by Cara Dee
Carlos eyed the fruit with a sneer.
“I’ll answer anything,” Arturo swore. “I didn’t kill anyone! That was Luis.”
And Carlos.
Darius kept his eyes on him, then decided to clear any suspicion if there was one. He looked at the fruit and bit into it, ignoring how Gray tensed up next to him, and chewed a couple times.
How something so commonplace could be so deadly was poetic. It was sweet like the ripest of apples, with a tart twist of the tropics.
“Nope, you’re right. This one’s bad.” He spat it out and threw away the remains. “This one looks better.” He held out the new apple, close to Carlos’s mouth. And Darius biting into yet another fruit seemed to do the trick. Carlos rolled his eyes and took a bite from it. “Atta boy. The whole thing. Can’t have you interrupting me when I talk.”
Arturo offered no resistance whatsoever and accepted a fruit, chewing around the core.
“Whew. I wasn’t born for this climate.” Under the guise of removing his tee because of the heat, with the shirt pulled over his head, effectively hiding his face, Darius wiped the fruit off his tongue in the fabric. He’d been careful not to swallow anything, but he was still gonna suffer like a motherfucker in a while.
Gray appeared to relax slightly once the T-shirt hit the sand.
Carlos and Arturo were none the wiser and ate obediently.
Darius studied the former. Carlos. Darius wouldn’t peg him as the brain, though he was undoubtedly more calculating. Planning his escape, biding his time, gathering strength through sustenance he didn’t know was gonna kill him.
“Who’s your contact in Florida and Texas?” Darius mentioned both states to make sure he covered all bases. For all he knew, everything could be run from Houston or Dallas. Maybe Galveston.
“We’re just sicarios, man.” Arturo spat out the nut-shaped core and wiped his mouth on his shoulder. “I don’t know nothin’, I swear. I swear on—”
“On your mother, I remember,” Darius drawled. He slid his gaze to Carlos again. “You’re looking to climb the ranks, though, aren’t you? You give off that vibe.” He smirked and tilted his head. “How old are you, forty? You wanna go far in the business, maybe get your own turf one day?”
Carlos was next to spit out the core, and he did so with a glare. “Like he said, we’re just hit men. Our lieutenant barely knows the boss. Outside ring—we’re far away from home, no?”
“Who’s your lieutenant?” It was Gray’s quiet voice that phrased the question.
The two men exchanged a hesitant look.
Darius chose that moment to stick another fruit into Arturo’s mouth. Then Carlos’s too.
“I bet you know at least one guy in the US,” Darius told Carlos. To be honest, the name of the lieutenant was less interesting. They could make up a name, and even if they told the truth, it was nothing Darius could follow up on. “One contact, one affiliate, one name.”
Carlos chewed slowly and said nothing, which said everything Darius needed to know. He was the one with information.
“Even if I knew something,” Carlos bit out, swallowing, “it stops being valuable me the second I say it.”
Arturo finished his last meal quickly and pleaded with Carlos, telling the man to cooperate. “Callate mamón y comienza a cooperar, quiero volver a ver a mi familia.”
Darius almost answered, then thought twice when he saw the hatred in Carlos’s eyes.
“Los voy a despedazar.”
Oh, really.
Darius smirked and told them it was wise they gave him what he wanted, seeing as it was up to Darius whether they lived or not. “Yo decido si les doy piso o no. Es una muy buena razón para darme lo que quiero, no?”
The look on Arturo’s face was golden, shock and regret, but Carlos… Fuck, that was better. His silent seething was a fucking pleasure to watch. No, Carlos wasn’t gonna cut Darius and Gray into little pieces, as he’d vowed, nor would he ever leave this beach.
Darius wasn’t gonna learn anything else this way, so he changed tactics. He picked up one of the guns they’d had on them, aimed it at Arturo’s head, and faced Carlos.
“No, no, no, please!” Arturo began begging, which quickly morphed into a prayer as tears fell down his bloodied cheeks.
Carlos gritted his teeth. “Why do you do this? You can go home. You got away from the trafficking. This is no business of yours!” He got heated, the vein in his forehead protruding. “You’re not going to shoot—”
Darius pulled the trigger.
Ten
Gray sucked in a breath and startled. Carlos’s eyes widened, and he let out a string of curses in Spanish while gawking at his friend’s body. Blood gushed out of the wound in Arturo’s forehead.
Dark brown eyes open.
“An unfortunate accident.” Darius started cleaning off the gun. “I think he ate some bad fruit, and when his throat caught on fire, he begged you to end his life.”
Carlos’s gaze flashed to meet Darius’s, and he swallowed unsteadily. “What—what do you mean, bad fruit?”
Darius took his sweet-ass time to respond, reaching into the plastic bag to collect some leaves. The gun was dropped in the sand in front of Carlos. “Knucklehead, now’s the time if you wanna—” That was all he got out before Gray flew forward and gave Carlos a punch so hard, it shot his head sideways. Carlos fell to the ground with a pained shout, and Gray fisted his shirt and yanked him up on his knees again.
“You’re gonna die. You know that?” Gray’s voice was as quiet and shaky as it was forceful and resolute. “You slit their fucking throats. You shot my friend so he suffocated on his own blood. You sick animal.”
“I-I didn’t shoot,” Carlos coughed. “Luis—ah, madre—fuck.”
Gray gave him a disgusted glare and eased off. “Just kill him.”
“He’s gonna die slowly. Painfully.” Darius squeezed Gray’s hand carefully as he passed. In his other hand, he had half a dozen leaves ready to be used. Partly to make Carlos suffer, partly to be thorough if a forensics team one day examined the bodies.
Gray looked tired. He opted to go help Lee and Fil, so they could make it look like only four people had stayed at the campsite. Carlos and Arturo and their two dead friends, more accurately.
When Darius and Ryan took the kids off this island, it would be as if they’d never been here.
Grabbing a fistful of Carlos’s hair, Darius pulled back his head and exposed his throat and face. “There’s still time if you wanna talk,” Darius told him. He let go and tore the leaves in half, letting Carlos see the milky sap that bled from the edges. “Tell me something I wanna know, and I’ll give you the antidote.”
“Antidote to what?” Carlos spat out, panting. “I don’t know what I ate. You are full of it.”
“I could be.” Darius slowly dragged the wet tips of the leaves across Carlos’s face. “Or…and there we go.” The fucker had just felt the first burn in an open wound. “It gets your attention quick, doesn’t it?”
Carlos hissed and screwed his eyes shut.
The white sap mingled with blood and sweat, and it didn’t take long until a curse became a groan, a groan became a growl.
“Do you have something you wanna say?” Darius wiped another smear of the fluid along Carlos’s cheek, then took a few steps to reach the water. There, he bent down and got rid of the leaves, washed his hands in the calm waves, and scrubbed them against the sand. It was still gonna hurt eventually, though nowhere near as much as Carlos did right now.
Darius didn’t wanna give up on this opportunity, despite that he and Ry had only gathered one name. Alfred. Definitely not a Spanish name, which was all the more reason to believe Carlos knew more than he let on.
For this next part, Darius was gonna sit back in the sand and watch Carlos surrender to the effects of the manchineel fruit. Two pieces had been consumed. One was lethal only in the worst cases, and people had survived eating two as well. But no one said the apples had to kill him
. The pain was going to be plentiful, and then a quick chokehold would take care of the last bit.
Darius leaned back some, his hands hitting the sand behind him, and he tilted his head at Carlos. “Does your mouth feel weird? Any tingling in the lips, maybe?”
A flash of fear flicked past in Carlos’s eyes. “You ate too. You’re fucking with my head.”
Darius’s wordless response was to reach for his discarded T-shirt and unfold it, revealing the piece he’d pushed out of his mouth earlier. His own lips were beginning to feel weird, but he wasn’t sure if it was his head playing tricks.
“What did you give me?” Carlos demanded.
“Doesn’t matter.” Darius crossed his legs at the ankles, wishing he had any smokes left. “I heard you, you know. You and Arturo mentioned an Alfred. Let’s talk about that.”
Anxiety was setting in. Good. Carlos licked his lips worriedly and shifted his weight on his knees. “It’s the only name I know. My lieutenant’s contact in Miami.”
Darius hummed. “Try again.” A lowly contact person didn’t have affiliates in that sense. The way they’d used Alfred’s name last night was…more. More significant. Darius was willing to bet this Alfred person ranked higher.
Perspiration beaded across Carlos’s neck. It trickled down from his hair. Restlessness increased; he struggled to get comfortable, and he wouldn’t stop wetting his bottom lip. The mindfuck was as successful as ever.
“You are not from Miami,” Carlos stated. “No one deals in coke in Florida and doesn’t know Alfred and his wife.”
Now, they were getting somewhere. “Last name?”
“I don’t know!” The panicked reaction offered relief. Carlos was not only telling the truth—or, most likely telling the truth—he was running out of wishful exit strategies. He knew he was in trouble now. “The wife is Korean—I haven’t met her, only heard stories. The son works with the Nevada Gaming Commission in Las Vegas. That is all I know. All of it.”
Jesus fucking Christ, this was big. Cocaine outta Florida, slaves outta Texas, and now Vegas…? There was no reason to believe the son, since he had been mentioned, didn’t play a part. Working at the NGC meant he could, technically, have his hands in a shitload of pockets.
If Carlos genuinely didn’t know the last name of this family, they were either buried deep under fake identities, or they operated in boardrooms where company names mattered more than people. And with a field that wide, Darius ruled out that it was a new organization. It took years to establish these businesses. They knew what they were doing if there were no whispers.
“What can you tell me about the trafficking ring?” Darius asked. Because that was all he needed to know. There was no room in his life for an entire spectrum of bullshit. He wanted to ensure the boys’ safety after this, and that was it. Nothing else. He was gonna go back to his quiet life in Camassia.
“Not much,” Carlos replied, visibly antsy. “It hurts to swallow, man. My skin—it stings.”
“Makes sense. You’ve been poisoned. Go on.”
Carlos let out a labored breath. “Is there an antidote?”
“Aye.” Darius jerked his chin at the plastic bag. “I got you some arrowroot,” he lied. “It’ll help.”
“But you killed Arturo for nothing! Why should I believe you’d let me live?”
“Oh, you’re not gonna live, Carlos. The only thing you still get to decide is whether or not you die painfully.”
Carlos looked stricken, though his anger won out. Such a hot-tempered fellow. He yelled and cursed until he was gagging, his throat slowly closing up. Darius could feel it too, more and more. His hands tingled from the sap of the leaves. His mouth tasted of pepper and dry heat, but it was manageable. Less so for Carlos.
It’d been an hour, maybe. It was just the beginning.
“Please,” Carlos rasped. “You son of a bitch.” Well, those were two confusing messages. Was he gonna go with hatred or pleading? “It’s getting worse.” He coughed, nearly falling forward, and spat out fluid that was tinted red. “W-water.”
His face was swelling slightly.
“Won’t help.” Darius turned his head and spat too. His throat was gonna catch on fire soon as well, hopefully without the swelling and bleeding. He hadn’t ingested any more than the traces that were in his saliva. “Are you gonna tell me something good or not?”
“You—you ate it,” Carlos accused. “You’re in pain.”
“It’s sweet of you to worry about me, but it’ll be heartburn in comparison to what you’re gonna go through.”
“But the antidote,” Carlos growled. “If you have it, you’d use it!”
Darius couldn’t help but grin. “You know what, you’re right about that. You’re sharper than you look.” He tapped the side of his nose. “Good on you, buddy.”
Carlos panted, and the fear was back. “There is no antidote. You lied.”
“I lied,” he confirmed.
Guess he wasn’t gonna get more intel. Thankfully, he had plenty. He’d only have to ask the right people about a man named Alfred with a Korean wife and a son in Vegas. Darius had some strings left to pull, and a couple of them lived in South Florida.
A while later, Carlos lost the ability to swallow past the thickness in his throat, and all his energy went to gasping for air. Tears flooded his eyes, the angry glare ever present, and he swayed in place.
“Dare!”
Darius looked over his shoulder to see Gray jogging down the beach toward him.
“Easy on your leg, knucklehead.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Gray huffed a breath and sat down next to him in the sand. “The camp is ready, but it still looks too big for four people. And we did what you said. We covered parts of the ground with new leaves and sticks and stuff.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Darius replied. “Nature recovers quickly, and we won’t give the authorities any reason to visit this island.” In fact, they were going to be vague about as much as possible, including their location.
Gray nodded in understanding and squinted at Carlos. “Is he in much pain?”
Given that Darius’s own throat felt like he was breathing lava, he’d venture a guess and go with, “Yeah.” He swallowed carefully and wiped perspiration off the back of his neck.
“Good.” Gray scooted a bit closer to Darius. “When you took a bite of that thing, I almost freaked out. You won’t get hurt, will you? I figured you got rid of it in your shirt.”
“I’ll be fine.” Darius slanted him a sideways smile.
Carlos sucked in a breath, close to hyperventilating. Shortly after, he slumped forward with the side of his face pressed against the sand, and he whimpered. Rapid, shallow breaths. Panic in his eyes. He was beyond desperation.
“What’s an Antolak?” Gray asked curiously. Get that name out of your mouth, kid. Darius furrowed his brow at him, and he continued. “Ryan said that word last night when the gunfire started.”
Darius grunted, reluctant. Not to share the story, but the martyrdom mind-set about it. “It’s a name.” He paused to spit again. While he had no issues swallowing, no swelling or internal blisters, it still burned. “When Jake was alive, he lived and breathed the Army. He had these homemade trading cards of soldiers he admired. He and Pop would quiz each other…” Darius dropped his gaze, fingers playing absently in the sand, and thought back on the days before Jake’s first deployment. Back then, he’d been frustrated with his brother. Jake was heading out, and all he and their dad did was reminisce about those goddamn cards. In retrospect, he knew they’d done it as a method of coping.
Pop more so than Jake. His eldest son was going to war, and he hadn’t known how to express his worry. So he’d grabbed a card every now and then, and he’d quizzed Jake. At the dinner table, in front of the TV, before bedtime, in the garage, anywhere they went.
“Before Jake went off to base camp,” he continued, “Pop had asked him to list his five favorite soldiers based on heroism, stupidity, and personal adm
iration.”
“You can’t have a hero who ain’t stupid,” Pop used to say. He still said it sometimes.
“Antolak was one of them.” Darius cleared his throat, wishing like hell he had a tall glass of ice-cold milk. It would ease the burn. “He was a sergeant in World War II who basically made himself a target to save his squadron. He ran straight across an open field for a German nest without cover and took out several men. He was gunned down over and over but always got up.”
“Jesus,” Gray mumbled. “Talk about bravery.”
“Aye, and stupid as shit,” Darius answered. “He did it twice—took out two German strongpoints before he was killed.”
Gray winced and made a face. “I read once that most of those medals—Medal of Honor? They get delivered to the family.”
Darius inclined his head. “That’s how it went for Antolak. Pop told Jake he didn’t want a shiny piece of metal. Don’t be a hero, he might as well have said.”
It seemed to make Gray hesitant to go on, though he did eventually. “Can I ask how Jake died?”
“Ambush in a mountain village.” Anger simmered below the surface. Anger and bitterness. War was always ugly, but civilized countries still followed some conventions. Same couldn’t be said for certain shitholes. “The rebels used children as shields and got the upper hand when Jake and his squad hesitated to fire back. A few seconds was all it took.”
“God,” Gray whispered. He closed the distance and rested his head on Darius’s shoulder. “Did they all die?”
“No. Eight men and one young boy were shot. The day after, they found Santiago—one of Jake’s buddies—trapped in an underground shelter. Jake had barricaded the hatch when he estimated they weren’t gonna make it. The rebels hadn’t seen Santiago, and my brother most likely knew he’d try something stupid if he’d had the chance.”
In the darkest hours, Darius, Ryan, and Pop wondered if Santiago would’ve been able to save Jake and the rest of his squad. A stupid act made a hero. But, in the end, they came to terms with the fact that Jake had been a sharp man with a knack for strategy. He wanted to do good; however, he didn’t act on emotion. He’d calculated the risks, the advantages, and the circumstances before making that decision to block Santiago’s exit.