Chapter 2 - The Serpent’s Table
The mansion was a fortress of marble and shadow. I was led down a long corridor framed by oil paintings of dead men with stern faces to a massive bathroom made of black granite. A servant filled a deep tub with warm, scented water. For an hour, I scrubbed the river mud from my skin until my flesh was raw and red.
When I stepped out, a fresh set of clothes was laid on the bed: crisp dark trousers, a white linen shirt, and real leather shoes that felt heavy and strange on my bare feet. I had never worn shoes that didn't have holes in the soles.
Hector was waiting for me outside the door. His face was unreadable as he gestured for me to follow him down a sweeping grand staircase into a cavernous dining room.
A long mahogany table dominated the room, laden with silver platters of roasted meats, fresh bread, fruits I had only ever seen in glossy magazines, and decanters of dark wine. Sitting around the table were six men and two women, all dressed in expensive suits and silk dresses. They were conversing in low, dangerous hushes, but the moment I walked into the room, every conversation ceased.
At the head of the table sat Don Mateo Vargas, now wearing a fresh navy suit, a glass of amber liquid in his hand. To his right sat a man with sharp, rat-like features, a thin mustache, and eyes that moved constantly across the room. This was Gabriel Vane, Vargas’s chief financial advisor and the head of the city’s logistics operations.
“Is this the river orphan, Don Mateo?” Gabriel asked, his voice dripping with condescension as he cut a piece of steak. “You brought a filthy beggar to the High Council table? The street rumors are already spreading. People are saying you fell off your own yacht because you were too drunk to walk straight.”
Vargas didn’t raise his voice. He simply set his glass down on the wood with a soft thud.
“I was pushed, Gabriel,” Vargas said smoothly. “From behind. Right before my steering control failed.”
A heavy chill descended over the table. The council members exchanged quick, nervous glances.
“Pushed?” Gabriel echoed, his fork hovering mid-air. “By whom?”
“That is what I intend to find out,” Vargas replied. He gestured toward me. “Come here, Aurelio. Sit.”
He pulled out the chair directly to his left—the seat reserved for the second-in-command or family heirs. I hesitated, feeling the weight of seven pairs of hostile eyes locking onto my small frame. I remembered the beatings from older boys in the alleyways when I tried to guard my scrap metal. I remembered that weakness in this city meant death.
I squared my shoulders, walked up to the table, and sat down in the high-backed velvet chair. I didn't reach for the food, though my stomach was screaming with hunger. I kept my hands folded on the table, just as my grandmother had taught me.
Gabriel scoffed, leaning back. “This is ridiculous, Mateo. The boy is a street rat. Why is he sitting at the table of the Five Harbor Lords?”
“Because his name is Aurelio Mendoza,” Vargas said loudly.
The entire room stiffened. One of the female bosses, an older woman named Sofia who controlled the city’s gambling dens, dropped her glass. It shattered against her plate, spilling red wine across the white tablecloth like fresh blood.
“Mendoza?” Sofia whispered, her eyes wide with shock. “Esperanza’s blood? We were told the line died out twelve years ago! Esteban swore he wiped them out!”
“Esteban lied to you, just as he lied to me,” Vargas said, his voice darkening. “My father tried to erase the Mendozas from history so he could claim the Western Docks without opposition. But Esperanza was smarter than my father. She survived. And now, her direct male heir sits in this room.”
Gabriel’s eyes narrowed into tiny slits as he glared at me. I saw a micro-expression of pure, unadulterated hatred flash across his thin face before he quickly masked it with a polite, oily smile.
“Even if he is a Mendoza,” Gabriel reasoned smoothly, “he is a child. He knows nothing of management, extortion, shipping lanes, or law enforcement. He is useless to us. The city is on the verge of a territorial war with the Northern Cartel. We cannot afford to play babysitter to a ghost’s grandson.”
“He pulled a two-hundred-pound man out of a raging current while six of my bodyguard detail stood on the bank filming with their phones,” Vargas countered, casting a lethal glance at Hector, who lowered his head in shame. “He has more spine than half the men in this room.”
Vargas turned to me, placing his hand heavy on my shoulder. “Starting tomorrow, Aurelio will be educated. He will learn our history, our law, our finances, and how to shoot a gun. He will live under my roof as my ward. Anyone who touches him touches me.”
Gabriel smiled, though his eyes remained as cold as ice. “A noble gesture, Don Mateo. But remember... in Ciudad de Esperanza, wards have a habit of dying young.”
I looked straight into Gabriel’s rat-like eyes, remembering the way he had twitched when Vargas mentioned being pushed into the river.
“My grandmother told me that rats only bite in the dark,” I said, my voice surprisingly steady. “When you bring them into the light, they just run away.”
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The table gasped. Mateo Vargas burst into a booming, deep laugh that echoed off the marble walls. But across the table, Gabriel’s hands tightened around his cloth napkin until his knuckles turned bone-white.
I had just made my first enemy in the criminal underworld.
