“Fuck,” I say to no one but myself. And I force myself to jog to catch up with her.

“Rosalita’s not here.”

There’s a different man at the door tonight. Where does Esmeralda find these clowns?

“Bullshit,” I say.

He shrugs, taking a bite of an apple. The crunch echoes against the walls of the alleyway around us.

“Where’s Esmeralda?”

He shrugs again, wiping stray bits off apple off his stubbly beard. “Don’t know. Didn’t ask.”

Kiki steps forward. “Look, we just need to talk to Rosalita,”

That line works about as well as it did last night. A third shrug. “Can’t help you there.”

“Why are you even here?” I shove Kiki out of the way, ignoring her little yelp of indignation. “Why is Esmeralda keeping me out?”

A fourth shrug. “Don’t get paid to ask questions.”

None of this is right. There’s something rotten here. But I don’t know what. And I’m getting sick and tired of being left in the dark.

Rosalita and Alejandro. They’d been carrying on an affair right under our noses with no one being the wiser.

Well, not no one. Someone knew. I can feel it in my bones. Someone knew—the same someone who left Alejandro hanging from a tree in the viceroy’s garden—and that someone might be coming after Rosalita next.

I cannot let that happen. I will not. I have lost too much. I will not lose her too.

“Fine,” I say through gritted teeth. “We’ll come back later.” I grab Kiki’s arm and storm off, doing my best to give the impression of righteous indignation.

What he doesn’t know is that later is sooner than he might think.

“Ana, what are you—”

Once we’ve turned the corner, I break into a silent run, rounding the building. Heading toward the back. Kiki falls silent, her stride matching mine. We share a look, and it says everything we need. She’ll follow my lead.

The door is open as it always is. The kitchen gets punishingly hot, even during these cool autumn nights. The only way to survive in there without boiling alive is to prop the door open to let the breeze in.

Tonight, though, there will be more than a breeze slipping through. I put a finger to my lips signaling for Kiki to keep quiet. She nods, short and sharp.

No one takes notice of us as we enter. Our presence in the brothel is so commonplace that it’s not weird for me to be in the kitchen. Not weird at all. I stop as I get to the open doorway connecting the kitchen to the more public areas of Esmeralda’s establishment.