He was doing it because I wanted answers.
And he trusted me to decide when we stopped.
Another swing. Another impact I didn’t need to see.
Sinclair sobbed harder, his whole body buckling in the chair, his bare skin blotching red and white with shock. His feet kicked uselessly against the floor. The zip-ties around his ankles held.
Voodoo snapped the fully charged collar in place around Sinclair’s throat, the click sharp enough that Sinclair jerked like he’d been hit again.
“No,” he sobbed, voice shredded. “No, no, please, please?—”
Legend lifted the rope again.
Sinclair broke.
“It’s—” he gasped, coughing on the words, “it’s not one group—please—stop?—”
Legend didn’t lower the rope.
He waited.
We all waited.
Sinclair’s chest heaved. His eyes squeezed shut in agony or shame—I wasn’t sure which.
“It’s a cabal,” he spat, the word choking him. “South America. Not— not just one cartel.”
Voodoo’s expression sharpened. Bones went still as stone. AB laser focused.
Sinclair swallowed hard, shaking violently. “Three. Three cartels. They hired me—independently. Not supposed to poolresources. Product. People.” He gagged, swallowed again. “But it’s how I made my best money—by combining shipments. Higher value. Less oversight. Bigger cut.”
Each word dropped like another stone in the pit of my stomach.
A cabal. Not a single monster. A hydra—with more heads than we could count.
“Your sister—” Sinclair wheezed, “—she was going to ruin everything. She wouldn’tstopdigging. Goddamn idealist, but she was going to make my life hell. The deeper she went, she got too close. I had to make her stop, make it go away. Or they would have erased me.”
A coldness crept through my chest, but this one wasn’t the controlled, purposeful kind.
This one hurt.
Legend stepped closer to me, not touching, not speaking—just there. A shadow at my side, an anchor I didn’t know I needed.
I kept my voice steady. Steadier than the rest of me. “Who did you call?”
Sinclair shook his head violently, as far as the collar allowed. “I don’t know their names. I never meet them. I only— only pass along the instructions. Cash. Coordinates. Pickup times. I swear to God, Grace, I don’t know their identities. Except…”
Legend’s fist clenched around the rope. Bones muttered something that sounded like a promise of murder. Voodoo’s jaw locked.
I didn’t flinch.
“Except?” I prodded him.
But inside—inside I felt something sharp and old and familiar tear open.
Tears and sweat seemed to drip off his face as he hung there then he raised his gaze to mine. “She is called Infanta. It’s nother name, I know that much. It’s just her code, a way for me to know it’s her. She—found out about my operation.”
“And used it to blackmail you?” That seemed to fit everything else we’d been dealing with.
