Two shots. Fast. One after the other. LaLa went down first. Paco went down half a second later. The phone hit the floor and showed ceiling for a moment before Quest picked it up and turned it back to his face.
“You’re next,” he said.
The screen went black.
The phone slipped out of my hand and hit the table. I barely made it to the trash can before my stomach emptied itself. Everything came up, coffee, bile, the empanada I’d eaten an hour ago. I braced myself on the edge of the can and heaved until there was nothing left. Then heaved some more because my body was trying to purge something that wasn’t in my stomach. It was in my head. LaLa on her knees. Paco’s eyes. The sound of those shots, quick and efficient, the sound of a man handling business he should’ve handled the first time.
Gabriel was on his feet. His face had changed for the first time since Manny died. Not grief this time. It was fear exuding from him.
“He’s in Colombia,” Gabriel said quietly. “He flew to Colombia.”
“He flew to fuckin’ Colombia!” Fosso screamed. “This nigga flew across the hemisphere to kill a nine-year-old and his mother on camera! What the fuck are we dealing with?!”
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. My legs felt hollow. My head was spinning. Paco. My nephew. Nine years old. Gone. Because I’d started a war I couldn’t finish against a man who had no lines he wouldn’t cross.
“That’s it,” Fosso said. His voice had shifted from panic to something harder. Something that had made a decision. “That’s fuckin’ it. I’m done waiting. I’m done with plans. I’m done with drones and nurses and distractions.” He grabbed his jacket off the chair and checked the gun in his waistband. “I know where she is. The Ritz. I’m going right now. I’m going to kill that bitch and then I’m going to the fuckin’ hospital and I’m going to kill that baby. Tonight.”
“Fosso, wait,” Gabriel said.
“For what? For him to show up here next? For him to call Mamá’s phone and make us watch while he shoots her too?” His eyes were wild and wet. “Manny is dead. Mateo is dead. LaLa is dead. Paco is dead. I’m not sitting here waiting to be next.”
He walked out before anyone could stop him. The door slammed. His footsteps faded up the stairs. A car engine started outside, tires hit gravel, and then he was gone.
Gabriel looked at me. I was still leaning over the trash can with vomit on my chin and tears I hadn’t given permission to fall running down my face.
“He’s going to get himself killed,” Gabriel said.
I didn’t answer because Gabriel was probably right. But the part that scared me most wasn’t that Fosso was about to do something stupid. It was that somewhere between the vomit and the tears, a part of me hoped he succeeded.
42
Justice
I was pulling into the Ritz parking garage to check on Mehar before heading to Hopkins for the night when I spotted him.
He was on the third level, pacing between cars like a crackhead who lost his stash. Hoodie up, hand twitching near his waistband, moving with that jerky, amped-up energy of somebody who was running on blow instead of sense. He kept muttering to himself, head on a swivel, scanning the garage, checking the elevator entrance, then circling right back to the same spot near the stairwell door.
I knew who he was before I even put the car in park. Creed’s intel had photos of all the Rios brothers and Fosso was the one everybody flagged as the loose cannon. The cokehead wildcard that Rodrigo couldn’t keep in check.
Quest and Riot were twelve hours deep in Colombia handling LaLa and Paco. Prime was coordinating the compound assault with Creed. Meanwhile this tweaked-out nigga had somehow made his way to the Ritz where Mehar was upstairs by herself with a gun she hopefully wouldn’t need.
Security would’ve caught his ass at the lobby. Looking how he looked, he wasn’t getting past the front desk, let alone up to thesuite. But I wasn’t about to let a Rios walk away from a building where my family was sleeping. Security was there to keep people out. I was there to make sure they stayed gone.
I parked two rows behind him, killed the engine, and stepped out quiet. He had his back to me, still pacing, still talking to himself. I could hear him muttering Manny’s name, something about his mother, something in Spanish I couldn’t catch. Dude was grieving and high at the same time, which made him about as predictable as a lit match near gasoline.
I closed the distance in about ten steps. He must’ve heard my shoes on the concrete because he spun around quick, quicker than I expected for how wired he was. He didn’t know my face but he knew I wasn’t supposed to be walking toward him in an empty parking garage with that kind of energy.
“Fuck you want?” he barked, hand going to his waistband.
I rushed him before the gun cleared his belt. Grabbed his wrist with my left hand and cracked him in the jaw with my right. His head rocked but the nigga didn’t go down. The coke had him too numb to feel it and he came back swinging with his free hand, catching me clean on the cheekbone. That shit rocked me. My vision flashed white for a second and pain spread across my face like a shockwave. Little dude could hit.
He yanked his gun hand free and was pulling the weapon when I grabbed the back of his head and bounced his face off the hood of the nearest car. The sound echoed through the whole garage, metal crunching against bone. He staggered backward with blood running from his nose and the gun skidded out of his hand under the car.
He came at me again because the coke wouldn’t let him quit. Swung wild and caught nothing. I sidestepped it and tagged him twice in the ribs, felt something crack under the second one. He folded forward and I got behind him, wrapped my arm around his throat, and squeezed.
He clawed at my forearm hard enough to rip through my sleeve and dig into my skin. His legs kicked against the concrete and his whole body thrashed with a desperate strength. He knew it was over but his body wouldn’t accept it yet.
I held on and tightened, counting in my head the way Prime told me to years ago. At fifteen seconds he started slowing down. By twenty his hands dropped off my arm. At twenty-five he went heavy against me and I felt all the fight leave his body at once.
