From the pages of the Whiskey Woven Dreams Journal.

The first time Miguel Castillo heard the name, he was bleeding from his side, shivering in the back of a cargo truck. El Tigre de Crico. The name was a joke at first, a cruel little crown the bikers placed on his head, mocking his desperation. A tiger caged by debt, by hunger, by the sick weight of two boys and a daughter who looked too much like her dead mother. It was the cost of their journey north, of a life stolen in the middle of the night when his wife, Camila, was gunned down in Mexico City, another faceless casualty in a war between ghosts and devils. The debt would be repaid in blood and powder.

They brought him into the meth trade, taught him to cook with the kind of precision that made people rich or dead. The desert air was thick with the chemical sting of poison, and the cartel watched him with dead eyes. The Devil whispered in the silence, promising him freedom, power, maybe even peace. But Miguel knew better. The Devil was a liar.

At night, in the belly of a rotting trailer where they let him sleep, he prayed. The words were dry in his mouth, brittle from years of doubt, but he prayed. For his boys, for Elena, for something beyond the flames of his own making.

His daughter, Elena, walked her own valley of death. She was too young, too strong-willed, too much her mother. But debts don't get erased; they get shifted. And in the cruel arithmetic of sin, her body was worth more than his hands. They took her at night, dressed her up, painted her face, and sold her to men who didn't care to ask her name. She learned to pray between customers, whispering in the cold dark of cheap motel rooms, inhaling her own sorrow between lines of meth and bourbon.

She prayed for escape. For her father. For something neither of them had ever really known—mercy.

Miguel's sons, Mateo and Daniel, grew up in the thick of it. Mateo, the elder, resisted at first, wanting to believe in something better. But Daniel, the youngest, thrived in the underworld. He had a sharp mind for deals, a steady hand for a gun, and no fear. Crime was the only thing he was good at, and he had no interest in running. He mocked his father's prayers, saying faith was for the weak. The cartel saw promise in him, and that terrified Miguel more than anything.

One night, Miguel stood before a steel drum, watching the flames eat through a man's bones. A warning from the cartel. A lesson. The man had prayed, too, before the gasoline took him, and Miguel felt something inside him splinter. That night, he knelt in the dirt behind the trailer, hands shaking, bile in his throat.

"Señor... help me."

And for the first time in years, God answered.

The next morning, Miguel told Elena and Mateo to pack. They were leaving. It didn’t matter if the cartel came for them. He would rather die fighting than live another day as the Devil’s chemist. But Daniel refused. "This is my life," he spat. "And I'm good at it."

Miguel pleaded, but Daniel was already lost.

The bikers and cartel came at night, laughing as they dragged Elena from the room. Miguel moved without thinking. A knife in his boot, a rage in his belly. Mateo stood beside him, two against an army, just like Gideon against the Midianites. They fought in the dark, a battle of faith against evil, but they were outnumbered. Then, the gunfire started.

Daniel was in the fray, but not on their side. He shot and fought like the devil himself. But the cartel doesn’t keep loyalty, only debt, and they turned on him. He died in the street, bleeding out with a pistol still in his hand. Miguel saw him fall and knew his son had made his choice.

But Miguel still had one left to make.

He fell to his knees, arms open wide, drawing the fire to himself, a final act of sacrifice. "Dios... en tus manos."

The shots rang out.

And then there was only light.

They found Elena and Mateo two days later, bruised but breathing, their brothers hidden beneath the floorboards of an abandoned shack. The cartel lost interest—too much heat, too many bodies left in the dirt. The church took them in, old women pressing rosaries into their hands, whispering about a man who had died for them, a man who had been reborn in fire.

Elena never stopped praying. Not between customers, not between hits. And now, not between pews, where her voice rose clear and strong in the hush of a Sunday morning.

El Tigre was dead.

But Miguel Castillo was finally free.