Page 116 of Victorious Vice

I need answers.

If this doesn’t have anything to do with whoever is threatening Raven, then whatisit about? Why would Austin Bellamy try to take his own life?

He’s hardly a saint.

Maybe hehastruly bitten off more than he can chew.

Thank God he’ll survive.

And now that Mario has agreed that I’m in charge of the family business, I can take care of this.

Austin Bellamy will live.

Diego Vega will not.

Jacinto Agudelo will not.

Declan McAllister will not.

The plans are already set. I put them into motion when I was driving to the airport in Bogotá.

They go down within forty-eight hours. As soon as Mario and Serena are safely out of Austin with their new identification.

So many unanswered questions regarding Austin Bellamy’s role in this whole thing.

And I still don’t know who the hell is buried underneath his old barn.

Whoever it is, Eagle recognized him as Diego Vega all those years ago.

Hawk and Falcon wouldn’t have known the difference.

The only other people who can answer any questions, besides Bellamy himself, are the two men who were with Vega that night. The two men who escaped, were apprehended at the border, and never heard from again.

I haven’t told Raven about her father’s role. That he was the one who hijacked her Uber app. That he’s the one who’s been sending the warning messages on that burner phone. I’m not sure about the pendant, but he might have had something to do with that as well.

As for the threatening messages, I have my suspicions that they’ve been coming from the McAllisters.

There’s only one way to find out.

Declan McAllister will be dead within forty-eight hours. If the messages stop after that, I’ll know.

Taking down my father’s cartel won’t be simple, but I have enough clean money through the coffee business that I can make sure all of the best men are taken care of. They’ll live out their lives with their loved ones and all their needs will be met.

I’ll take down the men who are controlling the cartel my mafia family is involved with. Jacinto Agudelo and Diego Vega will go down in Colombia. McAllister will go down in Austin. Several others will go down at the same time in various places. It will be bloody, but silent. The plan is already in motion, and it will be carried out while I’m here in Austin with an ironclad alibi.

And they made fun of my peanut butter plot.

In Bogotá, Jacinto Agudelo will be entertaining one of his lavish parties twenty-four hours from now. I attended one of his get-togethers while I was staying at his home. He spares no expense, be it on booze, drugs, or women. Around midnight, he’ll disappear from the party after all his friends have taken an escort to bed. He’ll lock himself in his study, where he’ll indulge in vintage Scotch and Cuban cigars alone. There, my man Rodrigo will strike. Rodrigo is an expert at blending in the crowd. The waitstaff for the company catering his events is regularly replaced, and Agudelo won’t recognize Rodrigo as a new face. He will poison Agudelo’s Scotch without a hitch.

Diego Vega is a different breed entirely. He shuns luxury, preferring to handle things on his own turf—on the streets of Bogotá where he grew up and built his empire from scratch. This rugged reality makes him more guarded and difficult to reach, but not impossible. Vega’s unwavering loyalty to his roots is where I’ll get him. The local soccer match he attends every Sunday without fail. Manuel, a local street vendor known for his empanada stand near the soccer field, will ensure that Vega’s usual order is laced with a lethal dose of cyanide baked carefully into his favorite beef empanada.

I have found that McAllister in Austin is a man of meticulous habits, predictably punctual and consistently cautious. His morning routine consists of an early jog along Lady Bird Lake and then a vanilla latte at the same coffee shop he’s patronized for over a decade every morning at precisely eight-fifteen.

At that precise time tomorrow morning, Sofia, who has been working at the coffee shop for the last week, will serve McAllister his daily brew. Sofia has an uncanny ability to make herself forgettable, a trait that makes her perfect for this job. She’ll poison his morning drink flawlessly.

McAllister won’t suspect a thing. He’ll raise his cup to his lips and not even notice the slight bitterness masked by sugar and warm milk. By the time he realizes something is wrong, it will be too late. He’ll clutch at his chest, gasp for breath and collapse right there in that quaint little coffee shop. It will look like a heart attack. I’ve already paid off the coroners at the local hospital in the likely event that an autopsy is ordered. Once his staff is notified of his demise, Natalie will take Belinda to social services, where a contact there has agreed to allow me to take guardianship of her until she turns eighteen.

Once Daniela is eighteen and she gets her green card, she and I will divorce and I’ll send her to culinary school on my dime and make sure she has everything she needs. It’s the least I can do, since I’m having her father killed. His assets will be seized by the cartel, and there won’t be anything left for Daniela. I will make sure she’s set for life.

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