Saving The Capo's Heir

Six

Esmé

The office smelled of espresso and gun oil—my two most reliable allies.

It took Javier two hours to dig through the mess of digital corpses I’d demanded. Two hours of silent typing while Mason and I pored over maps of alliances and debts that could make or end empires. For most people, that would feel tedious. For me, it was control.

It’s strange how fast the underworld forgets a woman can rule it. A year ago I inherited the largest cartel in New York after my uncle’s death. They smiled at the funeral, pretended respect, then waited for the new Reina to crumble. When I didn’t, they tested me. By my third week in charge, I’d ordered my first execution. The whispers died after that—well, for two days.

My uncle left no family but me. He never married. His one son tried to take the crown before the blood on the old man’s sheets had dried. I gave him mercy—a clean shot to the head. Family loyalty dies faster than love in this business.

Now I was paying the price of that legacy. My daughter was gone, and the ghosts of every man I’d buried might be clawing their way back for revenge.

“Alright,” Javier said, breaking the silence, “everything you asked for is in your inbox. Two main threads: Viktor Volkov from the

Bratva, and Iram Nieves from the old Puerto Rican syndicate.”

He spoke like a man who’d already memorized the files. His mind was a weapon—sharp, fast, and always humming with caffeine.

“We’ll review them together,” I said. Mason’s eyes flicked up from his phone, and Javier nodded, tapping send. My computer chimed a moment later.

“You’re still too damn efficient,” I muttered, unzipping the encrypted folder. Two subfolders appeared: Viktor and Iram Nieves.

“Start with the Russian,” Mason suggested. His tone was calm, but I could feel tension radiating off him like heat.

Viktor Volkov. Former arms trader, smuggler, liar. I’d put a bullet through his throat three years ago after he tried to short us on a shipment. His file scrolled down the screen, neat columns of information that smelled like rot.

“Viktor’s only son, Alexei,” Javier began, “bankrupt, hunted by his own allies. Half the Bratva want him dead.”

“Then he’s not our problem,” I said. “A man running for his life doesn’t have the resources to kidnap a cartel heiress.”

I closed the file and opened the second.

Iram Nieves.

His face appeared on the screen, older than I remembered. I’d killed him six months ago myself. One clean shot to the heart. He’d smiled when I pulled the trigger, as if relieved.

“Same story,” Javier said. “No official heirs, assets seized, no immediate retaliation.”

I stared at the photo. “He had women everywhere. Someone would’ve borne his name—or his grudge.”

Javier rubbed his temple. “Maybe. The data’s thin. If he fathered someone off-record, they’re buried deep. Give me a few hours and

I’ll dig under the foundations.”

“Do it,” I ordered.

He hesitated at the door. “Esmé, if I find bloodlines, you sure you want them listed?”

“Yes.” I looked him straight in the eye. “I don’t flinch from ghosts.”

When he left, the room felt heavier. Mason leaned back in his chair, watching me the way a man watches a storm he can’t stop.

“You know,” he said quietly, “you’re turning into him.”

“My uncle?”

He nodded. “The way you breathe when you read those files.”

“That’s the problem with inheriting a throne,” I said. “You start to look like the corpse who built it.”

He reached across the desk and caught my wrist. “You’re not him. You’re fighting for something he never had—a family.”

That word hit harder than I expected. I swallowed the lump in my throat and looked back at the monitors.

The cursor blinked over Viktor’s dossier like a heartbeat. “Family,” I murmured. “That’s what this is about, Mason. Someone wants mine erased.”

He stood and came around the desk, hands sliding to my shoulders. “Then we find them before they blink.”

Before I could answer, Javier’s voice crackled through the intercom. “Capo, you need to see this.”

He re-entered, laptop in hand, eyes wide behind his glasses. “Encrypted chatter picked up on the Perros’ dark-net network. The same one we traced in Florida last week. Someone’s moving money through Honduran accounts using the same codes we saw during the hospital hit.”

Mason straightened. “How sure?”

“Eighty percent. Maybe more.”

Javier typed a string of commands; code scrolled like rain. “They keep rerouting through old smuggling servers, but the wording’s too specific to be coincidence. Look—” He froze a line of text on the screen.

La hija de la Reina ha sido asegurada.

The daughter of the Queen has been secured.

Every molecule of air in the room shifted. Mason’s fist closed on the edge of the desk until the wood creaked.

“Where?” I asked, my voice low enough to make Javier flinch.

“Unknown. Message origin pings off three sites—Miami, Roatán, and an offshore relay somewhere near Belize. Whoever wrote it knows how to hide.”

“Then unhide them,” I said.

“I’ll try, but if I push too fast, they’ll know we’re tracing them.”

“Let them know,” I snapped. “Let them feel me breathing down their necks.”

Javier hesitated, then nodded. “Understood.” He returned to the screens, fingers flying.

Mason came up behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist, grounding me before I shattered the laptop myself. “Breathe,” he murmured against my ear.

“I am.”

“Try harder.”

I exhaled. “They’re calling her by title, Mason. That means they know exactly whose child they took. This isn’t random.”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. We both knew the rules of our world—when someone steals from a queen, it isn’t ransom they want. It’s chaos.

Javier finally sat back, rubbing his eyes. “I’ll keep the trace running. If they move funds again, we’ll get coordinates.”

“Good,” I said. “And Javier?”

He looked up.

“Get some coffee. You’ll need it.”

When he left again, the silence stretched, filled only by the hum of the servers. Mason picked up one of the pistols lying on the desk, checked the clip, and set it down.

“I keep thinking,” he said softly, “about the first night I met you. You were sitting in this same chair with a bullet wound in your shoulder and blood on your hands, and you told me you’d never let anyone take what was yours.”

I remembered. I’d been twenty-seven, half-mad, and furious at the world. He’d walked in wearing a suit and an expression that screamed banker, not killer. Now he was both.

“And yet,” I said bitterly, “they took the only thing that mattered.”

“Not for long,” he promised.

I turned toward him, tracing the line of his jaw with my finger. “You still in this, Mason? You married into war. You could walk away.”

He caught my hand and kissed my knuckles. “You really think I’d survive without you?”

I smiled despite myself. “Good answer.”

He pulled me close until our foreheads touched. “Then let’s finish this hunt.”

Hours later the estate had fallen into that strange midnight rhythm of activity—guards trading shifts, the sound of engines idling,

Javier’s servers pulsing in the next room like a mechanical heartbeat. I sat alone, the files on Viktor and Iram spread before me, and made notes in the margins. Patterns. Dates. People who disappeared after each kill.

Revenge is rarely spontaneous. It’s a family business.

My thoughts drifted to Iram Nieves again. He’d begged when I cornered him in San Juan. Not for his life, but for a child I hadn’t known existed. She’s innocent, he’d said. I’d assumed it was a lie to buy time. Maybe it hadn’t been.

I opened a blank document and typed a single word: Daughter?

If Iram had left blood behind, she’d be the perfect weapon—raised in his shadow, molded by hatred. A woman old enough to pass as a nurse, desperate enough to infiltrate a hospital.

My pulse quickened. I opened Kai Brown’s file again. Age 21. State-raised. No record of parents. Her work history began in Puerto Rico.

“Son of a b***h,” I whispered.

The math lined up. If Iram had a child before his empire collapsed, she’d be about twenty-one now.

Mason appeared in the doorway, barefoot, shirt unbuttoned, the sight of him pulling me briefly out of the spiral. “You’re still awake.”

“Couldn’t sleep.”

He stepped closer. “You found something.”

“Maybe.” I handed him the file. “Look at her birthplace.”

He scanned it, eyes narrowing. “San Juan.”

“The same year Iram disappeared for six months. He claimed it was for negotiations. What if he was hiding a pregnancy?”

Mason’s jaw tightened. “You think Kai Brown is Iram’s daughter.”

“I think she’s the one who drugged me and shot me, and I think she’s not done yet.”

He dropped the file on the desk. “Then we find her.”

“She’s long gone,” I said. “But she won’t stay gone for long. People like that crave recognition. She’ll reach out to whoever’s funding this, and when she does, Javier’s going to see the signal flare.”

He brushed a strand of hair from my face. “You’re terrifying when you’re right.”

“I’m always right.”

He kissed me then—quick, hard, grounding. “You scare me.”

“Good.”

He left me to the glow of the screens. I sat back, eyes fixed on the lines of data, every nerve wound tight. For the first time in days, I felt something sharper than grief—purpose.

The trail of blood was opening beneath my hands. And somewhere on that trail was the girl who’d stolen my child.

When I find her, I won’t shoot her fast. I’ll teach her what it means to steal from a queen.