Seventy-Four

Cofre del Tesoro, Colombia
September 2012

Michael looked at his watch and swore under his breath. Estefan was late.

Again.

“You shouldn’t curse,” Christina chirped at him from the high stool she perched on, legs swinging in haphazard circles. They’d been waiting in the ballroom that Reyes had turned into an indoor training facility for nearly an hour now, and he was seconds away from walking out.

Without warning, one of the floor-to-ceiling doors swung open and Estefan sauntered in.

Michael watched him stroll across the parquet floor to the center of the room where he stood. “And your brother should be more respectful of other people’s time,” he said, barely able to hide his contempt.

Estefan smirked, making a point of reaching down to close his zipper before wiping at the corner of his mouth. “Sorry. I was busy.”

Like father, like son. There were nearly two dozen household staff members on the island—all of them women and none of them over the age of twenty. They wore uniforms and performed the basic functions of housekeepers, laundresses, and cooks, but to live and work for Alberto Reyes meant you were his for the taking or giving as he saw fit. In the years since Estefan had become a permanent fixture on the island, he’d followed in his father’s footsteps in more ways than one.

Late-afternoon rain slashed against the wide windows, the sound of it a ceaseless drumming. “Go to your room and wait for me there, Christina,” he said quietly.

The little girl jumped down from her stool. “But—”

He shot her a look over his shoulder that killed her budding protest. “No buts, just do what I say,” he told her before turning around to look at her brother. “This isn’t gonna take long.”

Christina nodded, moving toward the door at a snail’s pace, casting looks over her shoulder at him as she went. As soon as she was gone and the door was closed behind her, Michael pulled his tactical knife from the sheath strapped to his thigh. He looked at his watch. It was ten minutes to five. “Your hour’s almost up,” he said, cocking his chin at the knife Estefan kept in a holster at his hip. “But I think I can still squeeze in a lesson.”

“Three years we’ve been doing this, Cartero,” Estefan said, pulling his knife while he circled slowly to the left. “I think I’ve learned just about all I can from you.”

Michael followed suit, the hilt of his blade held casually. “Oh, I can think of a few things I can still teach you. Common decency, for starters.”

Estefan laughed. “El Cartero wants to teach me decency?” His blade whipped out, slicing an arc through the space between them. He was fast, but Michael was faster; the kid caught nothing but air.

“Someone should.” He sidestepped another attack, countering with a downward strike with the tip of his knife, a shallow cut at Estefan’s wrist.

The kid hissed, yanking his wrist back, face twisted with hatred. “And that someone is you? When did you become a hero, Cartero?” He lunged again, and Michael stepped into it, taking the wound—a deep slice across his shoulder—as if he’d asked for it. The pain cleared his mind and allowed him to focus.

“Refraining from strong-arming the help into giving me a blowjob in the laundry room doesn’t make me a hero,” he said, sidestepping another attack. “It makes me a man who doesn’t have to force women to have sex with me.” Using Estefan’s own momentum against him, Michael jerked his knee upward, crashing it into the kid’s face with enough force to drop him like a sack of dirt.

Estefan rolled onto his back, his face painted with blood, contorted by rage and humiliation. “Whoever said it was the maid I’ve been fucking?” He looked at him, sitting up to mop the back of his hand across his face.

The implication of his words rang clear. There was only one woman on the island who was not a part of the household staff.

Lydia.

He thought of her face the last time he’d seen her. It had been less than a month ago, but it seemed longer than that. How scared she was, hopeless, her hands pressed against her protruding belly. He understood now. It wasn’t Alberto she was afraid of. Not entirely.

“What did you do?” he said quietly, staring down at the young man on the floor beneath him, a sick feeling slithering around in his belly, so cold he was surprised he couldn’t see his breath.

Estefan looked up at him. “It’s not what I did, Cartero. It’s what I’ve been doing. With her.”

Something shifted inside him. That cold slithering thing wrapping itself tight. Heating up. Settling in. “Get up.” Michael circled him slowly, shifting his grip on the blade from defensive to an offensive position. “Your lesson’s not over.”

“Sometimes she cries.” Estefan stood, tracking his movements with small flat eyes. “She thinks I don’t notice, but I do,” he said, his tone edged in something ugly. “I know it’s not my father she cries for, so it must be you.” He grinned, blood smeared across his bright-white teeth. “I’ve had her many times, Cartero. I wonder … how many times has my stepmother spread her legs for you?”

A strange sound came out of him, a strangled growl that propelled him forward, directly into the path of Estefan’s attack. The blade slipped into the meat of his left shoulder, scraping bone, slicing muscle.

He didn’t even feel it. He just kept coming.

Michael dropped his shoulder before twisting it away, forcing Estefan to relinquish his hold on the knife still embedded in his flesh. His right hand rocketed past Estefan’s defenses, latching around his throat, thumb pressed into the pocket of nerves nestled behind his ear so hard his eyelids began to flutter.

Dropping his own knife into its sheath, Michael reached over and pulled Estefan’s knife from his shoulder and showed it to him before pressing its tip into the corner of his eye. “I believe,” he said, drawing the razor-sharp edge down the length of his face, the thick, heavy blade exposing the muscle beneath the river of blood that coursed down his cheek, “I made you a promise. Something about laying you open and watching you bleed.”

It took everything Michael had not to angle the blade across his throat. Instead he dropped Estefan onto the hard floor, taking a step back to watch him wail and writhe.

“Class dismissed,” he said, stepping over him on his way out the door.