I climbed the stairs past the third floor, all the way to the top, where a brick utility building offered access to the paved roof. I walked out into the night, skirted the utility structure, and came to the narrow space that served as my hiding spot.
I’d claimed it soon after we moved into the building. I brought up plants and set them along the edge of the roof—Texas lantanas with their clusters of red and yellow blossoms, wild mint with humble purple flowers, white and pink zonal geraniums, and lush golden pothos. Bern and Leon installed an overhang for me and built a stone rail along the roof, Nevada bought me an outdoor couch, and Runa helped me string outdoor lights from the overhang to the rail. Arabella found a small fire pit filled with blue glass pebbles and Grandma Frida hooked it up to the gas line. Mom made me a blanket and bought pillows.
Alessandro once told me that I was loved by many people. He was right. But right now, I felt completely and utterly alone.
I leaned on the stone rail. Below, across the street, warm electric light spilled onto the pavement from industrial-sized bay doorways. After the warehouse collapsed, Connor gifted Grandma Frida one of the buildings he’d bought when he was trying to keep us secure. It used to be a massive industrial garage where semitrucks were repaired and Grandma Frida had pounced on it, so she could keep her business running. She didn’t know how to not work. Tanks, mobile guns, and cars spoke to her in the same way computers and code whispered to Bern and she loved talking to them.
The blinds on the large window at the top of Grandma’s building were open and through it I could see the inside of the motor pool. A bright red monster of a tank sat in the center. Grandma Frida stood on its side in her blue coveralls, digging in it with some weird tool. It was barely nine, and when Grandma Frida focused on a problem, she sometimes worked till midnight.
A heavy door shut somewhere. Nevada crossed the street and walked into the motor pool. Shadow followed her, wagging her tail. Grandma Frida turned away from the tank, waved at Nevada, and went back to messing with the tank’s insides. Nevada pulled one of the metal chairs open and settled into it.
I had upset my sister and she went to talk to Grandma.
I backed away from the edge and sat on my padded couch. Around me the night mugged the city, the air no longer scorching, but still warm. My insides churned. I’d never planned on talking to Nevada about any of it. My sister dragged around a truckload of guilt for forcing me to become the Head of the House and making me think it was all my idea. Now she knew that I knew. I had no idea what she was feeling. It was all terrible and fucked up, and it felt like my soul had been shredded. Anger, sadness, guilt, and sharp wailing anxiety boiled inside me into an awful, toxic mix. I wanted to punch something and cry, but I also wanted to curl into a ball in some dark hole and not come out.
I pulled out my phone, found Alessandro’s number, and texted him.
Where are you?
Where do you need me to be?
I was a fool. On the roof of my building. Look for the Christmas lights.
He didn’t respond.
I switched to Patricia. Someone’s coming to see me. Let him in.
Okay.
I leaned my elbows on my knees and hid my face in my hands. The ache gnawed at me, relentless. What if Nevada ignored me and went to see Victoria anyway? What if I failed?
I ran through my preparations in my head. Victoria would go for Gisela first. My aunt was a walking calamity. She spent her life bouncing from one man to the next, always on the fringe of crime. Both Bern and Leon despised her. She was like a comet—every time she appeared in our lives, disaster followed. If I were Victoria, I’d grab her. She was a veritable treasure trove of sensitive information only a close family member would know, everything from how four-year-old Leon used to wet himself when her then-boyfriend would scream at him to Mom’s PTSD. She didn’t know everything, but what she knew would hurt and it was exactly the kind of information Victoria weaponized.
“What are you thinking?” Alessandro asked.
I lifted my head. He sat on the rail under the string of outdoor lights. The black and grey fabric of his long-sleeved shirt and pants blended with the night. He looked like a thief on the prowl from the neck down and a prince from the neck up. The glow of the lights caressed his face, his bold, strong features, carved jaw, perfect cheekbones, amber eyes under the sweep of dark eyebrows . . .
“If I were smarter, I would kill my aunt,” I said.
“What did she do?”
He didn’t look shocked. He wasn’t outraged. He simply assumed that if I was thinking about it, it had to be necessary. This is who we were. Birds of a feather.
“Nevada is thinking about confronting Victoria tomorrow on my behalf. I tried to convince her not to. I don’t know if I succeeded. If she goes after Victoria, my grandmother will retaliate, and Gisela would make a handy weapon and a good bargaining chip. No matter how fucked up she is, she’s still my aunt and Mom’s sister.”
“If something were to happen to her, would your mother try to save her?”
I nodded. “She would. I should kill Gisela and solve the problem permanently.”
“But you won’t.” He said it with complete conviction.
“No, I won’t. I have to look my reflection in the eyes in the morning.”
“Do you know where she is now?”
I showed him my phone. “In the Royal Club inside Zona Rosa of Mexico City. I’m tracking her phone. She’s banging a guy who calls himself El Temor.”
“The Fear? Is he a criminal?”
“He is a luchador. Just to be clear, I’m not asking you to kill her, Alessandro.”
“I know.” He smiled. “It’s not you.”
He believed in me. I leaned on that like a crutch. I shouldn’t have called him to this roof, but I was desperate for someone who understood.
“I did pay a local PI firm to keep an eye on her. If I call them, they will take her off the street and sit on her until I tell them to let her go.”
“Now, that’s you. Are you thinking of pulling the trigger?”
“If I do, Victoria will know. I’ve been pretending that I have no idea where Gisela is and have no interest in finding her, because I want Victoria to aim her first blow there. If I show my cards, she’ll switch her primary target.”
“That’s a dilemma,” he agreed.
I hugged myself. I wanted him to come over and hold me. I had this absurd feeling that if only he touched me, everything would be okay somehow. If all the people in the city disappeared, and it was only me and him on this roof floating alone in the fog, I would be perfectly happy. I should’ve felt guilty over it—I was a sister, a cousin, a daughter . . . but in this moment I didn’t care. It was just me and Alessandro.
“You found Arkan after you left,” I said. “What happened?”
He looked at the city, handsome like a painting, silhouetted against the distant lights, then turned to me, and grinned. It was a sharp Alessandro grin, bright and self-mocking. “He killed me.”
“He what?”
Alessandro sighed. “I’d been looking for him for so long. He would surface somewhere, and by the time I got there, he would vanish into thin air, like a ghost. I would start over, collecting traces of him until he reappeared. We played this game for years. I don’t know if he got tired of being chased or if it was a coincidence, but two weeks after I left Houston to look for him, I found him. Or rather he let me find him. I tracked him down to the Montreal Malting Silos, a big abandoned malt factory. Towers and towers of concrete, thirty-seven meters high, in the middle of the city by the river.”