Kiss Kill Vanish (10 page)

“—and if I'd had any idea he was dragging Bruno in, I'd never have put you there.”

So the man had a name. Of course he had a name. Bruno. Somebody named him that, and the people who loved him called him that.

“You'd never have put me there,” I repeat. “But you'd still have killed him.”

He doesn't look at me. The anger from a moment ago has drained out of him. There's a vacuous acceptance on his face.

“You're a murderer,” I say, unable to keep the disgust from my voice. “How do you live with yourself?”

He leans over, rests his forearms on his legs, stares at his hands. He doesn't meet my eye, and he doesn't deny it. Just stares.

I understand. The impossible explanation is not coming. No optical illusion. No hidden threat that made it self-defense.

“I had to,” he says softly.

“You already said that.”

“But you don't believe me.”

“I . . .” I pause. “I don't see how someone could make you.”

“You're saying you couldn't be forced to kill someone.”

“Exactly.”

“Even if there was a gun held to Ana's head.”

My heart jumps at the mention of my sister. “What are you talking about?”

“Your father owns me. He's always owned me because I have a mother and sisters. You don't dabble in Victor Cruz's business. You're in for life because disloyalty is always punished, and the punishments can be carried out from thousands of miles away.”

The sick feeling surges as my stomach plunges. “My father wouldn't—”

“He would. He does. All the time.” The muscles under the smooth skin of his jaw tense as he clenches his teeth.

“You're wrong,” I say, angry that my voice is shaking again. “You don't know that.”

“I don't? What do you think your father really trades?” He gives me an incredulous glance, then goes back to staring at his hands.

“Art.” The word comes out, and the absurdity of it clicks like a lens being snapped into place. Focus. Clarity.

“Art,” he says quietly. “It's a good cover because there's so much money in it. And because he does trade art. It's his hobby.” He looks up at me, and his face is full of pity. It's wretched. It's the look you give someone before you have to hurt them. It only lasts a moment, then his eyes harden again. “Listen carefully, Valentina. I'm telling you the truth. Victor Cruz controls a quarter of all cocaine production and exportation in Colombia. In the neighborhood I grew up in, in neighborhoods and cities all over Colombia, Victor Cruz is God. There are entire drug armies in Bogotá who make siblings and mothers and friends suffer when one of his employees is disloyal or disobedient. So when he tells me to kill some low-life dealer who's been stealing from him, I kill him.”

I can't trust myself to speak. I close my eyes.

“I'd do it again.”

Revulsion fills me, pushing out air and light. I can't look at him. “I don't believe you.”

“I think you do.”

“You're wrong.”

“Valentina.” The way he says my name is disappointment and derision at once. “You had to have had some idea.”

“Stop.”

“You knew.”

“I didn't!”

“But you believe me now?”

Tears burn my eyes. He's making no sense, and yet he's making more sense than anything my imagination has concocted since I left Miami. How else can I explain what I saw? I'd considered an art smuggling scheme gone bad, or gambling debts unpaid, but for the most part I didn't let myself think about the why
.
Intentionally.
And
even if I'd allowed myself to dream up an explanation, I'd never have thought this.

Drug lord
.
Cartel boss
.
Cruz
.

That's my name. Believing what Emilio is saying should be harder, but that's my name, the one I thought was respected because of Papi's influence in the art
world, and the bitterness and pain in Emilio's voice when he says it are real.
Cruz.
He's not lying. It's something dark and evil and fearsome. It hurts.

My mind whirs with signs, inconsistencies, clues, a lifetime of things missed.

“Do you believe me?” Emilio repeats.

I nod, numbly. Do I have a choice? “But I haven't always known.”

“I don't see how.”

“I'm only seventeen.”

He laughs bitterly. “You know how old I was when I started working for the Cruz cartel?”

I don't want to guess. I don't want to know.

“Eleven. But even then, I was always sure I wasn't going to get stuck in it. I'd slip through their fingers. I wasn't going to get pulled in for life just because everyone else was. My uncle and cousins. My friends. My father. They were all trapped, but I was going to be a soccer star.” He shakes his head like his abandoned optimism embarrasses him. “I told you my father left when I was nine, but I didn't tell you it was in a coffin. My uncle screwed up one of Victor's big pickups, and one of his guys got killed. The next day a couple of thugs drove by and shot my father in our driveway while he was washing his car. Payback.”

Tears of shock and disgust roll down my cheeks before I can wipe them away.

“I guess you're right, though,” Emilio continues, ignoring my tears. “I had a choice. I still have a choice, and I choose to stay alive and protect my family. But there's something you should keep in mind while you're judging me for that.” He waits. I know he's waiting for me to look him in the eye, but when I do, I wish I hadn't. His eyes are clear. Magnetic. They have me, and I can't look away. “I grew up in the slums. I've seen more blood spilled than you can imagine—my father's, friends', strangers' who were at the wrong side of my own gun—all because of your precious Papi. And while I was living that nightmare, you were in a mansion in Miami living on the proceeds.”

Something ugly escapes, both sob and groan, before I can cover my mouth with my palm.
How can you live with yourself?
Did I really say that to him? I did.
I press my hand harder against my lips to keep every sound and thought inside. He doesn't have to ask me that same question because I'm broken, and he knows it. Everything he's said makes sense, my entire life makes sense, and the shock and horror that's ringing through my body doesn't change that. I want to scream at him. I want to slap his face, but that would be pointless, because it would still be true.

I should have known. My entire life. A lie. How could I not have known?

I slump in the chair, spent, ashamed. My eyes are closed, and my hands are cupping my wet cheeks. I can't look at Emilio. I think I hate him. And myself.

When I feel his hands slipping under my legs and behind my back I'm startled, but only for a second. I turn my head into his chest as he lifts me onto his lap, and I cry against his heart as he whispers, “I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry,” over and over and over into my ear.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

W
e waste too much time.

There are things we should be talking about, things we could be doing, but at first the grief is so sweltering I can only melt into myself and let him hold me.

Emilio goes somewhere else too—to a lonely corner of his mind. There's an uneasy tension in his arms and his torso, and when I reach up and cup his jaw with my hand, I feel clenched muscle. He's bracing.

“How did you find me?” I ask, my hand still on his cheek, my thumb on his lips.

“I didn't.”

“But you did.”

“No. When I walked into the gallery tonight and saw Lucien's arm around you, I thought I was seeing things. Going crazy. Or that you were someone who looked enough like Valentina Cruz to make me feel crazy. I was on the opposite side of the room and you were facing the other way, so I had to watch you for a while before I was sure. You're thinner now. But even from a distance, I recognized your mannerisms, the way you put your hand under your chin when you talk. Your walk.”

“But—”

“I saw you go into that room and realized it was my only chance. It was just luck.” My hand drops to his neck. I let my fingertips rest on the smooth skin over his clavicle. Luck. After everything he's told me tonight, luck sounds like a bad word, the curse that made my childhood perfect. Luck is a lie.

“How do you know Lucien?” he asks.

“Just randomly.”

“Tell me how.”

I picture the glittering mosaic by Sherbrooke station where I used to sit, remember the dull burn of an empty stomach. The hungry days seem like forever ago. During those first few weeks I spent nearly every afternoon sitting cross-legged below the mural, playing till my butt was numb and my back ached. “I was busking outside the Metro.”

“What?”

“Playing mandolin.”

“
My
mandolin, but why were you busking? Don't you have money?”

“I do now, but I was down to my last few dollars when Lucien found me. I can't get a real job here without a work visa, and I'd used all my pawned jewelry money on rent. Busking was how I got money for food.” I stop and swallow. The memory is as clear as a cold sky. “Then one day he was there listening. He listened for a while, and then he put money in my case and asked me if I'd ever modeled. The timing was . . .” I trail off, refusing to say it.
Lucky
.
It was lucky.

“Did you recognize him from anywhere?”

“No. What do you mean?”

“Do you think he'd been watching you for a while?”

Would I have noticed? I burrow my face into Emilio's chest and smell him. He's the same, but different somehow, too. I don't want to answer these questions. “I don't know. I guess he could've been lurking without me noticing. I tried not to look up. People walk away if you stare at them.”

He thinks for a moment, then says, “I can't believe Victor Cruz's daughter has been begging on a street corner.”

“It's not begging. And it doesn't matter, because I make enough working for Lucien now.”

He grumbles something I can't make out.

“How do you know him?” I ask.

“Lucien keeps turning up at events I have to go to for the art side of Victor's business. Your father actually does buy and sell art, you know. He's sort of fanatical about it, which makes it an even better front.”

I think of the galleries Papi's taken me to. The auctions. The museums. Hours and hours filling years and years spent soaking up what I thought was his legacy. The betrayal feels so sharp, so physical, I might be bleeding.

“I know Marcel a lot better, though,” Emilio goes on.

“Why?”

“Because he parties with the big boys.”

I don't ask who
the big boys
are. Marcel can party with the president for all I care.

A long pause hardens the air around us. The longer it lasts, the more impossible it becomes to force out words. I glance up, and he looks so distant and unbreakable with his thoughts that I barely recognize him. I put my head back down on his chest and feel his breaths instead.

“You're not the one who's been bought,” Emilio finally mumbles.

“What are you talking about?”

My head rises and falls with him several times before he answers. “Lucien's working for someone. He's babysitting you.”

“I don't understand. I thought—”

“He showed up right when you ran out of money, and now he's got you dependent on him, right? He's keeping you here in Montreal, away from Miami but not wandering around the world like you would be otherwise. He's keeping you safe. And let me guess, beyond that less-than-passionate kiss in the car, he's never actually tried anything with you.”

I'm spinning trying to keep up. Emilio saw the kiss, but that hardly seems like the important part. Nothing makes sense.

“Or has he?” Emilio asks.

“No.”

“He's never wanted to paint you naked, then?”

No. He's right. It's one of the absurdities that became clear at Les Fontaines, and I've been cataloging them all, haven't I? Subconsciously I've had to, because snowflake after snowflake they've been floating down around me and piling up to something too real to ignore.

“No,” Emilio answers his own question for me. “His boss wouldn't like that.”

Anger burns in my gut. Lucien is a liar. I thought I despised him, but this new pain, even after the deeper betrayals of tonight, is sharp and real. Did I actually let myself pity him? I squeeze my eyes shut. I want to kill him.

“Victor,” Emilio says calmly. “He works for Victor.”

“No.”

“Trust me. That's the explanation you want.”

“What do you mean?”

Emilio thinks for a moment. “Lucien works for someone. Better your father than one of his enemies, or someone who thinks keeping tabs on you could be useful at some point. But it's been too long—they'd have already used you as a bargaining chip. Or killed you.”

I cringe. “But why would my father hire Lucien to watch me? If he knew I was here, he'd come get me.”

“I don't know,” he admits. “Victor's been to Spain three times in three months looking for you. Or maybe just pretending to look for you. Maybe he wants you to come back on your own, and maybe he wants you kept safe until then.” Emilio sounds doubtful. He brings his fingers to my hair and pulls them through. I can't remember the last time someone did this. After so much isolation, being touched feels sweetly painful. I hold my breath.

“Except he never knew why you left,” Emilio says.

“You never told him I was in the closet that night?”