“Cousin,” she growls, rising to her feet.

The lieutenant of Monterrey stumbles toward us through the smoke, sightless in the dark. He’s limping from a gushing wound in his thigh. He’s frantic. And alone.

Valeria despises weakness, just like her dad. She must have abandoned him. Left him to his own fate.

Crack! A loud shot from beside me. Lieutenant Salazar lets loose a high-pitched shout and tumbles across the gravel path.

Lucía. She blew out his kneecap.

The lieutenant writhes on his side, hands pressed in a steeple of appeal as Lucía and Andrés approach. His gold teeth gleam in the firecracker light as he begs, “Primo, por favor. Misericordia.” Cousin, please. Mercy.

Does a man like him deserve mercy?

Lucía answers for me.

“No quitarás más vidas.” You will take no more lives.

She lifts her gun.

“Me ocuparé de eso con mis propias manos.” I will see to that by my own hands.

She fires a bullet into his heart.

“Justice by our own hands,” Ava whispers.

“Did anyone else hear that?” Barend asks, cocking his ear toward the embankment behind us.

At first all I can make out is more gunshots and the loud whooshing of helicopter blades. But then . . .

“Resist much,” a familiar voice rings out, checking to see if we are friend or foe.

“Obey little,” I answer. My pulse begins to race.

Emery reveals herself through the thick mist, like a vision in a bright-yellow coat.

She’s every bit real, though. Ava shoots forward into her arms, happier even than me to see our leader’s face again. “You came after us!”

So the Loyalists didn’t catch her after all.

Materializing behind Emery, a lean skyscraper of a man with a shaved head rushes straight for Barend. When he pulls off his night vision goggles, I realize it’s Ciro Cross.

If the top Elders are here, so is the Common Guard.

That means this is now an even fight. Two armies against two.

“We feared we would be too late,” Ciro pants, folding his hand over Barend’s.

“We all still might be,” Ava corrects him.

“You were right, Ava,” Emery says. “I should have sent our Guard here when we had the first clues. Did the trade go through?”

“Where is the bioweapon?” Ciro presses.

Bioweapon?

After being his prisoner, I’ve learned what Roth is capable of. Anything. He would do anything to get his country back. To restore his power.

But a weapon of mass destruction?

Fear, he told me. It always comes down to fear.

“The briefcases!” I say.

“Roth took them,” Ava pants.

If Roth slips through our hands, he could take down millions.

We have to take him down first.

Then a crazed shout cuts through the heavy smoke.

“Theo!”

It’s Valeria.

She screams my name over and over until she emerges from the dark as a succession of fireworks ignite the sky.

The capo is barefoot, her white suit caked in dirt and blood. And the two cartel women flanking her aren’t laughing now.

They’re outnumbered.

“Theo!” she howls. “I warned you what would happen if you lied!”

Then everything breaks into turmoil.

“¡Por Rosa!” Andrés shouts.

A blind shoot-out ensues. Ava and Emery charge out ahead with Andrés, Valeria’s duo blasting off shot after shot in return fire.

“Theo!” Valeria screams from the darkness.

“Aim lower!” Barend advises me from somewhere to my right.

On my other side, Lucía grabs a souped-up Roman candle off a fallen body, sets fire to the fuse, then points the blast of fireballs right at the Salazar women. They scatter.

Like mice.

“Theo!” Valeria cries over and over.

But where’d she go? Gray shapes dart left and right in the thickening haze, but I can’t find her.

“Theo!”

“I’m right here, Valeria!” I shout, unwilling to hide anymore.

“Theo, stay back!” my dad urges, yelling over his gunfire. He grips my arm. “Why is she after you?”

“Because she’s my aunt. And your half sister,” I shout at him, and his hold on me loosens. I can’t see him in the darkness, but he must look like I felt when I learned the secret of my own half sibling.

When Valeria calls for me again, I take full advantage of my dad’s distraction and bolt toward her voice.

It sounded near the water.

But she finds me first.

Out of thin air, Valeria’s on me, tackling me to the slick ground. Her hand locks around my throat in a viselike grip, her dagger nails digging into my skin.

Trying to squeeze the life out of me.

Then a blade appears above my head, shining red from the fiery explosions in the sky. With a ruthless jab, Valeria attempts to plunge the knife into my neck, but I manage to clamp hold of her wrist before she can bury the blade in my throat.

I yank back her fingers until I hear the pop! of each one breaking. She releases the grip on her knife’s hilt with a scream.

I hook my foot around Valeria’s right ankle and buck and roll, flipping her off me and sending her flying.

We both get to our feet at the same time. I realize the only weapon I have left is Mira’s knife, and I hold the blade out in front of me, ready for Valeria’s next attack.

I expect her to unsheathe one of her cutting smiles, enjoying the fight. Battling with her own hands. Getting them dirty.

But she stares at me with a terrible sadness.

“Nunca fuimos realmente Roths,” she says. We were never really Roths.

“No, no lo fuimos,” I tell her. No. We weren’t.

She clutches her knife with her unbroken hand, and I squeeze the steel rings of mine.

Valeria charges, all her fury directed at me, but I stand my ground, knowing I’ve trained for this.

At the last second, I spin on my heel and Valeria’s blade slashes only air.

She topples over the embankment wall, sliding down the concrete spillway. Before she reaches the water, her amethyst necklace catches on a protruding steel bar.

Valeria hangs there, choking, her fingers fumbling uselessly at her throat.

I don’t wait to watch her take her final gravelly breath. I turn my back on her, pulled by an overwhelming need to find Mira.

Gripping my knife, I start sprinting.

I need to be there to witness it.

The moment Roth’s empire dies. For good.

AVA

Mira reached Roth first.

Ten yards in front of her, the untouchable governor of Texas, former military general and presidential candidate of the United States, stands alone, his eyes dark and empty as an open grave. No soldiers or armaments to guard him, just a mortal man.

His pistol lays useless at his feet. Out of bullets.

Vulnerable, at long last.

He’s surrounded by Common members, on the ground and in the air, and he knows there’s nowhere to run this time.

I move to take my place by my sister’s side.

Haven, Skye, Owen. They all look at me like I just came back from the dead. And it feels like I have.

But now is not my moment.

Now is the moment for our game with Roth to finally end.