The sun sat low and cruel over the Yucatán, painting the limestone roofs of the compound the color of old blood. From the central courtyard the three brothers—Salvatore, Diego, Rafael—and their cousin Juárez moved as a single, practiced organism. Men slipped through shadowed doorways carrying crates stamped with false manifests. Workers in oil-streaked overalls rolled pallets past the idol-shelf where candles guttered; the carved Tzitzimimeh watched with impassive stone eyes, its presence as ordinary in the compound as the barking guard dogs.
They were not simply a family; they were a little carved state. From Mérida down through the ragged coastline and into dense jungle tracks, their influence threaded like iron bands. Town mayors took their donations; customs officers winked and looked the other way; fishermen and smugglers who refused found their boats sunk on moonless nights. The brothers had built an empire from graft, violence and the careful cultivation of fear—and Sangre de Luna would buy them a continent.
Salvatore El Lobo moved with the slow gravity of a man who expected obedience. He smelled of cigar smoke and sweat; his wrists were heavy with gold. He watched the loading like a priest overseeing sacrifice.
"Make sure the pills go with the weapons," he ordered. "No loose transfers. Seal everything under the same manifest. If customs pries, they find both—guns and product. A single loss is all we need to buy silence with a hundred bribes."
Diego checked manifests with a restless eye, the pragmatic brother who liked inventories and margins. "Routes through the Gulf are clogged. Navy patrols stepped up because of the war to the south. The smugglers we used are asking for more than their cut—claims the convoys are being targeted." He tapped a crate as if testing stitching. "And if we send through the western passage, the mountains are chewed up by militias. Every route has teeth now."
Rafael—young, quick-tempered, a grin that never reached his eyes—snapped his fingers, impatient. "Then we take it by force. Whip the blocking parties. Brutality gets respect. We pay once, then they fall in line."
Juárez, hair still singed from the last lab fire, moved between the pallets with jars tucked in insulated boxes. He handled the black vials with reverence, as if the viscous tar were both creation and creature. He had turned their idol's ooze into pills: capsules the size of a fingernail, smooth and finished, wrapped in a dark gel that gleamed like oil. He set one beside a crate, watching its sheen as if it might suddenly speak.
"The pill form is better for markets," he said quietly. "Less chance of contamination. Easier to slip through borders. But it's not shelf-stable forever. A year, maybe. If stored poorly, it degrades and becomes…volatile. We sell a miracle, but miracles age." He rubbed his thumb over the gel. "If we can't move the shipment quickly, we lose product and money. And the black liquid—that stuff, the essence—is worse. It reacts. Give it heat or wrong metal and it tears the lab apart. That's why we need medical-grade synth rigs."
Salvatore watched the sky, mind moving like a gambler sizing odds. "They demand 132 million?" he asked finally, voice a low rumble.
Diego shrugged. "They aren't interested in making an opening, not even for that. The coast factions—they want guarantees. They want protection beyond money. They want assurance they won't be prey to militias or international forces." He tapped the manifest again. "We could try paying more, but that sets a price precedent. Doors will always want more."
Rafael spat on the ground. "Weak fools. Bribe one head and the rest follows. Cowards cost us time."
Time, Juárez thought, was their worst enemy. The pills had a heartbeat of their own. Each day that passed, their value eroded like sugar in the rain. And London—where William's eager pockets waited—couldn't be patient forever.
Salvatore stepped closer to the idol, the stone's shadow throwing dark lines down his face. For all his luxury, he ruled by measures as old as hunger: power, fear, and the ability to hurt when necessary. If money bought a door, a knife opened it twice as fast.
"We don't bribe," he said slowly, weighing each syllable. "We make the way. If they take our money and threaten us with war, we show them a war they cannot win. No subtlety. We send a force, secure the route, take the posts that block us, and hang banners on the checkpoints. Make them ours."
Diego shook his head. "Open war is costly. We lose men, we lose ships—we lose product and time. And time kills the drug."
Rafael's fingers drummed an angry rhythm. "Cost is what you pay when you're a king. Either be a king or be a beggar."
Salvatore let them clash like two young dogs in the yard, then spoke with a patience that brooked no dissent. "Enough. Force is an option, but not the only one. We have allies who owe us favors. We have state men on our payroll, and mercenaries who work for the right price. We will combine methods. A strike to the right place to show we mean business. Simultaneous bribes to the loudest mouths so they stay quiet. We take the passes, but we take them clean. No long war."
Juárez's voice was quieter—technical, exact. "And I need time. If we lose centric lab time, I can't guarantee the shipment's integrity. We extract in a controlled environment, then we stabilize with the equipment. If we're forced to rush, I will have to remove the stabilizers and the pills will be a different product. Dangerous."
Salvatore's eyes narrowed. He knew Juárez's temperamental genius better than most. The chemist had kept them afloat when experiments exploded and shipments blighted. Without Juárez's work, Sangre de Luna was a rumor; with him, it was a commodity.
"Then we move fast," Salvatore decided. "We buy the rigs if we must. We seize what's needed, wherever it sits. We reinforce our couriers and plan a staggered route—some by sea, some by air, hidden in aid containers, one load disguised as agricultural exports, another inside a caravan under a diplomatic cover. We make detection costly. And before anyone can set prices higher? We hit them first."
Diego nodded, the accountant's mind already sketching numbers and losses. Rafael smiled, the feral grin of a man who loved the roar of direct action. Juárez tucked the last jar into a thermal case and sealed it with a small, satisfied click.
Salvatore's hand found the idol's base and rested there like a benediction. He had not always believed in carved gods, but scarcity and survival had a way of teaching men faith. "We are kings," he murmured, "and kings make roads."
The men dispersed to their tasks with the efficiency of a war engine. Trucks were loaded; fake manifests printed and laminated; satellite phones tested. Men from Veracruz and Belize, men who had once been fishermen and were now gunmen, checked weapons and packed rations. Old alliances were called in; new ones were paid. The shipment's departure would be a ballet of deceit.
At dusk, while torches were lit along the compound walls and the idol sat bathed in blood-colored candlelight, Salvatore walked the perimeter and watched the small port in the distance. He could already see coastal lights where the smugglers waited. He could taste the future: pounds in London, peso bills in his safe, power that would ripple like a tide across the peninsula.
But the island of his certainty had edges. He could see it in Diego's accounting, in Rafael's impatience, in Juárez's white-knuckled hands. If the route failed, if the pills degraded mid-sail, if William's enemies—those phantom hunters—kept burning warehouses in London, then the empire would be ash as easily as any crate.
Salvatore shook the thought away like flies. "Load the last crate," he ordered. "We sail at first light. And tell the men—if anyone talks, they die. Understood?"
A chorus of murmured assent. The machines hummed deeper. The idol seeming to absorb the promises like dry earth drinks rain.
Beyond the compound's outer gate the jungle breathed, patient as a coiled thing. The brothers moved through their plans with the long, certain gestures of men who had learned to make a continent answer. But somewhere across the ocean, a hooded shadow watched ruined warehouses burn and marked a name on a map.
The game was changing. The brothers made their preparations like kings. The sea would listen. The moon would not.