Chapter 5 - The Snake's Nest
We emerged into the freezing rain half a mile from the estate, crawling out of a concrete culvert near the riverbank.
My clothes were soaked, my hands were scraped and bloody, but Sofia was safe. We hid beneath the heavy steel spans of the old railway bridge—the exact bridge where I had dropped my burlap sack two months earlier.
Ten minutes later, the roar of heavy engines broke through the sound of the storm. Three black SUVs slammed to a halt at the edge of the embankment.
I drew a small tactical knife Dante had given me, stepping in front of Sofia.
The door of the lead SUV flew open. Mateo Vargas stepped out into the pouring rain, his eyes wild with terror, surrounded by a dozen heavily armed men.
“Sofia! Aurelio!” he screamed into the darkness.
“Dad!” Sofia broke from beneath the bridge and ran toward him.
Vargas dropped to his knees in the mud, catching his daughter in a fierce, desperate embrace. He kissed her hair, checking her over for injuries, before looking up at me as I slowly walked out from under the bridge.
“She’s unhurt,” I said softly, wiping rainwater from my eyes. “We used the laundry chute to bypass the main hall.”
Vargas stood up. He walked over to me, pulled me into his arms, and held me just as tightly as he had held his own daughter.
“Silvio is dead,” Vargas whispered, his voice trembling with a terrifying blend of relief and rage. “Dante held him down until I arrived. Before Silvio died, he gave us what we needed.”
He pulled back, holding my shoulders.
“Morales didn't just want the ledger, Aurelio. Silvio confessed where Morales is keeping his master vault—and where he keeps his high-value hostages.”
My breath caught in my throat. “Hostages?”
Vargas looked at me with an expression of pure, solemn gravity.
“Your father, Julian Mendoza, is alive.”
The world seemed to stop moving. The sound of the falling rain faded into absolute silence.
Alive.
“He’s being held at Morales’s private compound—the old silver mine in the Sierra Negra mountains,” Vargas said. “Morales has kept him forced in an underground cell for ten years, trying to break his mind to get the location of the family ledger.”
I felt as though I had been struck by lightning. For ten years, I had believed my father was dead. My grandmother had spent her final years weeping in secret for her lost son, believing he was buried in an unmarked grave.
And all this time, he was sitting in a dark hole in the mountains, waiting for someone to save him.
I looked at Don Mateo Vargas. I looked at his armed men, his armored vehicles, and the vast power he wielded.
“We are going to the mountains,” I said, my voice dropping all hesitation, turning as cold and sharp as glass.
May you like
Vargas smiled—a fierce, dark smile that promised absolute destruction to his enemies.
“Pack the weapons,” Vargas ordered Dante, who was standing nearby with a bandage wrapped tightly around his torso. “Tonight, the Scorpion dies.”
