I wish I could say I find myself incapable of falling asleep like this, pressed close against the heart of danger. I wish I could say that when I do, I sleep fitfully, tossing and turning through the night, my body attempting to escape his. The truth is, be it from sheer exhaustion or some other factor I don’t dare give name, I fall asleep instantly, and sleep peacefully through the night for the first time in months.
When I awake, our bodies have come untangled, the embrace leaving behind only one of Vega’s arms thrown across my torso, my bare toes brushing against his taut calf. It’s so casual, so intimate, so domestic, it makes my stomach churn. I try to politely extricate myself from the situation, flashing back to a dozen awkward one night stands that at one point in my life felt like the lowest one could feel. It doesn’t work. Vega is a predator driven by survival instinct. I’m surprised he doesn’t literally sleep with one eye open. He stirs instantly, making me tense even as he pulls away from me.
“You didn’t have any nightmares last night,” he remarks after a moment, not with the cockiness I expected, but genuine pleasant surprise. Almost like he cares. “How do you feel?”
“Fine,” I say, holding back the cruel snap in my throat. I know I owe this man, my husband, nothing, but it still feels rude to come at him with an attitude when he’s being so kind. Even if his kindness comes in the shape of his body lying close to mine at night. Perhaps because of that.
Again, I dress quickly and rush out of my bedroom, eager to escape the tension that now resides there. It’s not until I look up and see Miel in the hallway, eyes shifting to something behind me, that I realize Vega exited right behind me. I freeze, desperately wanting to explain, spit out a thousand useless it’s-not-what-it-looks-likes, but my tongue lies heavy in my mouth. Her eyes dart back and forth between us, but her face reveals nothing about her reaction. I don’t have to wonder what Vega is doing behind me, because he’s already well on his way to the staircase, shoulders loose and casual, as if one moment didn’t just upend the fragile status quo of our bizarre household.
“Get to work, Selina,” he says, not even looking at me. “You too, Miel.”
“Are you out of your goddamn mind?”
I sigh and look up from my laptop, suddenly realizing the benefit of working from the office downtown: Miel can’t barge in with her bullshit there. Today she’s extra pissed, hands so high on her hips it makes her elbows stick out like skinny wings.
“What now, Miel?” I ask, pressing my fingertips against my temples. All this bureaucratic nonsense is giving me a headache.
“You’re fucking Selina,” she spits out, straight to the point as always. I appreciate it. She needs to just say her piece and get out.
“What, you jealous?” I say dryly, and she scoffs humorlessly at the question. We grew up as close as family, and the idea of romantic jealousy between us is a joke, albeit a bad one. I do, however, wonder if she might be jealous for other reasons. After all, Miel has always been my right hand, my partner in everything. Could Selina have told her about our newfound partnership? But no. If they talked at all, Miel would know I’m not fucking my wife.
“This complicates things so much, I can’t even begin with you,” Miel says, hands flying off her hips and shooting into the air. When foul language doesn’t suffice, Miel’s next go-to is to talk with her hands. “You swore to me over and over this wasn’t personal. You swore that marrying her was purely business. Now you’re spending nights together? That’s pretty fucking personal.”
I slam my laptop shut, wincing at the razor of pain that shoots through my head at the sound.
“It’s not, and it’s also none of your business,” I growl, wondering if Miel and I have ever had a conversation in this room that wasn’t a screaming match.
“It is if it jeopardizes our plan,” Miel says, low and serious. I pause. What she’s asking is if my new relationship will jeopardize her place in my plan. But I can’t address that, because to show I care about her future freedom at all would betray my weaknesses, and to acknowledge her unspoken fear would betray hers. That’s family, right? A constant calculation, every conversation a minefield.
“It won’t,” I say, a little bit gentler, but not pitying. “You’re the one who said we should give Selina a chance to work with us, not against us. If anything, getting close to her will strengthen us. And hey, if that doesn’t work, well, I’ll let you break one of her kneecaps.”
I’d never let anyone touch my precious princess’s perfect knees, of course, but I’m hoping Miel will take the macabre joke as a dark peace offering. I force a grin, but the woman doesn’t crack a smile. “So it’s true? Y’all are… getting close?”
“Come one, you know she hates me,” I say in response, keeping the light smile on my face. I don’t feel like arguing anymore. “Listen, I have shit to do and you do too. Can we please fucking move on?”
“I’m still not happy about it,” Miel says in acquiescence, after a moment of consideration. “Things get messy when people get too ‘close.’”
She makes exaggerated air quotes around the final word, as if there was any way I could misinterpret her tone, but I don’t reply, letting her see herself out. Messy doesn’t even begin to cover it.
So Miel is pissed at me. What else is new? I don’t have time for her petty sulking. Ever since I told her that I’d married Selina, she thinks that a point has been proven about my so-called obsession that she’s been hammering on about since we first got here. If she knew the truth about it, I don’t think the word obsession would be quite heavy enough to cover it. But she will never know the secret that drew me to the Palacios estate in the first place. No one ever will.
After my conversation-turned-argument with Miel, I head to the office downtown, H in tow. The big man is silent the whole drive down from Johns Creek, which I especially appreciate today. When we get to Café Palacios, I ask Annie for a black coffee and some aspirin, and then settle down to work.
“Show me what you’ve got,” I say to Hernando, both of us giving the receptionist polite smiles as she drops off our coffee.
“There are three agencies in Atlanta that check all your boxes,” the man says, opening a new screen on his tablet and spinning it toward me. He rubs his hand over his buzzed hair as I scroll through the first private security agency’s website. “And four more in the surrounding area, should it come to that. It’ll cost extra to get them out here, but, you know.”
Money is no object, not anymore. It’s a phrase that will never fit quite right in my mouth, but it’s true. I tab over to the next site, scroll down through the somber list of services. Now that we’re about to incite a full-out war with our enemy, we’re going to need more guns, as many as we can get. And while I wish I could grow a team solely driven by motivations more bulletproof than money, that’s not possible, not in the time frame we’re looking at. So, hired guns it is.
“Contact the first three,” I tell H, shutting the tablet off and handing it back to him. “Make sure they know we have our own vetting process every damn person on staff will have to go through before we sign any contracts. Where are we with the cops?”
“The Chief knows what’s expected of him,” H confirms. “He’s sending the first patrol up to the estate tonight.”
I take a sip of my coffee. Thanks to another well-placed tip from Isla del Rey, we’ve now got the APD firmly under our thumb. The forced relationship is mutually beneficial, though. They provide backup, and additional protection for Selina, and we eventually lead them to El Sombrerón. Or rather, he leads himself to them, when he inevitably comes for us.
“Fantastic,” I say, setting my mug down. “So all that’s left to discuss is—"
From the street outside, there’s the loud rev of an engine, then two loud, quick gunshots. I’m running down the hallway before the sound is even done echoing, bursting through the lobby doors with my own gun already drawn, squinting into the midday sun.
There’s nothing, no one. Just the hapha
zard pounding of my heart in my ears, and a few panicked looks from pedestrians.
“It’s just a drill,” Hernando is saying to them in a stiff and unconvincing voice, as he gently nudges the arm holding my gun back down. “No need for alarm.”
I quickly tuck my gun back into my waistband, but keep my fingers ready to draw it again as I check the street for the hundredth time. It’s still peaceful, or as peaceful as downtown gets. I play the sound I heard back in my mind, and recognize it for what it was. A vehicle backfiring, something that I should have easily been able to distinguish from gunshots. I run my hand through my hair and resist the urge to growl in frustration. Hernando has seen enough as is. Despite the coffee I’ve been chugging, I’m running on fumes, a state that seems to have made me extra paranoid.
The truth is, I couldn’t sleep last night, not after Selina’s prying question. Her interpretation of love is naive and fantastical at best. Visions of the word being whispered like a prayer as blood stained my light-up Iron Man sneakers kept me up long after my princesa’s breathing slowed beside me. If that’s what love is, I want no part of it, and neither should she. I try to let that thought make me feel better about the fact that I’ve stolen my wife’s last chance at the emotion. It doesn’t work.
“Let’s get back to work,” I growl at H, swallowing the urge to punch a wall, and turn back into the office building.
That night, I once again find myself making my way to the master bedroom, Selina’s bedroom. Our bedroom. That first night, I didn’t intend to become a permanent fixture in her bed. I only wanted to quiet her for the night. But it did quiet her, and now I can’t imagine myself being able to sleep in my own bed when she could be tossing and turning, sleepless in hers. I would be there for her even if she insisted she didn’t want me there, which she did, the first night. But even she can’t deny the way my arms around her quell the demons that haunt her by night.
Just like last night, she’s already tucked into bed when I enter the room, her dark hair fanned against the creamy pillowcase. Her eyes are closed, long lashes pressed tight against her golden skin, but I know she’s not asleep. I can tell by the erratic rise and fall of her chest. I strip down to my boxers and lower myself onto the California King, relishing the way her breathing speeds up when she feels my body join hers. I still excite in exciting my young wife, though I don’t expect anything to come of these nights, not yet. I intend to comfort her, not to further traumatize her by forcing something she’s not ready for. But if one night she wants to pull me closer, well, so be it. I know by the way she keeps wearing those flimsy nighties and by the way her pupils dilate when she looks at me that whether she wants to admit it to herself or not, she wants these nights to escalate as much as I do. The malest parts of me hope that time comes sooner rather than later.
“I’m going to do it soon,” I tell her, and her eyes snap open, though her gaze remains stubbornly on the ceiling. “Cut off his supply.”
A month ago, I wouldn’t have told her that much, wouldn’t have trusted her with even a tidbit of my plans. A month ago, we wouldn’t have been in bed together, at least not with so many clothes on and so much less vitriol between us. But I promised her a partnership, and though she knows as well as I do that I’ll never fully pull through on that promise, I can at least try.
“Why haven’t you done it yet?” she asks, voice barely above a whisper.
I consider her question. I don’t want to tell her the truth, the fact of how much danger we’ll be in as soon as we strike our enemy so close to his greedy heart. I don’t want her to know that no matter how long I spend planning and putting new protective measures into place, there’s still a fairly large chance we all end up dead at his hand.
“Things like this take time,” is all I tell her in the end, and it’s not untrue.
She accepts my answer, still lying perfectly frozen on the far end of the bed. I think that this is the end of our conversation for the night, prepare myself for sleep, but then she speaks again. “Tell me about El Sombrerón.”
I don’t know why I didn’t expect this. I thought that the information she’d uncovered at the police station against my will would have given her everything she needed to know. I don’t want to answer this question for the same reason I didn’t want to answer her last one. If she knew the truth, if she knew the things that I know about our new common enemy, she’d never sleep again. This is a man that has no lines, no limits. He will do whatever it takes to keep his kingdom, and he doesn’t give a shit how many innocent lives he takes along the way. He took me and Miel when we were children, and while he hasn’t killed us yet, our lives were inarguably stolen that day. He wouldn’t hesitate to add a pretty heiress like Selina to his collection of trophies, and once he knows how much she means to me, well, death won’t be enough for her, either.
“It’s a legend,” I begin, sensing her tense beside me. “Latin American, and it differs slightly country to country. But the one I know, the one my parents told me, goes like this. He’s a short man, like a dwarf—that’s why some versions call him el duende—who wears all black clothing and a giant black hat, big enough to obscure his face completely.” I feel the mark on my forearm begin to burn, the one long stripe and two shorter ones still as hot and painful as the first day they were forced onto me. “He likes young girls with long hair and big eyes. When he finds one, he marks her home by braiding the tails and manes of the family’s horses, then he’ll stand outside her house serenading her with songs on his silver guitar, and turning her food to dirt. She’s unable to eat or sleep, until it drives her crazy and into his arms, or finally ki—”
“My father told me those stories, too,” Selina cuts me off, turning to face me. For a moment, I’m paralyzed by her features, stuck in the childish, unsettled feeling that retelling the myth always brings me. Long dark hair, big hazelnut eyes. Just like he likes. “You know that’s not what I meant.”
“I know,” is all I say, turning my face away from her. I feel her eyes stay on me for a minute longer, before she turns her own gaze back to the ceiling. “I know.”
I want to pull her close to me and lock her into my embrace, as much for her own comfort as to reassure myself that she’s here, solid and still securely in the relative safety of my arms. But I don’t, feeling the danger looming in the room as physically as if the legendary creature himself was lying in the bed between us.
The silence stretches out for five, ten minutes, neither of us speaking, neither of us moving. Then, she speaks again.
“Do you,” she begins, then clears her throat nervously and tries again. “Do you think you’ll ever… Do you want kids?”
It might seem like a non sequitur, but it’s not. She’s asking if I’ll ever force children into her life the way I forced myself. Asking if I expect her to raise children in this world I’ve pushed her into against her will, a world with threats so terrifying I can’t even make myself tell her about them. I try not to let my breathing go uneven, try not to give her any answer through my body language. The truth is, the thought hadn’t occurred to me until now. In my world, children are never a choice, rather an inopportune problem to be dealt with, one way or another. As long as I’m still part of that world, a world of danger and men who name themselves after mythical boogey men and are twice as deadly, I’m not sure I’d want to create a child forced to live in that same nightmare. But in another world, a world where Selina and I are happy, where there are no more threats left to our lives, a world where our child could be anything they wanted, not just a product of circumstance like we are, well, that would be another question. And it might be a fantasy all together.
“That’s enough for tonight, princesa,” I say, instead of answering her, denying her what she so desperately wants to know about her own body. “No more questions.”
The next night, I’m ready with my question. It’s as if I’ve fallen into my own version of 1001 Arabian nights, where every night all I get is one question to wedge between my
self and the impending intimacy with my new husband, an intimacy I want as desperately to fight as I want to give in to. Fighting is exhausting, especially when I know I’ll never win. But it’s in my nature to bite back, and I can’t quench the desperate urge to lash out at the man who seems intent on destroying me even as he swears he’s only trying to help me. For now, I settle on the weapon of lines of inquiry I know make him uncomfortable.
“How did you and Miel get involved with El Sombrerón?”
He pauses for a moment, even longer than he did when I asked him about the mythical kingpin last night.
“Well, my parents died when I was nine years old,” he begins.
I already know that. He doesn’t know that I already know that. I saw the police reports, the half-assed theories that were so quickly abandoned to chase after higher profile cases. His parents didn’t die like mine did, quietly and quickly, in an accident that could’ve claimed anyone and left no one to blame. His father beat his mother to death, and then died in a street stabbing shortly after. What kind of man does that make my husband?
“This woman down the street took me in. Miel’s aunt.”
So he’s not going to tell me more about his parents. That’s fair. It makes me shift nervously, to be in possession of such personal information when he clearly doesn’t want me to have it.
“We would have ended up running with El Sombrerón even if we hadn’t been orphaned,” Vega says with a shrug, as if he’s not talking about children being forced to engage in highly dangerous, fucked up activities. “It was just faster this way.”
“Why did you have to do it at all?” I ask, and as soon as I voice it I know it’s a stupid question, but I truly don’t understand.
Vega just gives a quiet, bitter little chuckle. My face burns a bit. I knew I shouldn’t have asked that, but it’s too late to take it back.
Caged: The Complete Trilogy Page 20