“Well, my lovely daughter,” my mother continues. “There’s still some hope for you. Just tell me everything, and maybe we’ll let this one slip. Your hard work throughout the years has bought you some good will from the boss.”
“I don’t know—”
She slaps me again, this time so hard that I feel the chair rocking back on its hind legs.
“Oh, cut the bullshit, will you? After the visit I paid you in the hotel, I got an interesting piece of information. Want to know what it is? Well, apparently you and Mr. Teague have already produced a batch of coke squared. Funny how you forgot to tell that to the boss, isn’t it?”
“What do you want from me?”
“I want you to give me everything you have. Tell me where the formula is. Tell me where that batch of cocaine is stored. Give me that, and you might just walk…” Reaching behind her, she grabs a knife she had tucked on her skirt and closes in on me. She uses it to cut my blouse, and then presses the blade against my skin, using it to trace a line that goes from my neck to my stomach. Blood starts pouring out from the cuts and, even though I know these are superficial wounds, she’s just getting started.
“Spit it out, Eliza, or it’s just going to get worse,” she hisses, not a trace of the woman I thought I knew in her voice. She’s not even a woman. No, standing in front of me is a monster.
“Fuck you. If you want to torture me, go right ahead and do it. Just shut the fuck up already, will you? You’re as annoying as I remember you,” I throw back at her, rage welling up inside of me. I might be going down, but I sure as fuck won’t go gentle into that long night.
If I have to go, I’ll go kicking and screaming.
“Very well, you petulant child,” she growls, raising the knife up in the air and burying the blade on my leg. I let out a wild scream as pain spreads all over my body, and the room starts spinning around me once more. “If this is what you want, this is what you’re going to get...but I assure you, I’ll get what I’m after, one way or the other. And when I’m done, I’ll just hand you back to Cabeza Dios…Caroline will delight in having you as a whore in her stable. You’re fresh and young, she’ll make sure you’re pounded for all your worth. And that’s all you’ll be worth after this.”
Gritting my teeth, I let pain wash over me as she works her knife on my body. Cutting, dragging it along my skin, draining me of blood. I drift in and out of consciousness and, even though she hits me repeatedly, screaming at me to tell her everything, I still have enough strength in me to offer her a grin and give her a piece of what’s on my mind.
“Fuck you.”
“I’ll cut your vocal cords, swear to God I will,” she threatens me, pushing the blade up against my neck. “I went to a surgical store just for that, so you can take all the cartel dick you can handle and more, you little bitch, and you won’t even be able to scream.”
“Then just do it already.”
“Oh, I will, Eliza. Believe me,” she says.
She starts pressing the blade against my skin, and I close my eyes.
This is it.
I defied the cartel. I tried to do things my way.
And this is the price I’ll have to pay.
But I don’t mind.
Because no price is too high when you love someone. And I love Grayson Teague. If for that I’ll have to pay with my life, then so be it. That’s a price I’ll gladly pay.
“Goodbye, Eliza,” I hear my mother whisper. “This is the end of the road for—”
The loud sound of gunfire drowns her finals words, and my eyes open in an instant, right in time to see Grayson storm inside the room, gun held high. He shoots my mother’s goon, hitting him right in the middle of his forehead before he has the time to make a move, and then he points at my mother.
He doesn’t even tell her to drop the knife.
He just lowers his gun slightly and shoots her in the leg. She drops to the ground, screaming and thrashing around.
“ELIZA!” Grayson shouts, and I offer him a smile as I feel about to pass out, consciousness slipping through my fingers again.
“You...you came for me…”
He unties the knots binding, and pulls me against his chest, holding me close.
“I’ll always come, Eliza. Always.”
Twenty-Five
Eliza
It seems too good to be true.
“Can’t take my eyes off of you,” I sing out weakly at the blessed sight of Grayson Teague.
He laughs nervously scooping me up in his arms.
I’m weak. But I can’t help but keep singing. It’s this warped up thing where I don’t have to be lucid to be happy to see him? I part my lips, caked in blood. “You’d be like heaven to touch…” I start to cough, blood spilling out of my mouth at an uneven pace. I want to choke it all up, but I am also missing out on my song.
“I wanna hold you so much,” Grayson finishes. “That’s what you’re doing? Woman, you’re fucking crazy, strong as hell, but fucking crazy,” he says, pulling me tight against him. I groan and I can tell when he lets go a little, he doesn’t want to.
Grayson puts me down, and I didn’t realize he’d picked me up. My head is woozy. My body’s aching.
But I rise, because I have to kill that bitch, my mother.
I lunge toward her, hearing her cackle. That cold look in her eyes, it’s harsh. It says, I liked torturing you and I want to fucking do it again.
But she won’t.
She’ll never do another thing, ever again.
Grayson pins me down and I watch him crack her neck, just turn it to the side like child’s play, like it was nothing.
She’s fucking dead.
In one goddamn blindingly fast second, Grayson’s got me down, and her body’s hitting the ground.
“How could you!” I shout. “How fucking could you? She was my goddamn kill. That bitch killed my father.” I jump up and I’m so dizzy I start to fall over.
He catches me.
He’s saying things, half starts and mumbles.
This wasn’t he kind of kill he stages for Bonita Muerte. This wasn’t even an I Want To Feel You Suffer kill. It was a quick killing, leaving me thinking, what the fuck just happened?
I’m thinking about what it means.
In some strange, sick way that I totally understand, Grayson was doing this for me in the most selfless way possible.
I get that. But I’m having a hard as fuck time dialing back the rage within me that wanted vengeance against my mother, justice for my father.
That was a girl who until very recently mourned her mother.
It makes me want to fucking hurl, well, that, and the recent torture both have me ready to throw up.
Everything around me seems blurry. I’m off-kilter. Weak.
Finally I realize that Grayson is actually talking to me.
He’s shouting now, desperate to break through my reverie, and now, he’s successful. I’m over my little bitch fit. I’m glad I didn’t kill my own mother, if I’m honest. I would have done it. But I am glad I didn’t have to. I still taste in the air what happened to my father, so I’m glad she’s dead.
But not killing her freed me of some demon within me I didn’t know I was summoning, and now I can hear Grayson Teague, the only person in the world to me in an instant.
“Baby!” Grayson yells and the stern sound of his voice makes me pause and stop to really listen to him. “I couldn’t let you kill your mother. I know if ever there was a woman who can take care of herself, it’s you. I know you think darkness has consumed you. But I also know that you’re still a heart full of need and love. This was something you didn’t need to do. You don’t need vengeance, you need freedom and love, Eliza, and it isn’t goddamn fair how bad you’ve been hurt and I’m sorry but I am doing whatever the fuck I can to take care of you. You’re mine.”
Whoa.
Everything he’s said starts to sink in. I know that all our dreams about endless shoes. Endless paradise. They kin
d of don’t seem so far away. Sure, they’re hard fought to be earned, but at the same time, they’re fucking possible.
But I look at him and I know he’s worried.
Grayson stops because he knows he’s said so much…I can tell by the look on his face, he thinks he’s said too much.
But he hasn’t. He fucking hasn’t. How can anyone know me so well that they know that I couldn’t have done this? I couldn’t have killed my mother. No matter what has happened, this would have turned me into her, and I see, because Grayson sees, I’m not like her. I am fucking better.
And with him to protect me, I know that I’m okay.
Eliza fucking Lang needs no man to protect her. That hasn’t changed. But I want him. I need him. I fucking love him, even if I can’t tell him.
I grab him, jump on top of him, straddle him, even though I’m weak. He kisses me but maneuvers me into his arms, holding me. When I press my head against his chest I realize just how dizzy I really am. I need to take a break, I need to let him take care of me right now. Things go black and I realize I’m passing out…did I tell him I love him?
Did I hold him?
Does he know that I trust him? That my heart is protected with him and I know it?
I can’t trust him.
Don’t, my brain tells me.
But my heart trusts him.
“I love you, too, Eliza,” I hear Grayson say.
Fuck.
I love Grayson Teague. I fade out and my head is swimming with images of my burning father, my laughing mother, little children with skull-covered arms, of Juan with a dick hanging out of his throat (even though that didn’t happen) and with the piles of bodies I’ve seen the cartels pile up.
Hanging from bridges, attached to street signs, staged for cops and passerby to get the message as much as those who gain the ire of the cartels.
Every horror in front of me, there, in my half-dream state. But you know what?
I’m not afraid.
Because in reality, Grayson is holding me. He’s bathing me. He’s getting a doctor to look at my wounds, but he’s taking care of me every step of the way.
And in the hazy, half out of it and then hopped up on painkillers side, Grayson Teague and I are the king and queen of the underworld. Everywhere the blood touches is our kingdom, every suffering that happens is because we set it in motion. We are the cartel, not the bitches of the cartels that think that they own us. We’re free.
We’re fighting, but we’re free.
All it takes is life-threatening injuries and a little bit of torture from your mother to get you to tell the man of your dreams—no matter how much he’s your most inappropriate suitor of all time -- that you love him. To see a future with him as a reality.
But what also fucking helps is the way he never lets me out of his sight. How he holds me. How he tells me about a thousand times that he loves me. Grayson recites it like a prayer, and I hold onto it as I come back into reality, stronger and better.
A weakness within me died, and a strength was born. If I’d killed my mother, the darkness would have controlled me.
But I control my darkness. I harness it. I use it. It makes me strong instead of me being strong armed by it.
It makes me goddamn invincible. Grayson and I could go up against the Bonita Muerte and Cabeza Dios. Up against any motherfucker who crossed us.
This is the man who calls mobsters cocksuckers by way of hello.
That begs me to go out for a drink with eyes that have never seen any warmth in their life but those eyes are so warm towards me.
That brings water to my lips so slowly and tenderly to nurse me back to health.
He’s the love of my life, and you better fucking believe I’m a ride or die kinda girl.
I’m a crazy girl, but I’m no fool. She knows my soulmate when she sees him. Grayson Teague is my soulmate.
Twenty-Six
Grayson
Eliza’s back in better health now.
Eliza loves me.
So these two things together start my brain spinning wheels in every direction until I get a suspicion that needs confirming.
I don’t think anyone higher up in either cartel, other than Eliza’s mother, knew we’d finished the batch of coke squared.
This is important because it can give us the most valuable asset of all. Time.
Time to get a plan together. To make a move. To have some loyalties in our favor before, should we decide to go through with a plan we both want, so that we aren’t immediately open season for every cartel.
We could stand a fighting chance to get away with the best product that anyone has ever seen. Eliza and I have the skills. We may even have the connections, if we have lead time.
“Call your boss,” I tell Eliza. “Tell him you have an update. Let me call mine first…” I can tell Eliza is wondering if I’m saying what she thinks I’m saying.
I fucking am, baby.
This could be our game. We just have to trust each other. I know Eliza will only admit to me or herself that she could when she’s on painkillers, now, but maybe given this opportunity, it will break through some of her barriers, and she’ll see that we’re worth fighting for, not just for fighting each other.
“Zario. Yeah. It’s me,” I say when he picks up on the second ring. Fuck, he wants his shit ASAP and that’s so not what he’s fucking getting from me. “Just wanted to update you. I think I need three more days and I’ll have the final piece. Some particularly wily fucks to hunt down,” I say.
This is a fucking risk. If he did know that I prepared a batch of coke squared, he’d be ready to end me.
The next me would have to come and fucking murder me.
“Okay, son, you got this. Knock ‘em dead. Let me know if anything changes,” Zario says.
I listened very fucking closely to that warped soccer dad little message I just got from him. I know when Zario’s lying.
“Yeah.”
I hang up.
“He doesn’t know shit,” I tell Eliza. “Zario doesn’t know shit about us finishing the batch or having everything for it. And I’m betting neither does anyone on your end.”
Eliza’s eyes are as wide as fucking footballs right now and she’s smiling so damn big, it does something to me. I can’t help but wrap her up in my arms.
“Call your boss?” I ask her.
“I will,” she says. “This means...” she starts to ask, but she doesn’t wait for me to answer or to finish her sentence as she’s already dialing. Her little head tucks into my neck and she has the same conversation with Lorenzo Quentin.
When she hangs up, she kisses me. Kisses me for a long time, and not only does it feel like it will never end, I don’t want it to.
“He didn’t mention my mom,” she says. “And he sounds like he doesn’t know anything. Most likely he’s waiting for her to check in when she’s able. So we might have some cover.”
Right now, in this moment, everything can be perfect. More than anything, I never want it to end.
Because from this moment out, we’re at war.
I can live with war. I know I can. I was born, bred, and made for it.
But that’s the thing about falling in love. You don’t want the sweet moments, the good moments, the slices of how perfect life can be, to ever end.
“I love you, Eliza,” I tell her again.
And this time?
“I love you so much, Grayson.”
Twenty-Seven
Eliza
“So?”
Sitting on the edge of the bed, I stare at Grayson.
He’s out on the balcony of our bedroom, cigarette in one hand and cell phone on the other. As he turns around to look at me, he flicks the butt of his cigarette out and returns inside.
“This isn’t good,” he sighs, running one hand through is hair. “My contact has just told me that Zario has found out about the batch we’ve produced. He knows. The time we had left...it’s gone.”
“Shit.
” Throwing myself back, I stare at the ceiling as the clock mounted on the wall ticks away the seconds. “And with my own cartel looking for us…”
“Yeah,” is all Grayson says.
Just a few hours ago, Rafe risked his life and called to give me a heads-up: right before my mother captured me, she informed the higher-ups about what I was doing. Which means they know everything about the batch we’ve produced. From there, they connected the dots and figured out our plan.
That’s when we look at each other.
Both of our bosses pretended on the phone with us that they didn’t know anything.
They lied.
They didn’t want to tip us off. They wanted us to get comfortable.
Which means they’re planning something.
Which further means that we’re truly fucked now.
“They still haven’t located the batch, or the formula.” Sitting next to me, Grayson lays one of his hands on top of mine, squeezing it gently. “We cleaned up good. It’ll still take them some time to find the warehouse.”
Just like Grayson said, we cleaned up good—which, of course, translates as Grayson putting a bullet in the head of every single man that worked in our crew. It felt awful to watch him do it, but there was no other way around it. We couldn’t risk it. Everyone was a potential leak, and there’s no way we’d be able to contain the news from spreading. After all, as much as those men respected us as leaders, their loyalties lay with the cartel.
And only fools would betray the cartels.
Fools like Grayson and I.
The only man we left alive was Rafe. Good ol’ Rafe, faithful to the end. I just hope the cartel doesn’t turn on him. I don’t know if I’d ever be able to shoulder the guilt. Gritting my teeth, I make a promise to myself—if we survive this, I’m taking Rafe with us. I can count on him, and his loyalty is unquestionable. More than that, he has a lot of experience under his belt that we can use to mount our operation.
Don't Trust Him: An Enemies to Lovers Romantic Suspense (King Vs. Queen Book 1) Page 11