SPOILERS!!!
El Zagal is unexpectedly hit where it hurts. One day when he wakes up, he finds himself face to face with Zarro, the foreman who gave him such a hard time on the farm. The others, including Tavira, are there, and he realises that Tavira has betrayed him, and Zarro is the leader of the bank that he hired to fake the robbery. El Junco starts to beat him up, intending to kill him, and then the civil guards arrive and arrest all the smugglers.
Days later Oliver appears because he knows that this is a problem he doesn't need. He greets the men and places a hammer on the floor of the cell and tells them that the man who takes hold of the hammer can do what they want and he will let him go. El Zagal, although showing signs of being illtreated by the others, jumps, takes the hammer and kills the Junco and Tavira, and the others are too scared to oppose him. True to his word, he is allowed to go free.
Rodrigo has been left totally depressed and frustrated, so he decides to leave Jerez. Even though Juana begs him to stay, he has had enough. The train is late, and when he is mid way, he gets a telegram from Juana, telling him that Tana has been attacked. Rodrigo stops his journey and returns to Jerez and finds Tana with the Salcedos. Tana has been beaten black and blue, and she has a deep cut in her cheek. Rodrigo swears that he will fight Oliver. First, he needs to kick his drug habit, and he asks Damian to tie him and for two days even though Rodrigo screams and cries to be allowed free, Damian turns a deaf ear, and he finally manages to overcome his problem.
The trial to the men accused to belong to the Black Hand is to start in June at the same time as the strike that has been called. Rodrigo surprises everyone as he appears as the defence lawyer of Pedro, Paco and Juan Ruiz. During the trial there are many contradictions but it is clear that the judge is against the accused. The evidence shows that there is no Black Hand, but Rodrigo knows that his mission is condemned. He shows evidence that El Blanco de Benahocaz could be alive in Barcelona, but this is not considered. During the trial we learn that el Blanco is living in a commune of nudists, and then he meets someone, Pellut, who he thinks he can set up a business with. He tells his friend his real name, and Pellut is actually the man who Oliver had asked to find el Blanco, and before the latter can know what is happening, Pellut kills and throws him into the sea.
Damian announces that he can't stay for the end of the trial because he needs to sail to America for some business deals. In the port he meets the girl, who once agains is alone. Her venture with Candela finished when Don Ricardo asked the two young women to dance for him. Then he invited them to drink and have a smoke. The two girls ended up unconscious, and the girl woke up to discover that she had been raped, and Ricardo was about to do the same to Candela. It was then that she remembered why she had lost her voice. The year before when she and her family were looking for work, she came to ask a blacksmith in Medina Sidonia for help. The man locked the door, and then to the girl's disgust he kissed and touched her, and the girl felt frozen. Then her brother, El Zagal, saw what was happening, and he burst into the forge and killed the blacksmith in the most cruel way, and that was when the girl lost the voice. This is something that I didn't expect. Now seeing what Ricardo was about to do to her friend, she tried to speak but her voice was rough, so what she did was use the burin that her mother made her have with her, she stuck it into the man's neck and killed him. When Candela came round, the girl told her what had happened, and Candela told her to go and she would stay because her family would come up with a way to conceal the crime.
The girl ends up in El Puerto and meets Damian. She finally tells her name, which is Juana. Damian is good to her, paying for her to sleep in an inn, and then he suggests she come with him to America and that way he can teach her accounts, so that she can be working for him because his own daughter is not very interested in the family business. The day that the ship is about to depart Damian is nowhere to be found, but the girl embarks, thinking that she will find Damian aboard.
Damian has been kidnapped by Oliver, and the same has happened to Rodrigo, and Inés is there as well. Oliver shoots Damian, and the two of them threaten to do something to Juana if he does something that can harm Ines because Rodrigo had the audacity to call her to justify and name three people who knew about the siblings. Rodrigo has to keep quiet about the real reason why Damian died, because he knows htat Juana won't stay put if she knows that her father was killed.
The end of the trial brings a verdict of guilty and seven men are sentenced to death, including the Corbacho brothers. They are sent to hard prisons while there is an appeal, but that new trial brings worse consequences, and Juan Ruiz is also condemned to death.
Leandro meets Delphina in the spa and falls for her. When his mother lies to him and tells him that Jimena is dead, he rushes back to Jerez after proposing to Delphina. On the way there he hears a scream and sees a man tied to a tree, covered in molasses and being attacked by ants. Leandro unties him. It is El Zagal, who was attacked by Zarro again. El Zagal tells Leandro to come with him, and Leandro sees the cruel way in which El Zagal kills Zarro, so he decides to hire him as his stoop and calls him Apache.
Leandro and Delphina marry, and he learns that his sister is not dead but in a convent, but Delphina convinces to let Delphina where she is. Ines is diagnose with cancer, and the day of the executions, Ines dies, but helped by Leandro, suffocating her with a pillow.
The end of the book is very emotional when the seven men walk to their deaths. Juana, who now lives in Madrid with Rodrigo and Tana, is there with her friends, and just as Leandro is about to be killed, Juana, in the crowd, shows him his baby daughter, Petra. That was a moment that really made me cry.
I really loved the book. It has been such a rollercoaster of emotions to learn about this fictionalised account of the past history of my city. I loved the characters, and the evil ones were really horrible.
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