“You gave me Tane?” I’m incredulous. I look around the room for support, but none of the others are looking at me. Even my own brother. Of all the men in the world, these four are the ones I hold in my dark, pitted heart, and three of them aren’t saying a word while the fourth chastises me like a kid who just shit the bath. And now the howler monkeys in my head are starting their racket. I keep them shut in their cages and focus on my uncle’s dark eyes.

“You had a heart attack,” I tell him. “And while you were lying on the airport floor, your pulmonary valve squeezing shut, you managed to offload your problem onto me. And I took it, and I went into the Bluff, and I got Tane. That brought the FBI down on my back, and on Ethan too. And then I had to deal with Brad Cargill and the Sureños, who are now gunning for me. And maybe if you’d been a little clearer with your family or with Frankie about who Tane is and what he’s worth to you, and what you were planning to do with him, we’d be in a much better place than we are now. Instead you were so busy trying to keep a lid on everything that when it all started to boil over, no one knew what the hell was going on. You set things in motion and then checked out right when you could have made a difference, and if you’d told Frankie or Caesar about any of this ahead of time, they could’ve handled it, and I would’ve helped them. Instead we were flying blind, so I figured it out and took care of it the best I could. And then, on top of that, I’m dealing with a psychotic ex-soldier who stole millions of dollars from Iraq with my father’s help, and he’s holding Tane hostage and has him wired up to a bomb, and he wants his money and I don’t have a fucking clue where it is.”