"So, what's the plan?" he asked. "We can't stay here forever."
"Working on it." I wasn't, not really.
Inside, the guitar had stopped. Diego had moved away from the circle and stood talking to Amparo near the door, his back to us. She reached up and straightened his collar, a gesture so motherly it made something in my chest tighten.
"He cares about you," Lorenzo said quietly. "More than he should."
"I know." The cigarette had burned down to my fingers. I let it drop. "It's going to get him killed."
A distant rumble cut through the night insects and guitar music, and I tensed before I had fully processed the noise. "Get inside," I said. "Stay with Eight. Don't let her out of your sight."
Lorenzo paused for a fraction of a second. Then he nodded once and disappeared through the doorway.
The door behind me opened. I knew it was Diego without turning around. I could feel him there, sense the shift in the air when he stepped onto the gravel.
"Jasper," he said. "What is it?"
"Company," I said, my eyes still on the road. "The bad kind."
He sucked in a breath. Then he stepped up beside me, shoulder to shoulder, his arm warm against mine.
The bass hit first, so loud that the porch railing hummed under my palm. Black SUVs rolled out of the dark, headlights cutting through the dust they kicked up. Men hung out of the windows with rifles braced against the frames. The music was American hip-hop, cranked past the point of melody into pure distortion, the kind of volume designed to announce that whatever was coming, it wasn't a conversation. My hand found the katana before I'd decided to reach for it.
The lead vehicle slowed as it approached the house. The passenger leaned out of his window and spat on the ground in front of the porch.
"They're just testing us," Diego said, but the muscle in his jaw had tightened.
The door behind us opened again. Danior stepped onto the porch, his polished shoes crunching on the gravel. He'd removed his suit jacket and rolled up his sleeves, revealing forearms corded with muscle that his tailoring usually disguised. He narrowed his eyes as he took in the convoy.
Diego clamped his hand around my wrist before I could move. "No," he said quietly. "That's not how we handle this. Not yet."
The convoy completed its first pass and turned at the end of the street, coming back for another round. The driver of the lead SUV gunned the engine, the roar echoing between the buildings.
"We should get the children to the back rooms," I said. "Away from windows."
"Already done," Danior replied. "We're not new at this."
The convoy revved engines and pulled away, heading up the hill toward the church.
From the porch, we could see the convoy forming a semicircle around the cemetery, headlights aimed at the graves. Then came the sound of shattering glass, and through the gap between buildings I could see the colored shards of the stained-glasswindows raining down, catching the flashlight beams as they fell.
Diego flinched. He gripped the porch railing until his knuckles went white. "Hijo de puta," he whispered.
One of the men at the cemetery shouted, waving his flashlight toward the fresh grave, the earth still loose and red in the beam of light. It was Emilio's final resting place.
The lead SUV's door opened, and a figure stepped out. Even at this distance, in the poor light, I recognized the theatricality of the movement, the custom white tracksuit luminous in the headlight beams, the way he paused to adjust his cuffs before walking toward the grave.
I muttered a curse in Russian. "Achilles. And that's Patroklos. Where one goes, the other follows."
"Who are they?" Danior asked, eyes fixed on the cemetery.
"The worst people you'll ever meet," I said flatly.
Achilles reached Emilio's grave. He circled it once, then stopped at the headstone and delivered a sharp kick that sent it toppling backward. The sound carried clearly in the night air, stone cracking against stone.
"Son of a bitch," Diego hissed, starting forward. I caught his arm and held him back.
"That's what they want," I said. "They're trying to draw you out."
