier.

He and I and our other brother, Jorge, aren’t triplets, but we may as well be.

Joaquin is eleven months older than me, and I’m ten and a half months older than Jorge.

You never find one without another, if not both.

We’re known as Tres J’s . We’ve been inseparable our entire lives.

Out of necessity when we still lived in Bogotá and by choice now because my brothers and our cousins are the coolest men I know.

If I’m forced to spend time with anybody, I prefer it to be my family.

Joaquin and I are quiet in the car on the way to our tío’s house.

I gaze out the window as we cross into New Jersey from Brooklyn.

I can’t get the woman out of my mind. That niggling feeling that she’s familiar won’t go away.

I say nothing as Joaquin and I head into Tío Enrique’s house.

We kiss our aunt-to-be on the cheek when we pass her at the front door.

I really like Elodie a lot. My brother and I head into Tío Enrique’s office where he and our cousins Pablo and Alejandro, plus our other brother Jorge, are.

It’s when Tio Enrique reaches for a paper on his desk that I suddenly know who the woman is.