Page 5 of Forbidden Fate

My observation skills are part of what makes me a good vet. Animals can’t tell you where it hurts, so you have to observe everything you can about them to figure out what’s wrong.

Today I’m using the dark web for the first time because what I’m observing right now in my family is not right.

Not right at all.

Still, my nerves are on edge. I mean, this is the dark web. I’m Robin Bellamy. I don’t get into trouble.

Except for that one time…

I steal into a few chatrooms using an alias. Doesn’t everyone on the dark web? I’m looking for information on Diego Vega. I’m pretty sure he’s not dead, even if Vinnie swears it. Call it women’s intuition. Or vet’s intuition. I’m looking, observing. I’ve seen reports of him being in Austin, and of course tons of stuff about his crime in Colombia. But some of the dates don’t line up. It’s like he’s in two places at once.

Could be it’s just a slip in data entry, a bot error, but I doubt it. I open three more tabs and start cross-referencing.

Even the most notorious crime boss can’t be in two places at once, especially when he’s supposed to be dead.

Maybe Vega uses a double. Lots of bloodthirsty leaders used them—Saddam Hussein and Fidel Castro, for example. Diego Vega isn’t an authoritarian dictator, but he’s just as evil and powerful.

Why wouldn’t Vega have a double? In fact…maybe that’s who was messing with Eagle eight years ago, before Falcon went to prison.

I continue my research, throwing in more names I’ve heard Vinnie and Daniela mention. I start with Hernando Reyes. After all, I did an Oscar-worthy performance as a reporter for a fake art magazine when Daniela and I interviewed his niece, artist Juno Reyes.

More than a few Hernando Reyeses exist, but I home in on the correct one right away. He was a senator in the Colombian legislature, which would make it easy to do Vega’s dirty work, whipping votes in his favor.

I find an uptick in chatter about a proposed bill to open up protected land in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Someone has purchased the mining rights through shell companies that are so typical in this part of the world that tracking real ownership is nearly impossible.

I bookmark what I can and hop to a different set of chatrooms, this time the kind where people write in code and emojis. Parsing this lingo is slow, but it pays off. Reyes is linked to Marco Ramirez, Dietrich Klein, Derek Wolfe, and Isabella Valentini.

Derek Wolfe, the billionaire tycoon, is dead, so nothing there.

Deitrich Klein turns out to be a dead end too. He’s in Germany and hasn’t had contact with any of the others in over a year.

Marco Ramirez, though, leads me to names I know—Declan McAllister and Jacinto Agudelo, Dani’s father. And of course, Mario Bianchi, Vinnie’s grandfather.

That’s not new information exactly, but it feels different seeing it displayed like a map in front of me. In college, Barb used to joke about my brain having red string and thumbtacks for synapses, but here it is, all the connections unfolding.

It’s not a shock to see those names together.

I read through transaction after transaction until⁠—

The name I was hoping I wouldn’t see pops up.

Austin Bellamy.

My father.

Austin Bellamy wired $150,000 to an account controlled by Hernando Reyes twenty-three months ago. The notation says only “consulting.”

That’s it. Nothing more. I bite my cheek so hard I taste blood.

Consulting? The only thing Dad knows is ranching, and I doubt a Colombian mobster would have any interest in that. What the hell has my father been doing?

But I can’t dwell on that, at least not while Dad is still in the hospital recovering from aphasia after he tried—and failed—to take his own life.

Very unlike my father…but if he’s in league with these assholes, he probably felt like he had no other choice.

Except again, that’s so not like my father.

He’s a good man. A solid man. An excellent rancher and⁠—