Fernando would have to begin again, distancing himself from her. There were many ways he could accomplish this. The goal was to wean Felicia off him without provoking her to hysterics. Fernando enjoyed playing with women. He even enjoyed tormenting them a little—but to cause them real pain was never his intent. Women’s tears of

Felicia craved direction. Whether this was her nature or simply the result of her circumstances was difficult to say, but Fernando suspected the latter. This made her uninteresting to him fairly quickly. There was always excitement with a new woman, the novelty of seeing them exposed for the first time. To Fernando this wasn’t necessarily

Fernando returned several times to the Hollywood house in Antigua. As Felicia had said, Mondragón was never there. With its grandiose stylings and furnishings, its garage of sportscars and motorcycles, its pools and palms and flamingos, its silent maids and sleek silver hounds, the place had the look and feel of a poor boy’s playground

Felicia flushed from cheek to chest. The points of her nipples peaked through the silk of her robe. She put down her glass with a clatter and stood, turning toward the house. Fernando followed after her, back inside and up the grand staircase. His eyes bore into her from behind. When she snuck a glance

Felicia fidgeted with her cigarette, flicking ash onto the marble floor. “Would you like something to drink?” Fernando inclined his head. She led him from the room, putting out her cigarette on the silk arm of a settee as she went. They walked across a cool foyer, then out onto a clay-tiled patio, bedecked with

Twenty miles northwest of Saguero lay the resort town of Antigua, nestled in the tree-studded, waterfall-laced slopes of the Paisa. With its alpine air and lofty elevation, Antigua afforded both wealthy residents and tourists alike a picturesque vantage from which to peer down on the mist-shrouded world below. Beautiful estates and resorts gleamed from the

Emmanuella slumped back in her chair. She seemed winded by what Fernando could only assume were many long years of unvoiced discontent. The worry lines in her face etched deeper with obvious distress at what she’d said. What Fernando had pressed her to say. It was like lancing into an old wound, delving into the

Emmanuella nodded. Her eyes were soft with sympathy. “Carmen died when you were very young.” “Not so young as that,” Fernando said, his voice clipped and hard. “I don’t know her because she was seldom around.” “It must have been difficult for her,” Emmanuella said gently, “caring for you on her own.” Fernando’s mouth thinned.

When Fernando next returned to Chico’s junkyard home, he did so alone. Chico’s green roadster was not there, nor was Pedro’s truck. Banned from El Toro, their father Esteban was no doubt at Pepe’s uncle’s bar already drunk. There were only the children and chickens about, the fixture of the old man dozing perpetually in

Mondragón rarely deigned to visit Cortez. But from time to time—more times than Fernando would have liked—he summoned him to one of his many choice establishments in Saguero and beyond. Choicer than The Red Room, but always with a sordid edge to them, no matter how posh of a front they seemed. Mondragón was not