Kiss Kill Vanish (38 page)

“You're not telling him,” I say.

“Why not?”

“Because I'm going to do it. I'm going to go talk to him right now.”

She narrows her eyes.

“In person,” I say. “He has to tell me why. He has to look me in the eye and explain, and know that I know what he does. It's why I came back.”

“Did you run out of money or something?” she asks.

“I don't want any of his filthy money.”

“Wow. Your conscience is really . . . something.”

I shake my head. “I've seen things you haven't seen.”

She studies me. “You're different.”

My stomach sloshes, with the sound of warm salt water slapping stone. I am different. I'll never again be the old Valentina.

I thought I came here to warn Papi, but now that he's gone, I see it isn't just that. I have to talk to him. He has to know I hate him for Yolanda Rojas.

I'm a monster's daughter, but I'm not a monster myself.

“You're definitely different,” she says. “It's a guy, isn't it.”

I don't answer.

“Is that the real reason you ran away?”

“No.”

“It is.”

“It isn't.”

“Is he here with you?”

“No,” I say, surprised that I'm answering her at all.

“What's he like?”

I stare into the smoldering sky that Marcel made. “I don't know. He's sad. And brave.”

She rolls her eyes. “I meant what does he look like?”

“Kind of like a sculpture.”

“This is going nowhere,” she says, and holds out her hand. “Give me my phone back.”

“Trade you for your keys.”

“Seriously?” She folds her arms. “You want to borrow my car? You realize it was bought with
filthy
money.”

“Ana, please.”

She pulls out her keys but doesn't pass them to me. “And how am I supposed to get home?”

“Lola's in there, right?”

Ana holds out the keys and I take them, passing her phone back.

“It's not as simple as you think it is,” she says. “Not so black-and-white, I mean, with Papi being the bad guy.”

“I don't think it's simple.”

“But you think you're better than me because I'm not running away or confronting him.”

I don't. She doesn't really know about Papi. I examine her dress. It's shiny and tight, ruched around the middle, and gaping around her neck like her head is the stamen emerging from some lolling flower. It's couture, but not beautiful. It's not something I would wear, or even something I would've worn. I don't think. Except I'm not sure I remember exactly what my former self preferred or why.

“I don't think I'm better than you,” I say. I don't understand her, but that's not the same. “You know where he is, don't you?”

This time she doesn't deny it.

“Tell me.”

“Home.”

“Are you sure?”

“You insist I tell you, and then you don't believe me?”

Home. I was sure he'd go to the marina to scream at someone as his millions melted and sank. The yacht was insured, but the cocaine, all that money . . . I'd imagined the horror flickering on his face. “It's not that I don't believe you, I just thought—”

“Lola was there when he got a call and started freaking out. He told her he had to go home, but that we should stay here.” She stops and sniffs the air. “That smoke is killing me. I wonder what's burning.”

There are so many things burning right now, I can't begin to answer. The yacht. My feet. My heart. I turn to leave. “Thank you,” I call over my shoulder.

If she responds, I don't hear. Maybe it's swallowed in the break of a wave against the limestone.

I want to slip through the party like a sliver. If I walk fast enough, if I don't make eye contact with anyone, I should be able to glide through it to the valet unsullied. I can envision myself emerging clean and free on the other side of the revelry, leaving this dirty luxury for good. I almost make it, too. The canopy of chandeliers and drunken cackling tricks me into feeling hidden, but Emilio's eyes find me. Or I find them. He glaring down from the balcony over the ballroom. An angry gash carves a ragged line down from his hairline, forking over his left brow. He shakes his head slowly. It's either disbelief or a threat, either
I can't believe you did this
or
I'm going to kill you
.

I smile.

He takes off walking toward the stairs, disappearing from my view. He's coming down.

Common sense says to run, but I don't. I rush to meet him, inexplicably eager to be close enough to see his rage. He thinks I'm still scared of him now? He can't do anything to me anymore!

From the bottom of the stairs, I see him descending. I charge up, reaching halfway before we come chest to chest.

“You did this!” he snarls. “You set that fire. You tipped him off.”

My smile grows. He looks so ugly right now with his face pulled tight and that nasty gash. I hope the scar is permanent.

“This is a federal investigation you're screwing with,” he goes on. “Do you have any idea how much time you can serve for obstruction of justice of this level?”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” I say calmly.

“You think that pretty little smile will keep you out of jail?”

“Obstruction of justice? Gee, those are big words! How have I obstructed justice?”

He ignores me. “I guess I shouldn't be surprised. He
is
your father. I thought you were the one Cruz with a moral compass, though.”

“Don't tell me who I am,” I spit at him. “And just so you know, I didn't tell Papi about your plans for tonight. I didn't tell him anything. He doesn't even know that I'm here.”

“But it doesn't matter anymore, does it? He's gone. Worse, he's gone with everyone he trusts, and I'm here. Do you know what that means?”

“That your little cartel bust is going to be pretty lame,” I say.

“Obviously, that's off. Just like you wanted, right? And Victor's somewhere trying to figure out how fifty-five million dollars of coke just went up in flames, probably making a list of people to kill for it right now. I hope you feel good about that, by the way.”

“As long as you're on the list, I feel fine.” But I don't feel fine. Sinking the yacht was supposed to cripple Papi, make him scramble, make him doubt Emilio. It wasn't supposed to inspire a killing spree.

“I should've told you the whole truth about your family,” Emilio says. “I wanted to spare you, but that was clearly a mistake.”

“You think you can hurt me? Too late. Ana just told me she and Lola have known about the art for years.” I turn and start walking back down the stairs.

“Not that. Your mother—I showed you those other pictures, but I didn't show you the pictures of her.”

I stop, but I don't turn around. He can talk to my back.

“Not that you'd recognize her. They had to use dental records to ID the body. We think she tried to leave him.”

Horror slices me open from the inside. Am I bleeding here on the steps? I make myself turn now because I have to see him. “Liar,” I whisper.

That's the face I remember from starry nights on the yacht. “I'm sorry,” he says, and for a second I think he is, because I remember that sad glimmer of wishing things were different.

“Liar,” I say again, but it's more of a cry this time, because I think I see in the way he's looking at me that he did love me and he is sorry, which means what he's saying must be true.

“I'm not lying,” he says, hardening his features, and the look is gone. “Still think he deserves to get away? Still proud of who you are and what you've done?”

My thoughts aren't fast enough to rein in impulse. I march back up the steps between us, and I spit. It hits his cheek and he recoils in shock. He takes a handkerchief from his pocket and wipes it off while I walk away. Forever.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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

A
t a certain time of night, at a certain velocity, the Rickenbacker Causeway to Key Biscayne becomes a roller coaster. It's that way now. I'm flying between ocean and sky, strapped into Ana's car, perched on a thin track. I see nothing but the lights of other vehicles dotting the road before me. Am I even steering? Those lights are like blisters, swollen and pulsing, nagging at my eyes as I veer between and around them.

All my dreams of her have been wrong. I imagined her abandoning us. In my most charitable moments, I had her too horrified to know what else to do. And of course, my sisters remember her too well, missed her too much for that kind of charity. They hate her.

How far did she make it? Did she escape in a car, speed across the Rickenbacker at night like this, shaking and crying, too terrified to look in her rearview mirror?

All these years of knowing nothing, I want to know all of it now. How did he do it? Or maybe he didn't. Maybe he sent someone else to kill the mother of his children.

I push my foot to the floor, and the car hums higher, its pitch matching my panic. The causeway crests, and the lights of Key Biscayne open up before me. It's a cluster of diamonds in a black nest—none of Miami's neon glare, just unapologetic opulence. Home. I swing into the exit lane and swerve off the causeway and onto the boulevard that spans the island.

Memory is such a liar. It's been four months since I've seen my home, and I've pictured it every day. But those images were all mopey versions of truth, tearstained and wrinkled like a folded photograph in a back pocket.

Now that I'm here, I feel what I couldn't recall. There's something metaphysical hovering over me as I drive the familiar streets, like a vibration or an invisible crackling. Thrill. Power. Wealth. It's been here all along. It took leaving and coming back to recognize it, though.

I pull into the wide circle of our driveway, under the portico, past the pillars and vine-choked nymph statues. They look more twisted up than usual, strangled by ivy.

I park in front of the cluster of fruit-laden avocado trees and step out of the car. I'm suddenly inexplicably calm. Maybe there's a maximum amount of shock and sadness my mind can hold, and I've reached it. Now I'm holding on to a cold, distant sort of anger, and it's entirely cerebral. I don't feel scared. I feel dangerous.

Should I use the front entrance? The side door? The back? Indecision binds me. This is my house, but I don't ever want to go inside it again. And I want to confront Papi, but I don't know if I can bear to see his face now that I know.

Without thinking, I reach up to squeeze an avocado. My fingers sink into the flesh, releasing the scent of decay. More than floral. Turned. The avocado slips off the tree without a tug. I begin walking through the flower beds, letting the rotting fruit roll out of my hand and onto the earth as I make my way around the side of the house. At the first set of windows, the blinds are drawn. Papi's office. It's dark.

I keep walking, through bushes and cypress and king palms and jungle growth, past more darkened windows, until I hear the ocean. A few more feet and I reach the gate. Beyond it a staircase goes two ways—up to the deck that wraps around the back of the house, or down to the rocks and the waves.

I edge closer until I hear voices, then shrink back against the house instinctively.

Papi. His voice is the only one that carries over the sound of waves slapping salt and sand against the rocks below. I can't hear the words, only that he's spitting them.

I'm inching toward a disaster, a tragedy, like I can stop it. Why am I here? Loyalty? Love? Revenge?

The image that appears in my mind answers none of it. I see a gun. Papi's gun. I have to be able to protect myself against his goons, don't I? My memory reproduces it as black, thick, shineless. He keeps it in his office, in a locked drawer, but the key isn't hidden, or at least it wasn't. I stumbled upon it years ago.

I slip off the stilettos and abandon them in mulch, turning back the way I came, running, not questioning whether it's still there or what I'm going to do with it. I need that gun. Without it I'm the girl watching from the closet, the girl who finds Lucien's body too late to do anything, the girl too shocked by photographs of her own blood's crimes to do anything more than cry. I need that gun.

The front door is locked. I type in the nine-digit security code, hoping Papi hasn't changed it again. The door clicks, and I slip inside the darkened front entrance. I'm home. But I don't have time to stand still and feel it. I hurry down the hall to Papi's office, head down so I don't see the artwork welcoming me from the walls. Those paintings will not have changed either, and I don't want to see them right now.

Reaching Papi's office, I flip on the lights and go straight for the skinny top drawer. The key is there like I knew it would be, and it slides into the hole in the bottom right drawer. I open it and there the gun is, waiting for me.

I know nothing about guns. But that seems less important than the sureness in my gut that I can't be the coward again. I wrap my fingers around it, surprised by the weight, the solidity. It's cool and smooth like a piano key. Smiles gleam up at me from the picture frames on Papi's desk—my sisters and me.

I leave the way I came, but I'm running faster now. It would be quicker to go through the house, but I don't know who's hanging around keeping watch, or what I'd do if they tried to stop me. The trek back around the statues and the palms and the flowering wisteria feels different now that I'm gripping the gun. I'm solid. I'm steel.

I slow once I can hear Papi's voice again. It's biting the salt-rich wind as I push the gate open, but the rhythm is off. I hear it as I put my foot on that first step up to the deck. I'm three steps up when the unnatural lilt make sense. Terrible sense.