Cristobal’s body was crushed under the debris. His face was left nearly unrecognizable, but one cold gray eye remained, open and unseeing. I watched them carry the body out of the wreckage as Ana held me up. My own injuries were far less severe, but they were enough to make standing a chore. But I had to know. I had to see it with my own eyes. The man who had brought so much evil to this city was dead. There would be other villains, other evils. But this one, at least, was vanquished. Sebastian was wounded too gravely to flee the scene, but Esmeralda, somehow, slipped through the cracks. She is out there somewhere, alive, but now that her protector is gone, she will not dare show her face in Potosí again. The archbishop has sailed back to Spain, reassigned to another diocese, or so the story goes. The Church protects its own, even if they’re greedy, amoral scum.

“We’ll hunt them down,” Ana said. “And we will make them pay.”

Of that, I have no doubt.

Now, a persistent drizzle bears down on us as we watch the pallbearers lower Alejandro’s coffin into the ground. Finally, he can rest in consecrated ground. The thought doesn’t bring nearly as much comfort as I wanted it to. He is still dead. His life was still cut far too short. There was so much good he could have done in the world. So much love he had left to give.

My father weeps silently as the first pile of dirt beats down on the lid of the coffin. He hadn’t said much when Ana and I had stumbled back home, battered and burned but alive. He’d thrown his arms around me and held me with a strength I hadn’t known his ailing body still possessed, whispering over and over and over, “Thank God. You are alive. Thank God.”

God had nothing to do with it, but if the thought brought him comfort, then I would not begrudge him his faith.

Rosalita lays a hand on my father’s shoulder. Her own face is pale and drawn, but no tears fall from her eyes. She looks at me and offers me a soft smile. My father pats her hand as he would a daughter. Her past, her life, her profession. None of it seems to matter anymore. At least to this family. If Alejandro could see them now, I know he would be smiling that rakish, beautiful grin of his.

We stand guard and watch until my brother is buried. Ana nudges me gently with her shoulder. “Are you all right?”

Her face is open, raw. Vulnerable. But strong still. Resilient. All the things I aspire to be. When I look at her, I know I cannot lie. “No. I’m not.” I take her hand and give it a gentle squeeze. She squeezes back without hesitation. “But I will be.”