Neo’s leg bounced. A soccer match was being broadcast on the flat screen, but he stared through that glossy surface - seeing nothing.

“He’s going to call,” Sylvia said, but even the usual calm reassurance in her voice was evidently missing.

“And then what? What the fuck am I supposed to tell him?” Neo sat back in a rush, both hands in his hair. “I don’t have the heroin. It all got burned. It’s ash. What, am I going to give him ash?”

“Calm down, Ne—”

He sprang to his feet. “Stop telling me what to do!” He stabbed a finger at Sylvia. “You got me into this. If it wasn’t for you—”

“Then you might have been dead already,” she said, rising slowly to her feet. She was tall, so she could look him straight in the eye even though she wasn’t wearing heels.

That pissed him off.

“Someone’s owed a shipment,” she said, toying with the collar of his t-shirt. “If you didn’t make contact, they’d probably have put a hit out on you.”

“They wouldn’t get here. He probably doesn’t even know where we are. Dad was careful to—”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Sylvia mused, sliding her fingers over his arm as she stepped around him. “Havie let his guard down a lot the past few weeks.”

“How is this better?” Neo yelled. “By calling, I’ve just gone and accepted that fucking debt, or whatever arrangement they had.”

“Maybe he’ll take something else instead. Money, or property—”

“That’s your answer?” Neo tried to grab her as she slipped past him, but she moved her shoulder out of reach with practiced ease. She padded over his room’s thick carpets as she headed for the refrigerator alongside his small breakfast nook.

She passed the Lamborghini on the way, and wrinkled her nose. “Smells like something died in here,” she said, and then opened the fridge.

“Sylvia! What am I supposed to tell him?”

“Make him an offer,” she called back, taking out a can of soda. “You’re capo now. You can give him whatever he wants.”

Neo opened his mouth, but then closed it again. He put his hands on his waist, nodding.

“I am capo,” he said, but more to himself than to her. “I’ll make him an offer—”

His phone rang, and he almost bit his tongue how he jumped at the sound. He snatched the phone off the coffee table, inhaled deep, and answered as calmly as he could.

“This is Neo.”

“I trust you’ve had enough time to work through your ‘number’s?” the man on the other end of the line put a sarcastic emphasis on what Neo had spouted out before hanging up on him the last time they’d spoken.

“Yes, I have.” Neo watched Sylvia walking back to him, as lithe as a gazelle. Well, as lithe as he’d imagine a gazelle to be. “Your shipment isn’t ready.”

“No?” the man asked, sounding unsurprised. “When will be it ready, then?”

Neo knew little about heroin; he’d always been more of a coke guy.

“Three months. Give or take.”

The man laughed in his ear. It was an unpleasant sound, but it went on too long, and cut off abruptly instead of tapering like true mirth.

“Tomorrow,” the man said.

Neo’s blood grew heavy, draining from his face and settling in a cold pool in his stomach.

“Tomorrow,” he parroted.

There was such a sucking silence, Neo glanced at the phone to make sure they were still connected.

“I…I can’t. Not—I mean, maybe if you give me a—”

“Tomorrow,” the man repeated slowly. “Our usual meeting place.”

“No, look—” Neo cast a pleading gaze at Sylvia, and she twirled her hand to encourage him to keep talking. “Please, there must be something I can give you. Money. How much money would the shipment have been worth to you?”

“Money?” The man let the word roll off his tongue. “I don’t want money. Your father and I had a deal.”

“Yes. You had a deal with my father. He’s dead, you know he is.” Neo tried to rein back his voice, but his heart was pounding so hard that it felt like it would shatter any instant. “In my mind, that cancels the deal.”

Another laugh, but this one bitterly short and cold. “No, my boy. A deal is a deal.”

“Then you get your drugs from Cora. She’s the one that killed him, not me. I shouldn’t have to pay for what she did. You call her and you tell her she killed the man you had a deal with.”

He looked at the phone again. The call was still connected, but the silence sucked at him like a black hole.

“The rumor is true?” the man asked.

“What rumor?” Neo snapped.

“Eleodora Rivera has been made capo alongside you?”

Neo struggled for a moment with his answer. As much as he wanted to lay every fucking ounce of this shit on Cora, he didn’t want to admit he was sharing the throne of El Calacas Vivo either.

“She’s my wife,” he said.

“And capo?”

“No woman will ever rule this cartel.”

“Interesting…” The man made a humming sound, and let out a long, expressive breath.

“You will deliver the shipment to me tomorrow before—”

Neo cut in with a harsh, “I just told you—”

“If not…”

His mouth clamped shut, nostrils flaring as he tried to clamp down his frustration. It wasn’t that difficult — he was coming to realize that the man on the other end of the line was anything but a hired gun. In fact…he was wondering if he wasn’t speaking to someone high up in a rival cartel, perhaps even the mafia, judging from his strong American accent. But why in heaven’s name would his father have made a deal with the mafia? Javier had his own connections to supply his product throughout most of the southern states of the US. Involving a third party just meant splitting profits.

“And if I can’t?” Neo prompted, when the man remained silent.

The quality of the man’s voice changed, as if he’d begun to smile.

“Then you will bring me Eleodora Rivera instead.”