CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

Kate’s knees buckled. She had to grab hold of the back of the bench quickly to keep from falling.

Her eyes locked on this man’s face, examining his sharp cheekbones, his curved mouth, the familiar lines of her father on the man’s chin. Suddenly all fear of him disappeared, and she was left with only the realization that what he was saying was true.

“How? How are you his brother?” She shook her head in astonishment.

“Kate…sit.” Mercado reached for her, and she sat down.

“Why? Why now? After all these years?”

“An old man has just died, Kate,” he said. “In Colombia, in the place you already know, Carmenes. That man was my father, Kate. Your grandfather.”

“No.” Kate shook her head again. “My grandfather’s dead. He died years ago. In Spain.”

“No, your father’s father has always been alive, Kate,” Mercado said. “These past twenty years, he’s been my protector.”

Kate blinked, not understanding. “Your protector?”

“I’ll tell you,” Mercado said, softly placing his hand back on her arm. “You realize now you no longer have anything to fear from me. There is a lot that has been kept from you. With the old man’s passing, everything has changed. All these years he kept at bay those who would come after me. But now the old commitments are off.”

“What commitments? What are you talking about?”

“You’ve heard of fraternidad?” Oscar Mercado asked.

Kate nodded warily.

“I know this word only brings fear to you, but for us it is a tie of honor. It is an obligation that is stronger than love, Kate. Can you understand that? Stronger even than the love a father may feel for his daughter.”

Her gaze drilled on him. What on earth was he saying to her? “No.”

Mercado moistened his lips. “Your father has been handling money for years for the brotherhood. This was his job, Kate. His duty. Su deber. But there was a score he had to settle, more urgent and more real than even the comfortable life he had built for himself. Even after twenty years. Even after you, Kate-and Emily and Justin. I understand this score. In his place I would do the same. It’s about blood, Kate. It is stronger than love. The score was me.”

“You?”

“It’s I who’s turned on them, Kate. He would do anything, anything in his power, to right this wrong.”

“You’re saying…he’s alive?” Kate asked haltingly. “That he was part of this fraternidad, this family.”

“He is very much alive. In fact, it’s possible he’s watching us now.”

Her eyes shot around her. The sudden thought of him out there, not dead, but observing them, was terrifying. Why wouldn’t he try to contact her if he was alive? Sharon was dead. Kate herself had been wounded. Emily and Justin needed him. It was too much to accept. She was his daughter. Whatever this debt, this oath that he was bound to, no twisted concept of blood would make him forget that or be so cruel.

“You’re lying.” She stood up again. “You’re using me to lure him to you. My mother’s dead. You people killed her. You shot up our house. I saw it. I was there. Now you’re telling me about this ridiculous brotherhood and that everything in my life was just some kind of cover. A goddamn lie!”

“You know it,” Oscar Mercado said softly. “You saw the photograph, Kate.”

She wanted not to believe him, but his solemn eyes were clear and unflinching, and she could see in them the man who was in the photograph under that gate with his arm around her father. His brother.

“It’s still not enough,” she said. “I know my father. I know what I felt. You said you can prove it, so show me. How?”

“I hope, with this.” The old man reached inside the pocket of his wrinkled jacket and came out with something in his palm, bound in tissue. He handed it to Kate.

As she unwrapped it, the world shifted for her again. She knew he was telling the truth. She knew he knew everything about her. As she stood staring at him, a sudden rush of tears welled in her eyes.

It was the other half of the broken sun given to her by her mother.

CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

It all came apart for Kate there.

An inner quake shook her so emphatically she felt as if it were cleaving her in two. She pulled the chain out from around her neck with the same broken half sun. She placed Mercado’s and hers in her palm, side by side.

They formed a perfect match.

“You knew my mother?” She looked at him closely, staring into his clear blue eyes.

“I more than knew her, Kate. We were familia.”

“Family…?”

He nodded. He took her by the hand. This time she didn’t flinch. His hands were hard, but there was a tenderness to them. Then he explained a part of her history Kate had never known.

“It was true what your father told you. He did come here as a boy. But not from Spain. From Colombia. From our own country. His mother was my father’s mistress. After my own mother died of an infection in her lungs, Ben’s mother became the love of his life.”

“Rose.” Kate nodded. Her mind darted back to the pictures she had found of the woman, recalling the face of the man with her, with her father as an infant. Her grandfather.

“ Rosa .” He shook his head and pronounced it in Spanish. “She was a beautiful woman, Kate. From Buenos Aires. She studied painting. She was full of life. Of course, they could never marry. Even at this time, in Colombia, this kind of union could never be permitted.”

Kate understood what he was telling her. “Because she was a Jew,” she said.

“Sí, ella staba judía.” The old man nodded. “When she bore him a child, it was necessary that she move away.”

“My father…” Kate sat back against the bench.

“Benhamín. After her father. So she came here.”

All of a sudden, questions about her father’s past started to become clear. That was why she knew nothing of her grandmother’s life. They hadn’t come from Spain. He’d hidden the truth all along. The rest of it seemed to fall in place like the last pieces of a puzzle: Her father had set up his own arrest. He’d gone to meet Margaret Seymour, just as Cavetti and the FBI had claimed. And that photo of the two men underneath the gate. The chilling name, overhead-MERCADO. That other man in the snapshot was before her now. His brother. Now it all made sense. Her eyes stole to the broken pendant-the gold half suns.

“It holds secrets, Kate,” Sharon had said when she placed the pendant around Kate’s neck. “One day I’ll tell them to you.”

Her mother knew!

“Your mother gave me this,” Mercado said. “She knew one day it would be me to tell you, not him. You must realize now”-the man smiled-“what happened to her, it was not me.”

“No!” A wall rose up inside Kate. Her hands trembled, but her voice was firm. “You’re saying he killed his own wife. That can’t be. He loved her. I saw them. For over twenty years. That was no lie.”

“I am telling you, Kate, this bond, it is stronger than what you know as love. All these years inside the program, I’ve never once divulged what I’ve just said to you. I never betrayed him.”

“Why are you telling me this? Why did you show yourself? What is it you want me to do?”

“I want you to help me find him, Kate.”

“Why? So you can kill him. So that he doesn’t kill you. Whatever’s happened, he’s still my father. Until he looks me in the eye and tells me he did these things. From him, not you… You’re saying that everything I’ve trusted in my whole life has been a lie.”

“Not a lie. A protection. For your own-”

“A lie!”

Oscar Mercado took her by the wrist and gently opened her palm. He picked up the two pendants of the broken Aztec sun and reached over and placed them around her neck. The two halves dangled momentarily, then came to rest against her chest in a way that made them appear as one. A single golden sun.