Page 139 of Cartel Devil

“Next stop, a trip to the furnishing warehouse. Joaquin will tell you what’s available to take home.”

Chapter Thirty

Joaquin

“You’re sure it’s ready?”

“Stop whittling, hermanito. I tested the app four times on the burners. It’s untraceable. You worry worse than an old woman who can’t find her dentures.”

Jorge gives me an obscene hand gesture that our tíos pretend not to see. We’re standing on his front lawn with Javier, our cousins, and our tíos. It’s two in the morning, so pitch black outside. We have a clear view of most of the houses owned by the syndicate families. Some are out of sight because they’re in an adjacent neighborhood, but we’ll be able to pick them out soon enough.

I hold a burner phone with a single app and a single account—Genio Colombianos. Colombian Genius. I may want our targets to guess who did this, but I don’t need any concrete evidence leading back to me. While I usually don’t have a flair for the dramatic—that’s Javier with all his Wuthering Heights angsty, broodiness—I count down.

“Cinco, cuatro, tres, dos, uno.”

I hit send.

We wait.

Within three minutes, lights flip on in houses throughout the neighborhoods. It’s like watching a Christmas lights show. Within five minutes, our phones are blowing up. A Kutsenko or Andreyev is calling each of us. Only Tío Luis and Tío Matías have silent phones, but they’re laughing the hardest.

“If they’re dialing out, their call waiting won’t connect the incoming calls. That’s only pissing the rest of them off even more.” Javier breaks character for a moment and cackles like the witch out of Hansel and Gretel.

It’s like a round robin as the bratva take turns calling each of us, keeping our phones buzzing for nearly ten minutes. I bet if we put them on the sidewalk they’d bounce around like Mexican jumping beans.

Finally, Tío Enrique answers Maks’s call on speaker. Right on schedule.

“It’s rather late to be calling, Maks.”

“I’m going to fucking murder all of you.”

“And leave our wives widows? I’m sure that’ll impress Laura and the others even more. Happy wife, happy life. Wasn’t it nice while it lasted?”

“You piece of fucking shit. This is business among the men. You don’t involve the wives.”

“Ah, but all the evidence says otherwise. You haven’t had any problems involving the other women. You’re just pissed you got caught—and got outed. Find your huevos in whatever drawer Laura keeps them, and fucking own this like the man you pretend to be.”

Tío Enrique hangs up just as Tía Elle pokes her nose out. “It’s starting.”

All the men head inside and find our women waiting for us. It’s their turn for their phones to be blowing up. See, it wasn’t just the men’s phones I hacked and added the apps to. I’m certain they all woke up to furious elbows and fingers poking them as their wives read what popped up on their screen.

Through a combination of hacking accounts across multiple devices, zero-day exploits to jailbreak their phones, and desktop tools that let me take over their devices, I sideloaded an app onto all of the phones. My family and I paid an exorbitant amount for my Ivy League education, but it’s twenty-plus years of hacking that trained me to do some of the most highly sophisticated, state-sponsored-level shit out there.

The women in my family pass around their phones to each other, the men looking over their shoulders. It’s the same texts or some variation of them over and over.

I’ll kill him.

I’m sorry.

I’ll make this right.

The thing about this app is that you can’t send a message to just one person. It’s all or nothing. So, every text goes out to every woman in the Four Families.

Tía Elle’s phone rings twenty minutes into Showtime at Los Diaz. It’s Laura. I glance at Madeline. She knew what was coming, and since Laura’s calling, I’m guessing she didn’t warn her sister. My sister-in-law shrugs.

Once upon a time, Madeline and Laura were like Tío Enrique’s nieces. He has a cross on his forearm with four initials. P at the top—Pablo. J at the bottom—Juan. L on the left—Laura. And M on the right—Madeline. When shit went south, first with Juan then with some of the other women, Laura threatened to carve her sister’s and her initials out of my tío’s arm with a butter knife.

Tensions eased when Javier and Madeline finally got together. But the damage was already done. Tía Margherita and Tío Luis stopped having Sunday dinners with Laura and Madeline’s parents. The four of them together haven’t shared Christmas with us in eight years. He doesn’t say it, but losing Laura and Madeline—temporarily—was one of the hardest things Tío Enrique’s had to bear.