Chapter 17
CHAPTER 17: BACK TO THE DUST
The heat of Veracruz, Mexico, was suffocating. The air smelled of salt, rusted iron, and impending death.
I stood in the center of the abandoned Rivas steel foundry—a massive, decaying skeleton of a factory that had been closed since the 1990s. The corrugated iron roof groaned in the wind, casting long, jagged shadows across the dirt floor.
I wore a simple white shirt and jeans. No diamonds. No corporate armor. I was just a mother who had walked into the mouth of hell.
"I'm here!" I screamed into the cavernous silence. "Let him go, Isabella! This is between us!"
A slow, mocking applause echoed from the upper catwalks.
A figure stepped out of the shadows. It wasn't Isabella.
It was Santiago.
He looked wild, dangerous, his prison uniform replaced by tactical gear, a heavy submachine gun slung over his shoulder. The madness in his eyes was absolute now. He had lost his wealth, his status, his sanity—leaving only a raw, primal desire for vengeance.
"Valeria," he smiled, stepping down the rusted iron stairs. "Look at you. Back in Mexico. Back where you belong. Kneeling in the dirt."
"Where is my son, Santiago?" I asked, my voice deadly calm. I could feel the cold weight of the compact pistol Marcus had hidden inside the small of my back, but I couldn't draw it yet. Not until I knew where Leo was.
"He’s safe. For now," a woman’s voice called out from the dark.
Isabella Rivas stepped into the light. She looked exactly like Julian—same cold, winter-frost eyes, but her face was hardened by decades of combat. She held a remote detonator in her left hand. Behind her, suspended by a heavy industrial crane twenty feet above a massive pit of jagged, rusted scrap metal, was Leo’s plastic car seat.
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My baby was crying, his tiny voice barely audible over the roaring wind outside.
"You broke my family, girl," Isabella said, her voice like grinding stones. "You thought you could use the American government to erase the Rivas name? We were kings before your father built his first warehouse."
