Cartel B!tch: Almanza Crime Family Duet

by Chelsea Camaron

  Numbness washed over me. I guess it was survival instinct that took over because with blood still running out of my nose, I stood and began to pack a bag.

  Maricio went to his room I assumed to do the same.

  The pain was too much too process, or to think about. I had to keep moving forward.

  Javier Almanza played me. I was the fool. I believed in his lies. I believed in chasing a dream with him. I was not the sky, not so untouchable after all. He touched me, he tainted me. It was all a lie.

  The pain of his betrayal was overwhelming. It hurt more than anything that would physically ever touch me. Pure agony. How could he have done this? How could I be naïve enough to believe in him?

  The day my brother and Javier took their first run for the Silvia Cartel was the day I lost them both. Only I didn’t know it back then.

  I damn sure knew it now.

  I would leave here today with my head held high. I would let Maricio take me to America. From there, I would build my life and one day, one day I would be free from them both.

  More so, I would be free from the Cartel that stole them from me. It would take some time. First, I needed to heal my broken heart. Then step by step, little by little, I would make a plan.

  A plan where I came out on top.

  Chapter Nine

  Javier

  Six Months Later

  “Did you find her, hijo?” My mother asked as soon as I walked in the door.

  “No Mamá, I didn’t fucking find her!” I roared and my mother blanched stepping back. “You would be wise to let this go. You would be even smarter to give me space right now, woman.”

  My mother who stood an even five feet tall stepped up to me. Her gaze locked to mine. My missing eye burned painfully as my body strained to see out of something that was no longer there. Time was not my friend as I continued to heal and adjust to the loss of my eye. It had been months and the pain was still ever present.

  Right this second, it didn’t matter. My mom was hurting and I would be the one to catch her words because I couldn’t deliver her daughter home. “You would be wise to remember who I am, Javier Almanza. You would be smarter to get my hija home! You would be good to know a mother’s love is more powerful than anything.” She lifted her wrinkled hand extending her first finger at me. “You may be strong, you may be feared, but I would go to the ends of the Earth for any of my children. That includes Mari Belle and Maricio. Whatever fight you boys got into you must forgive, hijo. He is your brother. She is your love. We are familia!”

  Her voice was anguish filled. I understood it, but I wasn’t the one to cause it. Six months ago, Miguel Silvia was killed in front of me, leaving Paco in charge. Six months ago, I stepped out into the dry desert sun to ask Maricio an honest question. Six months ago, I lost everything.

  “Maricio, did you know?” I asked him once we were on the outside of the gates. I had to know. I shouldn’t have asked with Maricio being high. Except I felt it. My instincts were screaming at me that I was in danger, that we were in danger. If Maricio wasn’t going to protect our family, I fucking would.

  Maricio turned to me, his eyes twitched from the drugs in his system. “Yeah, I fucking knew and no I didn’t tell you.” He was frank, firm, and fearless.

  “Why the fuck not?” I challenged as his betrayal hit me. We didn’t have secrets. Our family unit was tighter than this Cartel shit, wasn’t it?

  “Because for as bad as you are, Javi, you’re still good. You have this unspoken code. We all know it. We all see it. Paco knew there were lines you wouldn’t cross.”

  “What the fuck did you do?” I questioned knowing there were lines I wouldn’t cross, he was right. For him to say this, what did he do?

  “You never touch the women. Ever.” He smirked. “Sometimes, we had to use the power of a woman in distress. It’s business, Javi.”

  “What the fuck did you do?”

  “Miguel had a sister in Las Cruces.”

  I grabbed his shirt yanking him to me and shaking him. “Why would you say had a sister? What the fuck did you do? Why would you touch his sister?” I wanted to throttle him. He wouldn’t want a single hair on Mari Belle’s head touched so why would he fuck with someone’s sister?

  “I gave her a taste of a bad boy. I gave her a ride. Then while I thrust in and out of that tight cunt, I choked her till she took her last breath as her orgasm hit.”

  This sick fucker was proud.

  “You killed a woman while you fucked her? You took an order from Paco to take out your boss’s sister so of all the ways to do it, you suffocated her while you fucked her? Maricio, do you hear yourself? Drugs, guns, power. We don’t deal in pussy. We don’t use woman as pawns in a game they don’t understand how to play.”

  My words angered him.

  “You never do anything more than the direct order given to you. You kill only on a hit. You push upward but only without stepping over someone. You do it all the right way in a very wrong world. Sometimes, lines had to be crossed and people had to pay the price to give a lesson to the men above us.”

  “Fuck you. Do not make me out to be a pussy or a fuckin’ saint. Do not justify your actions. Why would you take an order from Paco against Miguel? Don’t you see, if Paco could betray Miguel he would just as easily stab you in the back. You want them to fuck with Mari?”

  “Always Mari. Damn, Javi I knew you loved her. I knew you would always look out for her. But my sister has turned you into a pussy whipped mother fucker.”

  He laughed in my face. I couldn’t believe how he saw me. Everything hit me and it was all too much. I swung and my fist connected with his face. He returned the hit.

  Blow after blow we beat on each other in the mid-day heat of the desert. In a flash, I was on the ground, Maricio over me. A flash of metal gleamed before pain sliced through my face.

  “I brought you into this and I can’t take you out of it no matter how much I want you gone they won’t allow it. You’re fuckin’ too good. They all say how you’ll be next to the throne. I won’t let that happen. You take orders and don’t deviate.” He yelled out as he stabbed my face over and over.

  I thrashed around, I tried to fight him off. I was going to kill him. Maricio was gone and the man over me was anything but my family.

  He was my enemy.

  After he stabbed me in the neck, I quickly bled out on the street. It was a blur once the blade came out and pierced my flesh. At some point, I passed out and Maricio took off with my eye no less. I still didn’t know how long I laid there dying, but eventually Aurelio found me. He got me to the hospital where he also donated blood to save my life. Thank fuck we were the same blood type. Never did I think Maricio would be the reason I was so close to death or Aurelio would be the one to save my life.

  Then again, life had a funny way of showing you what was up and what was down sometimes.

  Paco surprisingly showed up to visit and said that this was an isolated incident where Maricio was truly sorry. It was the drugs he said. Of course he would take up for Maricio. He had ordered Maricio to cross a line and abuse a woman. Something we both grew up vowing never to do. Our mother’s gave too much to us as boys when our father’s were gone.

  I could have maybe believed Paco if I hadn’t gone home to find Mari Belle gone. No, Maricio felt the change in power in our organization and took his chance at me. The drugs gave him the balls to attack me and the stupidity to think he would win. This wasn’t something isolated. Maricio took Mari from me knowing it would devastate me. Why she went with him was what I didn’t understand? Maricio wouldn’t have hurt her. Any other woman, yes, but his sister there was no way he would cross that line.

  Paco being the jefe, the bossman, now said he would keep Maricio in America while assuring me I was safe. I didn’t give a shit about what Paco considered safe. In fact, I didn’t care if Maricio drove back here and put a gun to my head. What I wanted, really wanted, was to know where Mari went. Paco made it a point to tell me that
Maricio didn’t take Mari Belle and he didn’t know of her location.

  I didn’t believe it for a single second.

  I felt it. They fucking knew. Paco knew where Maricio was and more importantly where Mari Belle was. Whether he would tell me on his own or I had to force it from him, that was something only time would tell.

  My problem, I couldn’t leave right away. I couldn’t chase after Maricio. The more time that passed, each fucking day, was more distance Maricio could put between Mari and me. It took time for my body to heal, time I didn’t have. Days turned to months with nothing from Mari. And it wasn’t long after Paco lost control of Maricio who took his money from a deal and ran.

  This didn’t surprise me and shouldn’t have surprised Paco like it did. A man who would cross his boss the way both Paco and Miguel had was a man who would stab anyone in the back. A man who would cut the eye from his brother’s face was a man who would do anything he could to achieve his own agenda.

  The only lead I had that could get me to Mari was cold.

  Like the kind of cold that meant someone was dead. Only I couldn’t find anything that said Maricio was dead. Which was good, while it killed me not to find them both, if Maricio was dead it meant I couldn’t kill him myself. And that was my new goal in life, find the man I considered a brother and end his life by my own fucking hands.

  He was a ghost and his sister right along with him.

  I wanted to know where she was. I wanted to know why she left me. I wanted to know she was alive because Maricio couldn’t be trusted. My instincts said she was alive, but was it really true or wishful thinking?

  Paco gave me a wide birth while I was healing. Of course that might have been because the police were crawling all over the hospital until I was released. They asked questions to which I refused any answers. Shit was so fucked up in Juarez they didn’t push. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind, the police knew who I was and who I worked for. To them, the Cartel was handling business. I lost an eye because I deserved it.

  That was an inaccurate assumption, but one most people would make.

  Regardless of the fact I knew who my assailant was, I wanted my vengeance. Therefore, I wasn’t willing to risk the police finding Maricio before me.

  He would pay for what he had done to me. It would take some time, but he would pay and it would be by my hands.

  The tides had shifted inside me. Maricio said I was good. He didn’t like the code I lived by. The very code that once would have kept me from killing him is the code that was keeping his ass alive right now too. Because I believed in a death of honor for someone in the familia. Except Maricio was my family no more. In fact, the code in which I would carry forward was written in blood, my blood, for him.

  An eye for an eye motherfucker.

  He took from me. I would take from him. Only I walked away with my life, he would walk straight to hell by my hand. I put the order out.

  Quietly, but quickly I issued the command, sending the word far and wide.

  No one touched Maricio Dominguez or they answered to me.

  I would be the one to end him. He would know it. I made certain the connections I had would also get the word to Maricio, I was coming for him and I would be coming hard, fast, and unyielding like a freight train.

  I vowed it to myself. I also vowed it to Mari for the time he stole from us. When I found her she would know it.

  “I miss her, hijo.” My mother whispered taking my mind back to the moment. The heartbreak could be heard in every word she spoke.

  I stepped in and pulled my mother against me holding her close. “I know Mamá,” I said softly as she cried.

  How could I tell her Maricio betrayed us all? How could I break her heart even more? Maricio took Mari away while my mother slept in the other room. It has devastated her and it was something I could not take away. There was no way to fix what was my broken inside my mother.

  I never told her what happened to my eye. She didn’t ask. Since it took me a few days to get home from the hospital, I allowed her the freedom to assume I was away on work. Whatever gave her a little bit of peace at night, I would do.

  I mean, really what would it benefit to tell her the boy she loved as her own gouged the eye out of her biological son’s face? I wouldn’t break her heart further with that information.

  Some things were better left unsaid.

  My phone pinged with an alert pulling me away from my mother. The text taunted me.

  He’s in a meeting with Paco.

  Aurelio.

  The man I never expected to have my back came through again.

  Chapter Ten

  Mari Belle

  Absently, I rubbed my swollen belly. This was bad, so very bad. I had no medical care to know if everything was okay inside my belly. Maricio said he couldn’t trust me enough to take me out.

  In fact, I had no idea how far along I was, whether I was having a boy or a girl, or what I would do when the time came to give birth. I was eighteen years old, pregnant, trapped, and alone.

  The little flutters I brushed off in the beginning were now stretches and kicks that told me my body was growing a life. A life that was created in chaos.

  As a little girl I dreamed of being pregnant. Luciana used to laugh when I would put a pillow under my shirt and arch my back. It was something I dreamed of all the time. Playing house was my favorite pretend game to play as a little girl. Javi once found a baby doll in a dumpster. He cleaned it up leaving only a small stain on the doll’s head that he called a birthmark to make me feel better about my trashed baby. I played with that doll for years. I fed it, clothed it anything I could find or sew myself, and even had it on a schedule for naps.

  I was born to be a mom.

  In my mind it was going to be this beautiful thing where my husband held my hand and brushed the hair out of my face as I pushed to bring our baby into the world. I knew the sleepless nights would be hard, but to see the smiling face of my precious baby, I would endure. I would give my husband and our children a house full of love, life, and happy memories. It was all a dream. It was a fantasy.

  I was in no way prepared to be a mom in my current situation.

  I thought I had found this special thing with Javi. I thought we had this strong, enduring kind of love that was unshakable. We had been through so much together. He was always where I found my strength. Javi was always in my corner, my biggest fan, and my team mate. When I struggled in school, he would sit down and study the book beside me until he could help me with my homework. What we had was something bigger than us both. In my heart, the love we had was stronger than the Cartel.

  It wasn’t. There wasn’t a single emotion that would have more power over Javier Almanza than the Silvia Cartel. He was in too deep. Knowing he would trick me the way he did all for his precious organization was unforgivable.

  It was also a reminder of who I was.

  Mari Belle Luisa Dominguez.

  I lived a life on the streets of Juarez. Nothing about me was more important than the dirt on the streets we lived on. I was shit on the shoes of the men in the Cartel and an unknown person to the rest of the world. If I ceased to exist not a single soul would shed a tear. Even Estella wouldn’t miss a beat. That pained me as much as the betrayal from Javi and Maricio. Because the day I needed her to wake up and save me, she slept soundly under Javi’s roof, in a bed he bought her with money from the Cartel. The Cartel he would never reject. She had her comfortable life and wouldn’t give that up to struggle with a girl like me.

  Maricio prided himself that Javi was the one to marry me. To him, it was Javi who turned his back on me. To me, Maricio was just as guilty. After all, he knew of the arrangement and didn’t step up. He didn’t tell Javi not to lead me on. He knew we were together. Maricio watched. He lived in the same house where Javi not once withheld affection from me. The day I turned eighteen it was like Javi was free to have me and went for it. Maricio didn’t stand in his way. How long was it all planned? I had so man
y questions, but none of them were just about Javi alone.

  Everyone in my life failed me.

  The negativity just played on and on and on in my head all day, every day. My only relief was sleep.

  I was alone in a world filled with people.

  I was unlovable, untouchable, and damned for a future of solitude. For I would trust no man again, I would love no man again, and I would never be vulnerable to a man again.

  For I was Mari Belle Luisa Dominguez, Queen of the Damned, Mother to Heartbreak, and Warrior of Loneliness.

  The only person I could believe in was me. The only person who would love me truly, madly, and deeply was me. All the filters were off; the fairytale dreams were shattered. Reality was my new friend and my reality was not looking good. The only person who wouldn’t fail my child was me.

  And no matter the costs, I would survive whatever life threw at me. I would survive for my child. My baby would be what kept me going when I wanted it all to end. He or she deserved the best chance in this world I could give. While my options weren’t prime at the moment, I would get it right no matter what I had to do.

  I shifted in the bed I was shackled to at my wrists. This was the fourth place we had resided in since Maricio took me from Juarez. At the first house Maricio locked the room and I was free to roam the small space. This was when he had me in his Las Cruces home. While there I tried to escape so now I remain tied to the bed no matter where we stay.

  When we were in Las Cruces in the beginning, he seemed comfortable staying there, like this was be our life. The days passed on. I couldn’t keep up with how long I had been here. I also couldn’t understand the changes to my body.

  At first I was sick and thought it was from the trauma of leaving. When my period didn’t come, I again chalked it up to stress even though I knew Javi and I had unprotected sex on a regular basis. For a while I guess I needed to be in denial.