That day is today.
“Yes.”My stomach hardens.“I need your help.”
“Sí, lo necesitas.Reconozco que te lo has ganado, Vigilante.¿Qué tanto te quemó para venir a mí?”
My fingers freeze, missing the translation.I’m too focused on that cadence, the tiny swallowed consonants, and the way his vowels curl at the end.
Oh, fuck.
There’s a distinct shape to the sound of that rumbling voice, not just a timbre but a posture.
I blink.The room tilts, and the air leaves me like a fist.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I’ve watched the cartel for years and listened to hours upon hours of surveillance.I memorized the smoky laugh threaded through static in Buenos Aires, the clipped consonants in the Austin recordings, and the deep intake before each execution is ordered.
It’s not data in a file for me.It’s an obsession with details.That’s what terrifies me now.Hearing the cadence, the unmistakable pattern, the pronounced pauses… I’m not speaking with a decoy.
Matias Restrepo, the most feared cartelcapoin Colombia, is the voice on the other end of the line.
Every bargain I made with blood and code folds like a trapdoor.Every drop of humanity I’ve traded away has come due.
My throat chews.My pulse drums in my teeth.
“Respirá, Vigilante.Que los nervios no te delaten.”The mob boss exhales.“You savedmi vida.A debt is owed, and I deliver.”
Mi vida.The endearment he uses for his wife, Camila Dias.
Years ago, I pulled Camila out of a job gone sideways.With some spoofed IDs, forged metadata, and fake time stamps, I made her vanish from all surveillance cameras until she escaped the assassin on her tail.
Camila is no damsel in distress.She runs The Shadow Collection alongside her husband.But I saved her life that night, and thejefehasn’t forgotten.
“We will talk terms,” he says, his accent silky dark and twice as lethal.“But not on the phone.You come to me.”
“That’s not… I’m…”
“Broke?Homeless?No plane?Out of time?Completely fucked?”
Yeah.All of those.Colombia is a long goddamn way from Alaska.How the hell does he expect me to come to him?
I grit my teeth, sort my voice out of a cluster of wrong ones, and keep it respectful.“Yes.”
“I’ll send for you.”He hangs up before I can reply.
Fuck me.
The cradle clicks down like a cocked gun, and my hands stop being hands.Frozen and shaking, I feel the splint against my wrist, the sweat beneath my forearm, and the struggle for breath that doesn’t come.
Dove’s footage loops before me, replaying her morning walk to work.I watch her breathe on the screen, and the cold, gnawing thing that is fear hardens into something useful.
Purpose.
I wake to the sound of Dove breathing.
Not snoring.Not the labored chuffing of bad dreams.I’m greeted with the delicate, steady tide of air filling her pretty chest and emptying again.
And I’m hard.Harder than any morning wood has the right to be.
