Saving The Capo's Heir

Eight

Esmé

War looks like a to-do list if you do it right.

By three a.m., the estate had slid into a predator’s quiet. Men moved in pairs. Radios whispered instead of crackled. The hall lights were dimmed to that soft amber that makes faces harder to read and shadows easier to trust.

In the war room, the map of Central America glowed across three monitors like an open wound.

Javier stood at the head of the table, hair a mess, eyes vibrating with caffeine and obsession. “Private airstrip twenty-eight kilometers from Puerto Cortés,” he said, tapping a runway icon on the screen. “Decommissioned for civilian freight five years ago—officially.

In practice, Los Perros run night traffic. The manifest that mentioned ‘adult male + infant female’ is attached to this runway.

Estimated departure is now forty-one hours.”

“Buy me six,” I said. “I want the runway dead six hours before they think they’re airborne.”

He nodded, already calculating. “I can spoof a maintenance outage. Not enough to stop a determined pilot, but enough to delay.”

He chewed the inside of his cheek. That meant there was more.

“Say it,” I told him.

“They might switch strips if spooked,” he said. “There are alternates.”

“Then we seed both.” I pointed at the map. “Secondary sites within a sixty-kilometer radius?”

“Three.” He flagged them one by one—one near the coast, one cut into scrubland, one too close to a village for my comfort. “My bet is the coast strip if they pivot.”

Mason leaned closer to the map beside me, hands braced on the table, jaw ticking. He looked like he was ready to punch the geography into submission. “How many runways can we quietly cripple?” he asked.

“Two without making noise,” Javier answered. “Three if we burn a contact.”

“We’ll burn a contact,” I said. “We’re done being polite.”

No one argued.

I pulled a legal pad toward me. The first word I wrote at the top was AIR. Under it, GROUND. Under that, HEAT.

“Air,” I said, more for the men than for myself. “We take the G550 to Belize. We refuel and switch to a local charter into Honduras.

Two birds means redundancy. Javier rides with me. Mason heads the second team wheels-up within the hour. If we’re force-split, I want a brain on each deck.”

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Mason shoot me a look—half really? and half fine. He didn’t like being separated; neither did I.

Redundancy wins wars. Marriage has to learn to live with that.

“Ground,” I continued. “Two SUVs at the Honduran border pre-staged with fresh plates. We’ll bribe border control if we have to; we’ll call it disaster-relief logistics if anyone asks. Leo Caputo is on standby with a medical team in Belize City—quiet. No sirens. No egos.”

“Looping Leo now,” Javier muttered, fingers flying. “He owes us.”

“He owes me,” I corrected. “He can owe you when you stop sleeping.”

A couple of the men huffed quiet laughs, but nobody actually smiled. Not really.

I flipped the pad.

“Heat. We do not go loud unless we’re made. Suppressed weapons only. Non-lethal on anyone who isn’t an obstacle; lethal on anyone with a baton, a knife, or the wrong sleeve tattoo. If we identify the buyer, we take him alive for one hour. After that—”

I drew a slow line across the page.

“—we’re done with his oxygen.”

No one flinched. In this house, that wasn’t drama. That was policy.

“Contingencies?” Mason asked, eyes still on the map.

“Storm,” I said. “Fuel shortage. Runway pivot. Double-cross by a border captain who wants a bonus. I want cash in hard bills for bribes. I want medical packed for an infant and for a man with a cut at the neck and a compromised ankle. I want three safe houses pinned in a triangle—coast, farm, and the shittiest motel you can find where no one asks for IDs.”

“On it,” Javier said. “One more thing.”

He hesitated, which I hate.

“Spit it out,” I snapped.

“Esmé… if the buyer’s network is properly resourced—private security, diplomatic shields—”

“Then we build a bigger resource,” I cut in. “I’m not asking permission from men who eat behind flags.”

He nodded quickly and did not say you sound like your uncle. Wise choice.

I pushed my chair back. The room stood when I did.

“Gear up,” I told them. “Wheels roll at five.”

They scattered, each man peeling off toward his task like a bead rolling down a wire. For a moment, the war room was empty except for me, the maps, and the hum of electronics.

I watched Mason’s back as he left, heading toward the armory with Jason and the four new shadows. My shadows now. He’d say they were his men; they would die for me first. That’s how it worked.

I found him again twenty minutes later in the armory, because I needed to see him before I went to see my mother.

The place looked like a high-end apocalypse.

Four Pelican cases lay open like coffins on the central table. Mason moved through them with the kind of focus that had nothing to do with the cartel and everything to do with our daughter. Suppressed SIGs, subsonic rounds, night-vision, collapsible breaching poles, one quiet drone, SAT phones, burners, batteries. It all disappeared into packs with mechanical precision.

Jason and my new shadows stood in a line, checking mags, racking slides, repeating rules after Mason like a catechism.

“No IDs,” he said.

“No IDs,” they echoed.

“No names.”

“No names.”

“No heroics.”

“No heroics.”

“If you go down, you go down quiet. If the target is a baby, you shoot through yourself before you shoot through her.”

They didn’t so much as blink. Good. Terrifying. Exactly what I needed.

I stayed at the doorway and watched. There was something almost intimate about seeing him like this, in his element. A man who married into my war and now moved through it like he’d been born in it.

I left before he saw me.

In the kitchen, I caught a glimpse of him again later, loading bags at the center island like a father instead of a soldier—water, premade liquid formula, diapers, wipes, a new pacifier, a small fleece blanket that smelled like our laundry room and not like fear.

He zipped the bag slowly, reverently, like it was a coffin or a promise.

My chest ached.

If I stayed to watch, I’d crumble.

Instead, I turned and headed for the one place I hadn’t wanted to go since I woke up.

The chapel.

I didn’t want to go to her. That’s the truth.

The math of grief is ugly. Mother. Daughter. Granddaughter. Take one variable out and the equation collapses. Add war and it gets worse.

The chapel used to be a sunroom. My aunt had forced my uncle to convert it “for the Virgin,” and my mother had filled it with candles and rosaries and whispered bargains ever since. She calls it “the only corner of this house that still belongs to God.”

Tonight it smelled like hot wax and old wood.

She stood in front of a small statue of la Virgen, head bowed, lips moving silently. There were four candles burning at the foot of the statue, wax pooling in uneven lakes. When she heard me, her shoulders stiffened and then relaxed. She turned.

For a second, relief flared across her face so bright it almost killed me.

“You’re leaving,” she said.

“I’m going to bring her home,” I replied.

“You shouldn’t be walking,” she murmured, her gaze dropping to my stomach, to the bandage hidden under my black shirt. Her finger twitched toward it as if she wanted to touch, to check. “You should be in bed.”

“I’m not a bed person,” I said.

“No,” she said with a small, sad smile. “No, you never were.”

We looked at each other the way you look in a bad mirror—knowing you’ll see things you didn’t ask to see. The mother who taught me to pray standing in front of a daughter who turned prayer into war.

She stepped forward and cupped my cheek in her palm. Her hand was warm, rough from years of work the world never bothered to see.

“Forgive me,” she whispered.

“For what?” I asked.

“For being alive when she isn’t here. For not stopping it. For teaching you to be a queen when what I wanted was to teach you to be a woman who didn’t need a throne.”

“You taught me to be both,” I said. “And I’m going to need both.”

She nodded once, like that hurt but she accepted it. “Then take something of mine.”

From her pocket she pulled a rosary. Not the pretty kind tourists buy. Dark wooden beads worn smooth by a lifetime of fingers. The crucifix was nicked, the chain uneven.

“I don’t—” I started.

“It’s not for prayer,” she said, reading my face. “It’s for memory. Hold it when you have to decide whether to keep a man alive for information or kill him for making you think about it.”

The corner of my mouth twitched. That was my mother. God and murder in the same sentence, like it was the most natural thing.

I took the rosary. It was still warm from her hand. “I’ll bring her back,” I said.

“You always do what you say,” she answered. “That’s why they fear you. That’s why I’m afraid for you.”

I leaned in and kissed her forehead. “Pray anyway.”

I left before she could cry. My mother cries like a river—slow, unstoppable, always carving a new canyon. I didn’t have time to drown in a new one.

In the tactical room, Mason was waiting with a vest.

“She’s going to kill me if she sees you,” I muttered, meaning my mother.

“She’ll have to stand in line,” he replied.

The vest was laid out on the table like an accusation. I glared at it. It glared back.

“Try to make me,” I told him.

He did.

Quietly, efficiently, he lifted the vest, helped me slide my arms through, adjusted the plates, tightened the straps. We’d done this dance a hundred times, but it felt different now with my abdomen still tender and my daughter’s absence like a bruise.

I tapped his chest. “You wear yours.”

“I always do,” he said.

“Keep your head down,” I ordered.

“I never do,” he said.

We both smiled at the same time. It felt twisted and right. Marriage, mafia style—stupid and sacred, promises made in blood and bulletproof fabric.

Jason stuck his head into the doorway. “Convoy’s ready.”

We walked the hall together, side by side, like a coronation no one got to watch. I wore black—black shirt, black pants, black boots, hair tied back brutally tight. Mason looked nearly the same, our uniforms matched, as if the world needed to be reminded that we came as a set.

In the garage, six SUVs idled, exhaust curling in the air like the breath of horses. Men stood in two lines, faces hard, backs straight.

They didn’t call out. They didn’t smile. They simply watched their queen walk past and made peace with what they’d do for her.

I watched their eyes. If any of them looked at me and saw a woman instead of a capo, I would have sent him home. Every stare tonight was the stare of a sailor who had seen a black wave and decided to ride it or drown in it.

We slid into the lead SUV together. Mason’s fingers found mine for one brief squeeze as the gate rolled open.

“Ready?” I asked him.

“No,” he said honestly. “But that’s never stopped me.”

The convoy rolled out into the night.

Belize smelled like hot metal and wet leaves.

We didn’t linger. We touched down in daylight and treated the tarmac like the temporary blessing it was.

Leo’s “medical team” waited in a corner of the small private terminal. Two nurses in plain scrubs. A pediatrician with travel-bag eyes

and pianist hands. A logistics man whose face could have belonged to a priest or a killer; in this life, those are often the same resumes.

I spoke to Leo over the phone, pacing under the wing of the jet while the heat pressed down on us.

“Keep the runway hot,” I told him. “If we need to bounce fast, you meet us wheels-up with oxygen and silence.”

“You’ll have it,” he said. “And Esmé… bring her home.”

“I intend to,” I said, ending the call.

We switched to the charter—a noisy little bird painted the color of boredom. The pilots didn’t ask questions. Money had been speaking for us for years.

In the air, Javier patched the drone feed into our tablets.

“Two teams at the target strip,” he said into his headset. “Eight men on perimeter, three in the tower, one line crew. Thermal picks up a hangar heat-signature consistent with at least one twin-engine jet.”

“Tail number?” I asked.

“Negative from this angle,” he said. “We’ll need eyes on the tarmac.”

“Wind?” I asked.

“East-northeast. Crosswind eight knots.”

“Good,” I said. It wasn’t, not really. But my mouth needed to obey the part of my brain that was already walking that runway with a gun in hand.

We descended into a sky the color of steel. Honduras greeted us with humidity that clung like desperate hands. The charter landed at a municipal strip where the most dangerous thing in sight was an old man with a broom and a suspicious stare.

The pilot taxied to a private corner and kept the engines warm. We were out and moving in under three minutes, sliding from air to ground as if the world had always intended for us to move this fast.

Two SUVs waited just beyond a sagging chain-link fence, plates already attached, AC blasting. Men from our Honduran contact leaned against them, trying to look casual and failing.

“Team split,” I said when everyone was loaded. “Team One is with me—Javier, Vega, Santos. Team Two with Mason—Jason, Cruz, shadows. Same rules: quiet until they force noise. No one plays hero without my permission.”

Javier’s tablet pinged. His eyes flicked down, then back up.

“Maintenance outage filed,” he reported. “If they believe the system, the strip delays traffic until tomorrow morning.”

“They won’t believe it,” I said. “But they’ll hesitate.”

The drive south felt like a string pulled taut across my spine. Jungle pressed in on both sides of the road. The asphalt was a suggestion, not a promise. We passed markets and children playing with a half-flat ball, a woman hanging laundry under a sagging roof, chickens scratching at cracked concrete.

War is only the whole world if you make it so. To them, we were just another dark convoy on a road they’d pretend not to see.

“Two klicks out,” Javier announced from the front seat. “Thermal shows a shift inside the hangar. Either they’re fueling or running

APU.”

“How many bodies?” I asked.

“Same as before,” he replied. “Perimeter men are bored. Tower’s alert.”

“Bored is when they miss things,” I said. “Get me that tail number.”

We crested a small hill. The airstrip stretched out below us, carved into the jungle like a scar. A hangar sulked at the far end, doors slightly parted like a mouth about to lie.

I lifted binoculars. A tail stuck out just enough to tease. White fuselage. Gold stripe.

Cold slid down my spine.

“Valverde,” I said.

Even over the radio, I heard the shift in Mason’s breathing. “You sure?”

“I shot him out of a house in Cali,” I said. “I know his taste in paint.”

“So either he’s here,” Javier said, “or he lent his plane and kept his face.”

“Either way,” I said, lowering the binoculars, “I’m taking something from him.”

We parked on a ridge overlooking the strip—good vantage, bad place to die. The drone hummed overhead, turning the world into false-color heat signatures.

Eight men on the fence line. One flicked a cigarette to the ground before he finished it. Sloppy. Three in the tower: two alert, one scrolling his phone. Inside the hangar, hot shapes: one jet, two trucks, five distinct human bodies.

None of them small enough to be Aaliyah.

“They’re not here yet,” Javier said. “Cargo hasn’t arrived.”

“Or she’s been moved to a holding house to reduce time on the strip,” I said. “Time on a runway is vulnerability.”

“Agreed,” Mason said over the radio. “You don’t load a crown in front of the peasants.”

“Find the house,” I ordered. “Five-kilometer radius. New generators, fuel drums, extra guards, ice deliveries—anything that looks like it doesn’t belong.”

Javier widened the drone’s scan. The jungle is honest: whatever is hot is alive or stupid.

“Got something,” he said after a moment. “Northwest. Compound with two trucks, a generator running mid-RPM, and—”

He stopped.

“Say it,” I snapped.

“One small heat signature moving slow in the rear room,” he finished.

My heart stuttered. “Thomas,” I said. “And our daughter.”

Mason’s hand found my shoulder from the back seat of his SUV, even through the distance of comms. “We go now.”

“Split again,” I said. “Team One to the compound. Team Two stays eyes on the strip. If they move to wheels, you stall them—sugar in tanks, goat on runway, I don’t care. No one lifts a plane while I breathe.”

“Copy,” Mason said, and I could hear something like a smile in his voice—the kind that never touched his eyes.

The trucks moved.

The compound rose from the jungle like something that had no right to exist—poured concrete walls, one heavy gate, razor wire draped like cheap jewelry. Two cameras. One too-new generator humming like a nervous heart.

I pulled the rosary from my pocket. The beads were warm now, molded to my palm.

“Javier,” I murmured, eyes on the wall. “Kill the power when I say.”

“Ready,” he replied.

“Vega, Santos,” I said. “North wall with me. We go over and down, not through. Quiet if we can. Loud if we must.”

We crouched in the brush. Mosquitoes feasted on my neck. Inside, someone laughed, drunk and loud. A bottle clinked against a table.

“Now,” I whispered.

Javier killed the power. The compound exhaled. The lights went out. The generator coughed and died.

I ran.

We hit the wall together, three dark shapes against darker concrete. Vega tossed a folded blanket over the razor wire. We went up, over, and down. My muscles screamed. My abdomen burned. I didn’t care.

We landed inside the yard, knees bending to absorb the impact. A guard’s flashlight beam cut through the dark. Santos slipped behind him, arm around his neck, and put him to sleep before the beam completed its arc. No sound. No drama.

We hugged the wall, moving toward the back corridor. The rear door was cheap wood trying desperately to look important.

I pressed my ear to it.

Small sounds. A breath. A soft, rhythmic hum. My heart squeezed so hard it hurt.

“Thomas,” I whispered through the seam. “It’s me.”

Silence stretched. Then a low voice answered, hoarse but unmistakable.

“About time, Reina.”

Relief hit so hard it made me dizzy.

“Step back,” I ordered.

I nodded at Vega. “Door.”

He popped the hinge pins with a tool like he was breaking open a secret. The door came away clean. We slid it aside and stepped into a room that smelled like bleach and stubborn hope.

Thomas stood there, shirt torn, bandage dark at his neck, eyes ringed with purple and full of something that looked like fury and faith all mixed together.

On a narrow cot beside him lay my daughter.

Aaliyah was on her back, arms flailing, a pacifier bobbing lazily in her mouth as if this was just another boring hour in her very short life.

My knees hit the floor before my brain decided to kneel.

My hands trembled as I reached for her. She was warm. Solid. Real. She made a small noise of protest when I dislodged the pacifier.

“Hi, mi vida,” I whispered, voice breaking open.

She blinked up at me, unimpressed by my melodrama. The pacifier slipped from her mouth and she let out a mild, offended squawk.

I laughed. It sounded like someone else’s laugh. Someone lighter.

Thomas’s hand landed on my shoulder, grounding. “We’ve got to go,” he said, voice low. “They won’t stay stupid long.”

“Right,” I said, swallowing everything else. “Javier, status.”

“On the strip they’re restless,” he answered. “Fuel truck moved. Hangar doors creeping.”

“Mason?” I asked.

“Waiting to ruin a plane,” he said. “Say when.”

I slipped Aaliyah into the sling Sergio had bullied me into packing. I’d rolled my eyes at him when he insisted. “I’m Capo, not a

Pinterest mom.” I could almost hear his I told you so now.

“Move,” I said. “Same way out. Over the north wall. Thomas in the middle. If anyone breathes wrong, they don’t breathe again.”

We slipped back into the night with our breaths measured. At the wall, I handed Aaliyah to Thomas, vaulted up, dropped to the other side, then reached up to steady them both as they came down.

For one fleeting second, everything felt choreographed by someone who’d finally decided to give me one small thing.

We hit the jungle floor.

And then the world lit up.

Spotlights exploded from the direction of the strip, washing the tree line in harsh white. My radio crackled.

“Esmé,” Mason said, voice cool metal. “Hangar doors just opened fully. Tail number confirmed. Valverde’s jet is rolling.”

On Javier’s tablet, the drone feed swiveled. Runway lights flared on, our “maintenance outage” overridden by someone with money

and arrogance.

“You’ve got thirty seconds to stall,” Javier warned.

“Thirty’s a lifetime,” Mason replied.

“Make it one,” I said, tightening my hold on my daughter until she complained.

Behind us, the compound erupted into noise—shouts, a half-started siren that hiccuped and died without power.

“Thomas,” I said, shoving Aaliyah back into his arms. “Get to the trucks. Take the north path. Do not stop. Do not look back.”

“Where are you going?” he demanded.

I opened my palm and showed him the rosary.

“To remind a man why he shouldn’t have put his paint on my sky.”

The jungle smelled like the beginning of rain. The night moved around us like a living thing.

I turned toward the direction of the runway and started to run.

Somewhere, a jet engine spooled to a hungry hum.

Somewhere, my husband laughed without smiling.

Somewhere, the Reina chose.

The world tipped forward into the kind of silence that comes right before every light turns green.