Chapter 4

I refused to leave. I had to find him. I had to see Luis.

I pushed past Andrew, ignoring his calls, and began my search. I walked through the ruined halls of my home, my bare feet sticking to the blood-slicked floors. I checked every body, turning over faces I knew, my heart hammering against my ribs with a sickening rhythm of hope and dread.

"Looking for your kingpin husband?"

A voice, sickly sweet and dripping with malice, cut through my daze.

Molly Johns stood in the archway to the garden, flanked by two federal agents. She was the daughter of our old housekeeper, a girl who used to watch me with envious eyes. Now, she wore a sharp suit and a smug smile. Andrew's protégée.

"He's dead, you know," she said, stepping closer. "Andrew shot him himself. Right by the river. Dumped his body like the trash he was."

The words hit me, but I felt nothing. I was numb.

"It's so tragic," she continued, her voice a theatrical purr for the agents listening. "First the incestuous little sister, now the cartel widow. What will you be next, Jocelyn?"

She wanted to humiliate me. She wanted to break me in front of the men who had just destroyed my life.

But I wasn't that girl from New York anymore. I was La Dama. I had faced down men who would make these agents cry for their mothers.

I turned to her slowly, my eyes cold and empty.

"You smell of desperation, Molly," I said, my voice low and steady. "You wear my brother's approval like a borrowed dress, but it doesn't fit. You think this power makes you strong? It just makes you his dog. And he will put you down when he's tired of you."

Her smile faltered. The agents shifted uncomfortably.

I stepped past her, my search forgotten. "Tell Andrew I'm waiting for him by the river. Where he murdered my husband."

I walked away, leaving her standing there, her victory soured, her face a mask of shocked humiliation. I didn't look back.