Bex Dane [Dane - Falcon

Nuevo Laredo, Mexico

Twenty-two years ago

Primitivo (Falcon)

"Everyone out. Run!"

Startled eyes stared back at me.

The group of women in the brothel parlor didn't move. They had no idea they were sitting ducks before a massacre.

"Oscar's about to burst through that door and start shooting."

One of the women snapped out of it and ran.

"Get the fuck up and run!" I yelled at the rest of them.

Finally, they screamed and followed her.

"Claudia!" My call died in the chaos.

Shit, I should've located her first before sounding the alarm, but I panicked when Oscar left early. Weeks of planning and I fucked it up.

I slammed the butt of my rifle into the first bedroom door. "Get up. Now. Shooter at the front. Go out the back. Hurry. Hurry!"

Women dressed in miniskirts and underwear bumped in the narrow hallway, gasping in their frantic rush.

They raced without looking back. They ran for their lives.

"Claudia!"

No one answered me.

Where the hell was she? I found her daughter crouched in the hallway with her hands over her ears.

"Where's your mom?"

Magdalena's round, terrified eyes peered up at me. "She's gone."

"Gone? Where?"

"I"

Fuck. We didn't have time to talk. "Get out. Wait by my truck. Go now!"

She scurried out the back just as my brother broke through the front door. He squeezed his eyes shut and opened fire. The bastard didn't even see me.

I took cover behind the couch with my rifle over the top as his wild shots blasted through the room. My heart racing, I took aim and shot him in the thigh.

He stopped shooting but didn't go down. "What the hell?"

"Drop your weapon, Oscar."

He opened his eyes and scanned the empty room.

In his cocaine haze, he didn't feel pain from the bullet in his leg.

"Drop the rifle, Oscar," I repeated.

His wild eyes zeroed in on me. "You shoot me, not them?" Spit came from his scowling mouth as he spoke.

I held my fire. I always protected my brothers. As the oldest son, the responsibility fell on me. I risked my life to save theirs many times. But when it came to killing women, I drew the line. I had to stop him, brotherly fidelity be damned.

"They did nothing to harm us." I tilted my head toward the back door.

Manuel, the leader of a rival gang, had brutally murdered the whores in my father's brothel last week. Fifteen dead. My father ordered this attack as retribution.

His eyes glanced to the door and back to me. "They killed ours, we kill theirs." Oscar rattled off the mantra my father had drilled into our heads since infancy.

"No. We don't kill innocent women over this turf war."

"We kill whoever we need to." He narrowed his gaze and trained his rifle on me.

"I don't want to shoot you, Oscar." I gave him his final warning.

"You betray the family?" His voice rasped with rage.

Yes. The ultimate betrayal of my family and our history. "You can't betray evil, only escape it."

His weapon shook as he pressed the trigger. He'd forced my hand. It was him or me.

I shot Oscar in the chest.

He gasped and fell. Thank God my mama wasn't alive to see me spill my own brother's blood. I grabbed his rifle and didn't spare a second to say goodbye. The survivors must carry on or become the dead.

At the back of the house, Magdalena stood crying on the passenger side of my truck.

Just a tiny thing, I towered over her. "Claudia's not here?"

"Manuel took her before you got here." Tears streaked through the dirt on her face. "She said she'd be back. She didn't know when." Her hair fell forward as she sobbed into her hands.

Goddammit. Manuel got to Claudia. I missed her by minutes. I should've planned this better. Of course Manuel would hear about the attack and run with Claudia, the one woman my father would want.

This left her daughter alone.

With me.

"Get in." I opened the door and shoved her inside.

After running around the front, I tossed the two rifles on the seat and started up the truck.

"We're leaving without her?" her timid voice asked me.

"We have no choice." A boat waited for us in the Gulf. We needed to be on it before my father realized someone had transferred his millions to offshore accounts.

Dust kicked up around us as the tires skidded in the dirt. She sat up and peered out the windshield as Nuevo Laredo faded in the distance.

Adios, Pap .