We hopped on the plane as soon as we wrapped up our affairs in Colombia, the air still buzzing with the deals we struck and the power we claimed. It was a private jet, sleek and stocked with luxuries befitting our new status, but my mind was already on the next conquest. Our business had commenced in Colombia with a flair that sent ripples across the continent, and now we set our sights on bigger, older territories, filled with old blood and ancient grudges.
Aurelio wanted Europe next, a playground of history and wealth ripe for disruption. He believed we would take the old world by storm, where whispers of the Casillas name would invoke new fear in old hearts. A small smile crept on my face as I thought of the Spaniards. They once owned the world, their reach long and fierce, but that was a long time ago.
Now we would head to the old world where they used to own the world.
Our new base of operations was destined to be Switzerland, a land of neutrality and hidden wealth, where old money kept its secrets and the mountains whispered of untold fortunes. But for us, this Alpine haven offered more than just a strategic advantage. It was where my boarding school was—Le Rosey—the pinnacle of prestige, renowned as the most elite institution of its kind in the world. Nestled amidst the serene landscape, Le Rosey was a breeding ground for the future rulers of countries, empires, and conglomerates. My time there would not be merely an education but an initiation into the world of power.
Aurelio and I envisioned how rubbing shoulders with the heirs to vast dynasties would position us among the world's most influential circles. We would be embedded like a ticking clock, counting down to when those networks would be ours to manipulate and control. The children of presidents, monarchs, and moguls would become my classmates, future partners in our schemes—or future targets.
I will be touching shoulders with the future most powerful people in the world. In the hope of them being embedded into our schemes of international drug trafficking.
We descended through tangled clouds, slipping beneath the radar as if the sky itself wished to keep our secrets. The jet banked hard over Lake Geneva, where the blue water met the silent sprawl of the alps. There was no fanfare, no waiting immigration officials, just a biting wind and the crunch of frost beneath the tires as we coasted to a smooth halt on a runway that time forgot—one leased by an anonymous holding company with no links to either Colombia or Mexico, scrubbed from flight plans and beyond the reach of both law enforcement and rival syndicates. The landing strip jutted from a thicket of pine and frost, a demilitarized zone in miniature, where the only witnesses were the ghosts of smugglers past and the mute, star-blanketed sky.
Leondias disembarked first, his jacket crisp, his gaze sharper still. He surveyed the horizon, scanning for threats as unseen men in unmarked parkas unloaded our meager luggage—new passports, burner phones, a hard drive filled with enough kompromat to topple a dozen regimes. For a moment, the isolation was total, as if we'd slipped through a chasm in the world and arrived in another universe altogether.
It was the perfect scheme for our soon-to-be flourishing business: land undetected, disappear into the latticework of Swiss neutrality, and quietly establish ourselves in the place where nobody would look for the next generation of narco royalty. The jet's engine ticked as it cooled, each metallic ping a countdown to our rebirth. The old world did not yet know it had new heirs, and we owed that secret, in part, to the ingenuity of this midnight landing.
i was handed an envelope—inside, a full dossier on my new identity, meticulously constructed by our people in Sinaloa and laundered through at least three respectable banking families. I was now Emilio Ruiz, the only son of a dissolved Spanish noble line, with a taste for esoterica and a rumored knack for chess. The pedigree was believable enough to gain entry to Le Rosey, but generic enough to not attract the wrong kind of attention. Not yet, at least.
We slid into a waiting black Mercedes with diplomatic plates, driven by a man whose face I would never see. As the car left the frozen airstrip and merged onto a winding mountain road, my old self sloughed off like a winter coat. In its place grew the new Emilio—equal parts phantom and prince, primed to touch shoulders with the future titans of the world and ignite a revolution from within their own sanctuaries.
By the time the first rays of dawn crept over the peaks, we were already halfway to Rolle, the village that housed my new alma mater. The entire operation had been orchestrated with the precision of a symphony—each note a transaction, each rest a silence bought with blood or money—and as the mountains receded in the rearview, I realized that we had not only crossed a border, but broken into the next echelon of the game.
When the gates of Le Rosey loomed ahead—old stone, new security, ancient codes of conduct—I felt a thrill more potent than any drug we ever trafficked. I was about to be unleashed, an agent of chaos among the world's most polished children, and every handshake from here on out would be a weapon.
We entered the school as planned, with barely a nod from the guard at the gate, and Aurelio's voice echoed in my ear as he squeezed my shoulder: "This is your proving ground. Make them love you, then make them need you."
My father's words reverberated through my mind, less a memory than a neural command. He had said—no, he had decreed—that to rule hearts and dominate games of power, I must sculpt desire itself. I must make them love me, he warned—make them need to be in my orbit, as though drawn by the gravity of a dying star. This was no simple charisma, no surface charm. It was a calculus of intimacy and distance, of always leaving them wanting but never doubting that I might one day let them closer. His doctrine was simple: when you are the center, the rest must revolve. If you do not burn bright enough, you are consigned to the icy periphery, orbiting someone else's sun.
He had demonstrated this a thousand times—at the dinner table, in the draws of his office, at every party he ever hosted or crashed. My mother, his enemies, even the feeble politicians who tried to snare him with honeyed threats: all flamed out and fell back, unable to withstand the pull of his audacity. I was not simply to imitate him, but to become a perfected echo, the next evolutionary step. It was my assignment, my legacy, and my curse.
Sitting in the back of the Mercedes, watching the frost-laced landscape flicker behind tinted glass, I rehearsed my new identity the way an actor does lines before opening night. Emilio Ruiz—the name tasted foreign, but soon it would be soaked in the sweat and cologne of adolescent intrigue. My father's voice was a metronome ticking insistently: Confidence, always. Vulnerability, never unless it is feigned. Coolness, yes, but let them glimpse the flame beneath. Every gesture was to be calculated, every word a move in an endless chess game. Even my supposed vices—the taste for esoterica, the rumors of late-night chess matches with aging professors, the hint of old-world melancholy—were assets, weapons in a campaign for total social conquest.
He had coached me on the first assault. "Status is the only currency that appreciates overnight," he'd said, staring through me as if already disappointed by my inevitable failure. "You arrive as a myth, never as a man. Myths do not bleed." The lesson was to show up at Le Rosey not as a transfer student, but as an event—an enigma that whispered of scandal and allure, the son of Spanish blue bloods and South American ghosts. I was to let nothing stick, offer no handhold, and in that void, let the others fill in what they most wanted me to be. The leverage would be in their projections, their need to shape me into a figure they could adore or envy or hate. It made no difference; attention was the only altar worth worshipping at.
I considered how I would debut—a calculated scandal, perhaps, or a mysterious absence from the first day of orientation, only to appear at a forbidden midnight gathering, bearing vintage absinthe and stories of exiled aristocrats. Or maybe a chess match against the reigning campus champion, played in the shadowed library under the eyes of the most influential trust fund brats, ending in a stalemate so elegant that it could only be intentional. Each scenario held its appeal, but the common thread was always control. To let them think they had discovered me—while at every turn, I had already decided what they would find.
The closer we drew to the school, the more the instructions mutated into cravings. I wanted the worship. I wanted the envy. I wanted to be the oxygen that filled their lungs and the poison that blackened their teeth. The old Maximilian—awkward, purposeful, painfully sincere—was dead at the border. Here, in this Alpine fortress, every minute would be a new invention.
The Mercedes slowed as we approached the carved stone arches of Le Rosey, morning sunlight already glancing across the manicured lawns and the huddle of students gathering at the path's end. I could feel my pulse slow, a predator's calm overtaking me. This was the first test, and if I failed it, there would be no second. I would not fail; the desire to win was more ancient than fear, and somewhere in my chest, my father's dark heart beat and waited.
I straightened my tie, adjusted the cufflinks of my carefully wrinkled dress shirt, and fixed my face into a mask of amused detachment. The gates opened.
I stepped out into the morning, intent on becoming a phenomenon before the first bell even rang.