El Moreno showed his face a bit past noon, and from the look of it, he needed longer yet to sleep off what he’d been trying to sleep off. As he stepped out onto the back patio to where Evan sat beneath the pergola, his terry bathrobe flapped extravagantly, showing off maroon briefs, hairy legs, and ostrich-skin cowboy boots. A cigar hung crookedly from his mouth, adhered to his bottom lip, free of the clamp of his upper jaw. It wobbled as he spoke.
“Caballo Oscuro. Enjoying the view?” His face held pressure lines from whatever he’d fallen asleep on—a pillow, a swirl of sheets, the ergonomic front grip of an MP7.
Evan had spent the morning clocking Montesco’s men, watching the guard-station switches, noting which vehicles rolled through the front gate and how often. The side of the house provided a superb vantage to the workings of the estate. Since his arrival Evan had kept a running tally of Montesco’s men. On top of the two sicarios, his count had reached forty-one.
Topless girls in string-bikini bottoms lounged on poolside boulders or splash-slid into the water like aquarium turtles. A half dozen workers were up the palm trees with razor-tooth saws, thinning out the crowns. Jovencito was guarding Anjelina’s room, and Darling Boy had positioned himself at a downstairs window, his ugly face aimed at Evan.
Reymundo scurried out of the house; it was clear he’d been waiting nervously for his father to make an appearance.
“Papá, I’d like to see my girlfriend.”
Montesco took his time with the cigar, savoring a puff. “‘Your’ girlfriend? Nothing here is yours, hijo. Everything here is ours. Father and son is the most important relationship on this planet. For years the Montesco name meant nothing. Until me. Now it is all that matters.” He paced in showy fashion, waving his cigar, walking beneath the hum of the workers overhead. “You will inherit everything. All that is mine will be yours. Which means that all that is yours is mine. Do you understand?”
Reymundo’s head was tilted down, but the muscles of his neck had tightened, as if he were girding himself, and Evan saw something rising in the young man he had not seen before.
“What if I don’t want that?” Reymundo’s voice trembled, but there was a thread of steel in it.
The Dark Man’s face literally darkened, the inner blackness pushed to the surface like toxins fighting their way out. His stare held a cold enmity that Evan had seen on only a few occasions in the entirety of his time as Orphan X. It verged on inhuman, tainted with something preternatural, a kind of evil summoned up, channeled from another place.
Reymundo literally withered before his father’s glare.
When Montesco spoke, his voice held an uncharacteristic calm. “I will line up fifty of my best men and rape her until she falls to pieces. Until her body comes apart.”
Reymundo was breathless. “You wouldn’t do that. Even you.”
“Why not? My life’s work, my sweat and blood clawing myself up out of the gutter an inch at a time, it’s in you, my son.” Montesco’s tone was gentle, even loving, but the sadistic gleam had not left his eyes. “You want to walk away from everything I’ve built? Everything I am? When I’m gone, you will turn my legacy into dust, destroy me. You’d exterminate my name, the name of my father. If you’re willing to do that to me, don’t question what I will do to her.” And now he leaned closer, his shadow falling across his son’s face. “What will be left? If you betray all that I’ve done, all that I am, what will remain of me?”
“What if I’m something better?” Reymundo looked stunned that the words had escaped him. Immediately his posture changed, crumpling inward. “Papá, forgive me, I didn’t mean—”
Montesco backhanded him, knocking him to the ground, then started kicking him in the ribs, face contorted with rage. His hair tumbled across his eyes, and for a moment it seemed like he’d unleashed something that could never be contained, that he would literally kick his son to death.
As Montesco wound up once more, Evan tensed to intervene, but before he could, a cry came from overhead.
A dead palm frond fell weightily from the sky, striking Montesco at the back of his neck. He staggered and dropped his cigar, embers cascading along the concrete. Knocked down onto a knee, hair thrown forward across his face, his maroon ass hanging out of the bathrobe.
It was as though someone had pressed pause on the world.
Girls frozen in the grotto, mouths ajar.
Darling Boy on his feet inside, one hand pressed to the windowpane.
The guards standing rigidly, as if afraid to breathe.
Montesco rose. Dusted off his knee. Spit a bit of tobacco from his tongue.
There was a hum coming off him, a low vibration of rage. That too-wide mouth quivered. The eyes, offset by that broad nose, had an animal intensity, fire and wounded pride. It was as though he’d been punctured, unveiled as a mere human who could get struck on the head and knocked down like anyone else. Time and time again, Evan had learned that nothing in the world was more dangerous than a weak man who felt humiliated.
The worker was rappelling down the trunk of the palm tree, pulley rope literally smoking in his hands. He hit the ground unevenly, stumbling over to the Dark Man and throwing himself prostrate on the concrete. An older man, quite short, long-sleeved shirt drenched with sweat, missing his front teeth. His name patch read VENUSTIANO.
“Perdóneme, Jefe. Perdóneme.” Venustiano was too scared to sob, but his chest heaved as though he were.
Reymundo crawled away, finding his feet, keeping his distance from his father and the newest distraction. Darling Boy had emerged from the house. He stood across the pool, arms loose at his sides.
Montesco looked not at the tree trimmer but at Darling Boy. He swept his sweat-slick locks back over his head, restoring himself to his full height.
“Fetch the lion,” he said.