Chapter 65: Return to Santiago

Rayén's POV

"Say something," I said.

Lautaro looked at the photograph in my hand, then at me. The dashboard clock glowed 4:52. Outside, the cypress swayed like they were listening.

"I was twenty-three," he said. "Your father asked me to his house for a truce lunch. You were in the garden, though I didn't know your name yet. You were twelve. You were reading under the rose trellis and pretending not to watch us."

"I was seventeen."

"You were seventeen." He almost smiled. "I thought you were a child. Then you glared at me over your book like you'd already decided where to bury me."

I didn't smile back. "The photograph says six years ago."

"He wrote that date after. The night he died." His hand opened and closed on his thigh. "He pressed this into my palm, along with the pen. He said Maitén would come for you the moment he was gone. He said I was the only man in Santiago who could stand in the way, because I was the only one she couldn't buy."

"And the paper you signed?"

"A weapons transfer. Quilicura. He told me it was a gift for the wedding contract, that I'd need arms to keep you safe, and I was too bloody and too grateful to read it twice." His eyes didn't leave mine. "I found out what it really was three months ago, in the vault, when you did. I swear on my sister's life."

"You said not to swear."

"I said you shouldn't." His voice was low and rough. "I'm asking anyway."

I put the photograph back in the envelope, because looking at that little girl was going to break something. For a long minute I didn't trust my hands with the wheel.

"You should have told me the first night," I said.

"You were holding a knife."

"Fair."

"I'd have told you the second."

"And the third?"

He didn't answer. He turned his face to the window instead, and I saw his throat work. When I finally pulled back onto the road, I realized neither of us had said a word about the kiss, and I understood that was a choice too.

We reached the edge of Santiago as the sky went the color of old pearl. The Andes stood up behind the city, snow-capped and indifferent. I'd looked at them my whole life and never once thought of them as a wall.

I drove past the Las Condes turnoff. He didn't ask why.

"The estate will be watched," I said.

"Yes."

"Millaray's flat above the pharmacy, then."

His head came around slowly. "How do you know about that?"

"I read the staff files. For three months I had nothing else to do." I kept my eyes on the road. "You think I only learned your habits to kill you?"

A short silence. Then, very quietly: "No. I think you learned them because you were curious."

My face went hot, which was absurd. I stared harder at the windshield.

Millaray opened the door before I finished knocking. She was in a sweatshirt two sizes too large, her hair flat on one side, and she looked at her brother's blood-soaked shirt and went white to the lips.

"Idiot," she said. Her voice shook. "You absolute idiot," and then she had her arms around his neck and he was holding her with his good arm, and I stood in the stairwell and looked at the floor, because it felt like I was seeing something I hadn't paid for.

She pulled back first. She wiped her face with the heel of her hand, furious about it, and turned on me.

"And you." She looked me up and down. "You brought him back."

"He walked part of it."

"Carlos called me from a payphone in Valparaíso. He said you'd made him a deal." Her eyes narrowed. "I don't like deals."

"You like him alive."

Something flickered across her face. She stepped aside and held the door wide.

Inside, the flat smelled of coffee and antiseptic. She'd already laid out gauze, a suture kit, a bottle of pisco. She sat Lautaro on the edge of the bed and cut his shirt off while he said I'm fine four times, and she told him to shut up four times, and I stood by the window pretending not to watch his bare back flex when she poured pisco over the wound.

When she was done, I laid the ledger on the table.

The leather was warped, the pages swollen, but the ink had held. Millaray turned it over in her fingers and exhaled.

"Dry," she murmured. "Dry them in the oven, low. Don't touch the violet pages."

"Violet?" Lautaro said.

"M.S." She tapped a margin. "Same initials as the manifests. Same ink. I traced the pen, brother. Montblanc. Violet cartridge. There are exactly three in Santiago, and one of them is in a drawer at Maitén's house in Providencia."

The room went quiet. My mother's handwriting, in the margins of every bill of lading, every payment to every man who'd tried to kill me. I thought I'd already felt everything I was going to feel about her. I was wrong.

"Six days," I said. "No. Five now."

"Five," Lautaro agreed.

"The council sits on the fifth."

"The coup is planned for the council chamber," Millaray said slowly. "If we bring the ledger in front of the whole table—"

"They'll say it's forged," Lautaro said.

"Not if Rayén reads it." Millaray's eyes came up to mine. "The Altiplano seal is on the cover. Your father's seal. They have to hear it in a daughter's voice."

"And if they don't believe me?"

"Then they'll see the Don's wife standing next to him," she said, "and decide which of you scares them more."

I felt Lautaro look at me. Not at my face. At my hand, which I'd been holding in a fist against my sternum without noticing.

He crossed the room. He stopped an arm's length away, careful, like I was a skittish horse, and held out his palm.

"No tricks," he said. "No blade. No knowing look. Just my hand, if you want it."

"In front of Millaray?"

"I'm not here," Millaray said, and walked into the kitchen.

I laughed. It came out wet. I put my fingers in his and felt his close around them, warm and a little rough, and for the first time in my life I did not feel like a woman holding a weapon. I felt like a woman holding on.

"Five days," I said.

"Five days." His thumb moved across my knuckles. "Together?"

"Together." I looked at him. "But when this is over, you tell me everything. Every word my father said."

"Every word."

From the kitchen, Millaray's voice came flat and sharp. "Rayén. Come look at this."

She stood at the counter with the old radio, the one Conco had used. Its green light was blinking. A recording was playing on loop, a woman's voice, soft and unhurried, and I knew it before the first sentence ended.

"Mija, I'm so sorry to do it this way. But your brother is cold, and your father's grave is open. If you want to see Aconcagua breathe again, come to the old winery at noon. Bring Lautaro's head."

I looked at Lautaro.

He wasn't looking at the radio. He was looking at the floor, with a face I'd only seen once, on our wedding night, when I'd held a blade to his throat.

"Lautaro," I said. "Conco is safe. You said you helped him cross the border."

He raised his eyes. They were the color of a man about to confess to something unforgivable.

"I did," he said. "I just never told you which side of it he crossed to."