The scorpion. The skull.
It was them.
I’d barely allowed myself to believe it when Ryuji said the Alacrán Cartel had allied with Max and the Italians. The Alacrán were slippery fuckers, and they were rarely seen outside of Colombia—if they were seen at all.
Leona had noticed my discomfort during that meeting. She’d seen how I clammed up, but I couldn’t get the words to form. I couldn’t explain what it meant to me that they might be underneath my nose after all this time.
My fingers flew across my keyboard, calling up all the images I had of the Alacrán Cartel. Dozens of pictures loaded, fanning across all six of my computer monitors.
The tattoo belonged to seasoned members. The skull with the deadly scorpion was the distinct marker, but the lettering that readmuertewas what really sealed the deal for me.
Death.
Unoriginal for a tattoo, but effective.
When members were initiated, they got the skull and scorpion. That was the easy part. Members only got themuertelettering after they’d been raised to the higher ranks. After they’d killed enough people.
I chewed on my thumbnail while I swiveled in my chair, trying to get my brain to focus.
They were here.
The Alacrán Cartel was the most notorious cartel in Colombia. They’d started small in the south, planting thousands of hectares of coca bushes near the border of Ecuador, but they’d pushed their way north when I was a kid, right around the time my parents died.
The Alacrán takeover eventually eliminated the cartel I grew up with. They were the ones who shot me in the thigh and left me bleeding out in a ditch before Obi found me.
But that wasn’t even the reason I’d been on high alert since I heard they were in New York.
I’d suspected for years that their leader was the one who killed my parents.
Rafael Arboleda.
I’d never been able to prove it. I’d never even had a shred of evidence that proved the Alacrán Cartel was there the night they were murdered. The only real connection I had was that their aggressive expansion happened at the same time my parents had died. They’d since overtaken control of most coca cultivation across the country, with only a few competitors still surviving.
But ever since I was a boy, flashes of a memory had invaded my dreams—a scorpion crawling over a skull. Shortly after, a voice. A bone-chilling laugh, echoing over and over.
Ice trickled through my veins, not from fear but from the chilling desire forvengeance.
I pulled up my search programs, trying to locate any other information on the cartel besides the periodic images I’d captured over the years. I’d previously tried to track the cartel, but they were so good at flying under the radar that it was almost impossible to get data for longer than ten minutes at a time—if a member surfaced at all. They almost exclusively used cheap ass burner phones, and they stayed off the internet as much as possible. I’d even known them to use fuckingcarrier pigeonsin Colombia. They’d structured all their business to run off the grid, which meant I struggled to get a lock on anything they did.
We had to stop the Alacrán for our alliance with the Russians. We had to take them out to take power away from Max.
But I had a vendetta to settle.
I needed answers.
I cross-referenced images of the men who’d attacked the Russians tonight with the images I had of the Alacrán members. While the computer ran to pick up similarities, another thought struck me.
Leona’s father purchased drugs from multiple organizations while also stealing from the Russians. Had he been involved with the Alacrán prior to Volpe’s alliance with them?
Pulling up what I’d saved from his old laptop, I scanned through the material and receipts. There. Shipments from Barranquilla and Cartagena. But many cartels operated out of those cities. It wasn’t a sure conclusion. He could have been buying cocaine from someone else.
I dug a little deeper, tracing the shipment Luciano purchased back to an obviously fake tourism company by the name ofEsmeralda Travel Agency.
My eyes locked on their logo. Three emeralds backed by a golden sun.
I pulled up one of the pictures I had collected on the Alacrán, only to see the exact same logo emblazoned on a transport van in the background.
Shit.
