from the Gulf and the Zetas.
They were all friends then, the Tapias, the Barreras, the Esparzas. In those days, Damien looked up to the older boys like Iván and Sal and Rubén Ascensión and Ric Núñez, who was closer to him in age. They were his buddies, his cuates. They were Los Hijos, the sons who would inherit the all-powerful Sinaloa cartel, and they would run it together and be brothers forever.
Then Tío Adán married Eva Esparza.
Little Eva is younger than I am, Damien thinks now as he centers the sights on Ricardo Núñez’s graying temple; we used to play together as kids.
But Tío Nacho wanted Baja for Iván, and he pimped his daughter out to get it. After Eva married Tío Adán, the Tapia wing of the cartel became the stepchild—slighted, ignored, pushed to the side. The very night Adán was popping little Eva’s cherry, his tame federales went to arrest Damien’s uncle Alberto and shot him dead. It turned out that Adán had sold out the Tapias to save his nephew Sal from a murder charge.
My father, Damien thinks, was never the same after that. He couldn’t believe the men he called his primos, his cousins—Adán and Nacho—would betray him, would kill his flesh and blood. He started to get deeper and deeper into the Santa Muerte, deeper into the coke. The anger, the grief, ate him alive and the war he launched to get revenge tore the cartel to pieces.
Shit, Damien thinks, it tore the whole country to pieces, as Diego allied the Tapia organization with the Zetas to fight the Barreras and the Esparzas, his old partners in the Sinaloa cartel.
Thousands died.
Damien was only sixteen that day, just after Christmas, when the marines tracked his father down to an apartment tower in Cuernavaca, went in with armored cars, helicopters, and machine guns, and murdered him.
He keeps the photo on his phone as a screen saver. Diego Tapia, bullet holes in his face and chest, his shirt ripped open, his pants pulled down, dollar bills tossed over him.
The marines did that to his father.
Killed him, mocked his corpse, put the disgusting photos out on the net.
But Damien always blamed Tío Adán.
And Tío Nacho.
His “uncles.”
And Ricardo Núñez, Ric’s father.
What they did to Diego Tapia is unforgivable, Damien thinks. My father was a great man.
And I am my father’s son.
He wrote a narcocorrido about it, put it out on Instagram.
I am my father’s son and always will be
I’m a man of my family
A man of the trade
And I’ll never turn my back on my blood
This is my life until I die.
I’m the Young Wolf.
His mother has begged him to get out of the business, do something else, anything else, she’s already lost too many loved ones to the trade. You’re handsome, she tells him—movie star, rock star, Telemundo handsome, why don’t you become an actor, a singer, a television host? But Damien told her no, he wouldn’t disrespect his father that way. He swore on Diego’s grave to bring the Tapias back to where they belong.
At the top of the Sinaloa cartel.
“They stole it from us, Mami,” Damien told his mother. “And I’m going to take back what they stole.”
Easy to say.
Harder to do.
The Tapia organization still exists, but with only a fraction of the power it used to have. Without the leadership of the three brothers—Diego and Alberto dead, Martín in prison—it operates more like a group of franchises giving nominal allegiance to the Tapia name while they each operate independently, trafficking coke, meth, marijuana and now heroin. And they’re scattered, with cells in southern Sinaloa, Durango, Guerrero, Veracruz, Cuernavaca, Baja, Mexico City and Quintana Roo.
Damien has his own cell, based in Acapulco, and while the other cells give him a certain level of respect because of who his father was, they don’t view him as the boss. And Sinaloa—maybe out of guilt over what they did to his family—tolerates him as long as he’s subservient and not looking to get revenge.
And the truth, Damien knows, is that he’s not much of a threat—hopelessly outgunned by the combined forces of the Barrera and Esparza wings of the cartel.
Until now, he thinks.
Now Tío Adán and Tío Nacho are dead.
Iván and Elena Sánchez are at war.
Game changer.
And now he can pull the trigger on Ricardo Núñez.
“Shoot,” Fausto tells him.
Fausto—squat, thickset, mustached—was one of his father’s loyalists who went with Eddie Ruiz after Diego’s death. Now, with Eddie in prison, he’s back with Damien.
Based in Mazatlán, Fausto is a stone killer.
What Damien needs.
“Shoot,” Fausto repeats.
Damien’s finger tightens on the trigger.
But stops.
For several reasons.
One, he’s unsure of the wind. Two, he’s never killed anyone before. But three—
Damien shifts the scope onto Ric.
Ric is sitting right next to his dad, and Damien doesn’t want to take the chance on missing and killing his friend.
“No,” he says, lowering the rifle. “They’d come after us too hard.”
“Not if they’re dead.” Fausto shrugs. “Shit, I’ll do it.”
“No, it’s too soon,” Damien says. “We don’t have the power yet.”
It’s what he tells Fausto, what he tells himself.
He watches the convoy turn into the next switchback, out of sight and out of range.
The plane takes an unexpected turn.
Ric expected that they’d fly directly back to Culiacán, but the plane banks west toward the ocean to Mazatlán.
“I want to show you something,” Núñez says.
Ric
