Existence (4 page)

“This is
amazing
,” Alicia breathes, as they pull up in front of the beautifully manicured grounds and he opens her door. There's something new in her eyes when she looks at him, and he realizes she never thought of him growing up in a place like this. He's told her so much about the Tlaloc power—less so about the money that enables and derives from it. Other than that disastrous first date, he's refrained from giving her lavish gifts or taking her out for expensive meals. Alicia isn't that kind of girl.

But there's a radiant smile on her face that he hasn't seen before. “What?” he asks.

She shakes her head. “I just . . . I didn't know.”

Dinner is exactly the disaster he expects it to be, although Alicia has no idea. Jago's mother, Hayu Marca, is expert at appearing sweet and nurturing—but beneath these layers of maternal fluff is impenetrable steel. This is what strangers never seem to see.

Alicia is intimidated by his father, Guitarrero Tlaloc, who she assumes is the head of the family. Jago's mother, on the other hand, greets her at the edge of the property and immediately envelops her in a warm hug, and afterward Alicia whispers to Jago, “I don't know what you were so worried about; she's lovely.”

Jago murmurs a noncommittal response.

The kitchen staff has gone all out, preparing an opulent spread of lomo saltado, aji de gallina, pollo a la brasa—the best Peru has to offer. Alicia eats heartily, and doesn't bat an eye at the roasted guinea pig served whole, on a spit. She takes a small bite and pronounces it “interesting.” This is her highest compliment.

“Jago says you're a dancer.” His mother's English is flawless. Like Alicia, she refuses to call him Feo, but not because she thinks the nickname doesn't fit. Naming a son is a mother's prerogative, she always says. She's not about to abdicate that responsibility to the streets.

“
Was
a dancer,” Alicia corrects her.

Jago's father raises an eyebrow. “You quit?”

“I think there might be something better out there for me. Or at least, I just want the chance to find out.”

“And what do your parents think of all this?” Jago's mother asks pointedly.

Alicia shrugs. “They're parents. They like what they know. You know?”

“Mmm.” Jago's mother frowns.

“But in the end, they want me to be happy,” Alicia adds, perhaps sensing things are going awry. “I mean, isn't that what you want for Jago? For him to find whatever makes him happy?”

“What makes Jago happy is fulfilling his duties,” Jago's father says.

“There's got to be more than that,” Alicia argues. “I know you have a lot of family traditions here, but don't you want him to find his own way?”

Jago takes her hand under the table and squeezes gently, hoping she will understand the message:
Stop, please
.

She does, and the subject abruptly shifts to the movies, and the difference between Hollywood and South American heartthrobs, something Jago's younger sister and mother can both discuss at length, and Alicia does an excellent job pretending to care.

He knows it's too late; the damage has been done. He waits through
dessert, through after-dinner drinks, through his mother's extended good-bye rituals, the compliments and hair stroking and promises traded, to keep in touch, to be family, to love each other because they both love Jago. He can tell from Alicia's radiant smile that she thinks she's aced her test, and she kisses him good night in full view of both his parents, promising to meet him for breakfast first thing in the morning. Then she climbs into the bulletproof car with the red talon slashing across its shiny black paint. Jago's men will see her safely home.

They've already arranged to meet long before breakfast—Jago will slip out later and rescue her from her dorm, “like my very own Prince Charming rescuing me from a tower,” she likes to say.

But for now, she leaves—and leaves him alone with his parents.

“No,” his mother says, reclining into her favorite leather armchair. “I don't like this one.” This house is several generations old, but when his parents got married, his mother redecorated it from floor to ceiling. She chose furnishings and tapestries that would look ancient, as if they'd always been there—as if this were
her
ancestral home. The bloodred eagle claw that serves as a family crest is emblazoned on the archway over the door, and etched into each of the stone tiles beneath her feet. This estate is her domain, now. She may have married into the family, but sometimes Jago thinks his mother is more of a Tlaloc than any of them.

“
I
like her, Mamá. That seems somewhat more relevant.”

His father, as usual, remains silent on questions of love.

“She's going to put ideas in your head,” his mother says.

“How do you know
I'm
not going to put ideas in
her
head?”

“Oh, Jago.” His mother leans forward and clasps his hands. “You think you're such a strong man, but you're still a soft boy. You're weak, here.” She taps his chest. “You always have been.”

“What are you worried about, Mamá? That I'll be happy?”

“This is a girl who doesn't understand anything about your life or your responsibilities, Jago. If it were simply a distraction, if you were
merely slacking off . . .” She stops him before he can object. “Yes, I know all about the training you've missed, and I don't care. Boys will be boys, and all that. I want you to have your fun, Jago. But you can't go thinking it's anything more. This girl, she doesn't fit into your life—not now, not ever. And you can't afford to start thinking that the two of you are the same. What you do . . . you can't just quit because you get bored.”

“Don't you think I know that?” he snaps.

He's thought about it plenty, what it would take to walk away, how much he would have to want it and how much he would be giving up.

“Watch your tone, Jago.”

“Alicia isn't just some girl, Mother. She's not a distraction, but she's also not a bad influence. She's . . . Alicia. She's amazing. And you would see that, if you weren't so judgmental.”

He's the only person who dares talk to her this way, and often she likes it. Not tonight.

“I could forbid you from seeing her,” his mother muses, as if weighing the idea.

“Don't do that,” he warns her. “Don't make me choose.”

Her eyebrows shoot sky-high. “Oh?”

He can't look at her.

“I see,” she says. “Then I suppose I'll simply have to live with it, won't I?”

She stands up with great dignity, turns her back on him, and strides out of the room. He's won, he thinks. But he doesn't feel that way. Maybe because she's right about one thing. Alicia
has
put ideas in his head, made him wonder whether violence and duty are his destiny, or only one choice among many.

He could be the Player without being a criminal, he thinks. He could choose a different life without renouncing his obligations. Isn't that possible? He could walk away from the family business, be a poet or a musician or some anonymous man selling fried meat in an alleyway . . . couldn't he? The Tlaloc family's rule over Puno has been
inextricably linked with Endgame and the Players for as long as any of the Olmec can remember, but just because something once was, must it always be?

He could even walk away from Endgame altogether, renounce his status as the Player, hand the sacred duty over to someone else. He could be free of all the training, of having the fate of his line rest on every choice he makes.

Jago remembers the first time he truly felt like the Player. He was 13 years old, just months past swearing the oath, binding himself to this life and this duty. He had been on training missions before, of course, but this one was different. This wasn't simply some exercise put to him by his uncles, an attempt to hone his skills. This was real. Meaningful.

He had scaled a skyscraper in Buenos Aires, disabled an alarm system, slipped past a security force armed with machine guns, cracked a safe owned by the richest man in Argentina, and taken an ancient Olmec knife that this man's ancestors had stolen from Jago's people long ago.

There have been so many missions since then that Jago barely remembers this one. He left some bodies behind, he remembers that. There was a bit of a mess on the way out—an alarm, an explosion, a hasty escape down the Rio de la Plata—but mostly, it's a blur.

What he has never forgotten, what he will
never
forget, is how it felt to arrive home with the ceremonial knife in hand. How his uncle, a former Player himself, kissed his forehead, and said, “You have done well for your people.”

Jago had won victories for his family before; he had been fighting for Tlaloc honor in the streets since he was six years old. But this was different. This wasn't for the Tlalocs; this was for the Olmec. This was noble; this was
right
.

That day, Jago didn't feel like the monster of Juliaca, the ugly, scarred Feo who takes whatever he wants, whose face makes his people cower in fear.

Jago felt like a hero.

He could never give that up. Without Endgame, he's nothing. He's nobody.

But maybe he wouldn't have to give it up. Maybe he could have Alicia, and the beautiful life she wants for both of them, and still be a hero.

Even thinking this way, even imagining, is a betrayal. That's how his mother would see it, at least, and she would never let him speak to Alicia again. His mother loves him; he knows that. But her love is the opposite of Alicia's: It comes with conditions. It comes with expectations. She loves her son, who is the heir to the family business, who is the Player, who is strong and ruthless and powerful. She couldn't fathom the idea of a son who was none of those things, who was simply Jago, her boy. For his mother, love and power are inextricable. If he ever gave up the one, he would lose the other. He knows that.

But it doesn't matter, he reminds himself. These are just idle thoughts, not acts, and thoughts are safe. No one can peer inside his head.

His mother will never have to know.

But thoughts do have consequences.

Even the
act
of thinking can have consequences.

This is one of the first lessons Jago learned as a child, as he mastered rudimentary hand-to-hand combat. Instinct is always faster than conscious thought, and in a combat situation almost always more accurate. When thinking drowns out instinct, when it makes you second-guess yourself or hesitate to do what must be done, that's when it can be most deadly.

Jago should have known that; he should have known better.

But on that Friday afternoon, one week before Alicia is due to leave him behind, as he tracks his prey to a flophouse on the edge of the city and corners them in a seedy room rented by the hour, he's not thinking about his childhood lessons.

He's thinking about what Alicia said to him that morning: “Let's run
away together, just the two of us. Let's see the world.”

Does she mean it?

Would she do it?

Would he?

He's been tasked with hunting down two men, former employees foolish enough to steal from the Tlalocs and think they could get away with it. This is a crime that comes with a standard punishment: death.

He doesn't want to be here, in this dark, crumbling motel with its fetid stink and suspicious stains. He doesn't want to be creeping through a rat-infested hallway, locking the silencer onto his gun, preparing to assassinate two men who have stolen from a family so wealthy it barely noticed the loss—two men whose greatest crime is stupidity. Tiempo and Chango wanted to come along, but Jago insisted on going alone.

It's one against two, maybe. But the one is a Player.

The two don't know it yet, but they're doomed.

Jago creeps up to the door. The manager, after a small bribe made its way into his pocket, gave him the room number and a tip: the lock is broken. There's nothing standing in Jago's way.

You think this ugly life is all you can have, but you're wrong,
he can almost hear Alicia saying as he eases open the door.

One of the men, Julio, is sprawled on the bed facedown, snoring. Alejandro is shaving, with his back to the door. Two bullets, one in each head, easy in, easy out—that's what he's been trained to do.

What you've done doesn't have to define you. What your parents want doesn't have to define you
. She's said it so many times. She wants so much for him.

Jago takes aim. Alejandro first, because at the sound of the shot it will take Julio a second to shake off sleep and get his bearings, and by the time he does, he'll be dead.

I don't care what you've done in the past. Who are you now? Who do you want to be?

His finger tightens on the trigger, as it has many times before. This is a simple calculation; these men are enemies of the family, of the line.

You can choose
.

For the first time in his life, Jago hesitates.

Then fires.

Alejandro screams as the bullet blows off his ear. Jago has perfect aim. He knows how to kill—or how to wound. As Julio leaps out of bed, Jago pulls the trigger again, firing a second shot through Alejandro's other ear, another through his hand, a third and fourth through each of his feet. A final shot to his gut, an inch above the intestines. By the time Julio has reached his weapon, Alejandro is writhing on the floor, screaming and bleeding, and Jago's gun is aimed at Julio's forehead.

Julio drops his weapon, raises his hands in the air.

“Take your friend, leave this city, and never return,” Jago says. “And tell everyone that the punishment for crossing the Tlalocs is swift and painful.”

Julio nods quickly, repeatedly, murmuring, “
Sí, sí,
whatever you say, Feo, anything, please,” and—with Jago's permission—kneels at Alejandro's side, trying his best to staunch the bleeding.