Her brothers became copies of one another. They looked the same, with their Chilean complexion and Swedish hair. They trained at the same gym, worked at the same steel mill, and were fathers by the age of twenty-five, marrying eerily similar Catholic girls. Tera wanted to take a different path. She’d begun an undergraduate degree at Pitt, eyeing a career in economics, but didn’t get out of her freshman year. Her roommate, returning home from a party one night, was raped, stabbed eight times, and thrown into the Monongahela. Another friend was fatally shot for the nineteen dollars in his wallet. These incidents happened within days of each other, and set Tera’s head spinning. She dropped out of college and worked one unfulfilling job after another, including a year-long stint at the mill with her brothers. It paid well, but pounding steel, constantly, furiously, was never going to be enough.

It was around this time that her father was diagnosed with throat cancer, which metastasized aggressively to his lungs and bones. He was a hard parent, an even harder cop, but he believed in justice and fairness, and the streets would be less safe without him. Watching him deteriorate, Tera knew that there needed to be another Montecino in blue.

Throwing hot coffee into Lieutenant Ass Slapper’s lap would mark the beginning of a dubious reputation in law enforcement. There were numerous written reprimands, two suspensions. Several police psychologists analyzed her childhood, everything from her absent mother to her abusive father. Tera maintained he was not abusive, but of course she knew otherwise. She also knew that her ruthless methods were an attempt to win her dead father’s approval. He was with her, after all, in the lining of her stomach. As well, Tera constantly sought justice for her roommate and her friend. She remembered their faces with every pervert and rapist she dismantled, every murderer she kicked in the dirt.

Tera realized something else early on: that there were too many memories in Carver City, few of them good. She felt that a clean slate would make her a better cop. With three years of policing under her belt, she transferred to Los Angeles, North Hollywood Division. It was the change she needed. Tera learned the streets, the people, and the system. She put in her four years on patrol, then—at the age of thirty-three—made detective, working in juvenile crimes.

She also fell in love. Briefly.