I just kicked Atlanta’s most dangerous criminal in the balls.
It works, his hand releasing my throat as he hisses in pain, but instead of collapsing to the ground in helpless agony like he’s supposed to, he stays standing, looming over me, his face twisting into an impossibly terrifying facade of rage.
He growls something in Spanish, and slaps me across the face. No animal instinct saves me this time. Hot pain bursts across my cheek, and I stumble backwards, crying out.
Fuck.
I feel myself beginning to crumble, beginning to wonder if no miracles will be happening today after all. No, maybe things are going to end exactly as they were always meant to. The big bad guy is going to kill the stupid, vapid, weak little princess who was arrogant enough to think she ever stood a chance. And I’m going to die alone, in the dark, and in love with a monster who could never love me back.
All I’ve ever done is try to survive, but no one lives forever.
El Sombrerón grabs me by the front of the shirt, yanking me close, and I set my jaw. I’m going down, I can accept that much, but it sure as hell won’t be without a fight.
His fist pulls back, and the door bursts open.
When the door opens and I see El Sombrerón’s hands on my princesa, I cease being human. I am no longer flesh and bone—I am made entirely of rage, violence, and bloodlust. I am bullets and blades and broken bones. I am the killer that El Sombrerón created, and I’m going to kill him.
My whole life has been leading to this moment.
El Sombrerón is already in motion, grabbing Selina by the arm and pulling her in front of him as a shield. As her arm twists behind her back, it makes a loud crunching sound, and my wife screams in pain.
My guns are out and I’m halfway across the room, but El Sombrerón pulls Selina in closer, making her whimper, and puts a switchblade to her throat. Her face scrunched up in pain, she keeps struggling, a droplet of blood forming where the knife nicks her, then another.
Crimson red.
The color of her lips, the color of her shoes, the color of her death when she bleeds out in my arms.
The color of my fury as I take a shot, directly over my princesa’s left shoulder. I’ve never been much of a marksman, but I am incapable of failure in this moment. Not when Selina’s life is at stake. The bullet brushes El Sombrerón’s ear. The unexpected impact only distracts him for a second, but it’s enough. Selina stomps on his foot, elbows him in the gut with her good arm, and twists out of his grasp in one fluid motion. As soon as she’s out of the way, I fire again, this time hitting him directly in the shoulder. He grunts and the switchblade clatters to the floor, and in my peripheral vision I see Miel wrapping her arms around Selina, pulling her to safety.
It’s almost over. In a moment, this will all be over. My enemy will be dead, and I’ll be free.
I keep my Glock aimed squarely at the twisted figure in front of me, finger on the trigger, but I don’t take the shot. Instead, I take my second gun by the barrel and reach it behind me, to where I know Selina stands.
Her cold fingers brush mine as she takes it.
I’m in love with Selina Palacios, have been since the moment I first laid eyes on her. I see that now, with such blinding clarity that it’s amazing I didn’t see it sooner. I was afraid to, afraid that caving to emotion would only lead to failure. But all along, it was the key to becoming unstoppable.
I’ll give my wife anything she wants, always. Red roses every day, all the diamonds money can buy, a lifetime supply of screaming orgasms. But that’s not what she wants tonight.
What she wants now is the kill.
I take the gun Javier offers me, and the weight doesn’t feel as unfamiliar in my hand as it once did. My palm hugs the grip and my finger slips against the safety with the ease that I once reserved for downing shots of tequila.
Lick, shoot, bite, suck. Grip, support, aim, shoot. The hardest part is the aftermath: the shock, the burn, the recoil. The temporary high, and the knowledge that it will end. Everything has a comedown.
Javier keeps his own gun on El Sombrerón for safe measure, and I approach our mutual enemy. He is still gripping his bloody shoulder, body hunched in pain, but his jaw is set, and his eyes are on me. Hard, hateful eyes. He still thinks he’s untouchable. He still thinks his men will come to his rescue, and for all I know, they might. If I’m going to kill this man, I need to do it fast.
One step closer, two. I spread my feet in the stance Miel taught me, lift the gun to meet El Sombrerón, raise my other hand to support my grip. I have to bite my tongue to keep from exclaiming in pain, but I manage to steel the injured arm, locking my second hand firmly into place.
If you have time, always use both hands. It will look dumb, but you’ll shoot better.
That’s what Miel said, right after she told me I would never survive an encounter with a real monster. And here I am, about to execute one.
Because that’s what this is: an execution.
Atlanta’s anti-violence poster child, with a loaded gun to a man’s head.
My brother died a hero, and I survived long enough to become the villain. If I pull the trigger, if I watch El Sombrerón’s brains splatter against the red sheets behind him, I will be exactly who I spent my life fighting against.
But if there’s anything my mother taught me, it’s that you can’t rely on a white knight to swoop in at the last moment. Prince Charming is never going to save you. At the end of the story, you become the dragon, and you save yourself.
So I pull the trigger, and watch the life leave the eyes of the man responsible for my brother’s death.
It’s not slow, like it was with Max. This time, it’s like pulling a lamp chain. One second El Sombrerón is alive, glaring at me with dark eyes, and his head is jerking back in a bloom of red, and those cruel eyes go still, then hollow. Then his body is falling backward, hitting the foot of the bed and sliding into a crumpled mess on the floor. And he’s dead. The only thing standing between us and freedom, between us and happiness, is gone.
Just like that. It was impossible until it wasn’t.
I can sense the warmth of the dead man’s blood on my face, and see the way the gun in my hand shakes, but my head buzzes with static, and the echo of what I’ve just done is all I can hear, think, feel. Miel comes up behind me, resting a hand on my shoulder, possibly the first time I’ve seen her voluntarily touch someone out of anything other than violence.
“Your first kill,” she says, a bizarre note of pride in her voice.
I turn to face her and Javier, feeling starting to pump through my body again, lead by the shrieking agony in my left arm.
“My last kill,” I correct, holding the pistol out to Miel. She accepts it automatically, a look of confusion crossing her brow, but I think I see quiet understanding in my husband’s gaze. Or maybe all I’m seeing is my own reflection in those dark, ever unreadable eyes.
The body of the man I just murdered is still warm behind me, and the approaching sounds of footsteps and yelling assure me that our battle is far from over, but for possibly the first time in a life spent chasing tranquility, I feel truly at peace.
I righted the sins of my parents. I avenged my brother’s death. I married, and fell in love, in that order. And though it may not seem that way to an outsider, I freed myself. I became someone, if only for a moment. Not who I was born to be, or raised to be, or broken down to, but who I’ve always been. If I die tonight, at least I’ll die happy.
Javier’s eyes meet mine again, and this time I recognize what I see in them. The softness and warmth and intensity that has been blooming inside me despite my best attempts to smother the feeling, now lives in my captor’s eyes, too. He may refuse to acknowledge it, but I don’t need for him to say the words. In this moment, I know that I am loved. The feeling is vicious, and twisted, and undeniable.
Love.
My husband loves me.
And these are our vows: violence, hatred, peace.
Not even death can part us now.
I’m still staring at Selina when the door pushes open, utterly entranced by the emotions playing over her face. My princess was first made of porcelain, then iron, and now… I don’t recognize this new look on her, the stillness in her eyes. Her lips are red, as always, but this time it’s not lipstick that stains her mouth, but blood. This is what I’ve done to Selina Palacios. I took a paper doll and I made her a killer. I took a name on my hit list and I made her my wife.
She and Miel both turn when the door opens, Miel raising both guns. Though my mind is still trying to process the past five minutes, my body is well trained, pulling my own weapons to face the new intruders.
It’s a few men I know, and one I haven’t seen in a long time. Caleb, El Sombrerón’s son. He’s older than I remember, dark circles under his eyes and stubble on his jaw, but that sharp nose is unmistakable. His eyes dart to his father’s body, still flooding the floor with blood. They freeze there for a moment, revealing nothing, before they rise back up to me. His men carry assault rifles, but Caleb appears unarmed. That doesn’t mean he isn’t dangerous, though. We grew up in the same hell, but where I was brought up to be a soldier, Caleb was raised to be king.
And now, with El Sombrerón dead, he is one.
Selina asked me once if I planned on taking the throne, after we killed El Sombrerón. But that was never what I wanted. And judging from the way Caleb’s jaw is working, he might not want it, either.
But not even princes have the power to make their own destiny.
“Fuera,” he says to his men, surprising all of us, except for Selina, who doesn’t understand.
“Pero—” Nick begins, but Caleb cuts him off with a jerk of his head.
“We need to talk,” the new king says to me, looking pointedly at my and Miel’s weapons.
I eye him, his men still hovering halfway inside the room. Under his father’s rule, we would have been ripped apart by bullets already, but Caleb remains composed. I didn’t know him well before he left Atlanta, and I certainly don’t know what kind of man he’s become since. But if my options are to trust him or to get gunned down where we stand, then the choice is easy.
I lower my weapon and nod permission to Miel, who begrudgingly does the same. I tuck mine back into my waistband, but she keeps hers at the ready. There’s a difference between trust and stupidity.
The men leave the room about as willingly as Miel lowered her guns, and Caleb shuts the door behind them. He leans against the cheap wood, closing his eyes and inhaling deeply. I see Miel glance at me, but I don’t let her take the easy shot. In this moment, Caleb Guerrera looks his age: 21, maybe 22. A kid, with a dead father and a criminal enterprise thrust upon him.
“You know there’s no way I can let you leave this place alive, right?” he says, opening his eyes and straightening.
Miel shifts impatiently. I shake my head at her.
“You can do whatever you want,” Selina says, and we all startle a little at her voice. I can hear the pain in it, vibrating through every word despite her obvious efforts to hide it.
Caleb looks at her and lets out a low, humorless chuckle. “Selina Palacios. The woman who caused all this bloodshed. I thought you would be taller.”
“I never asked for any of this,” Selina says, more forcefully this time. “Not any more than you did.”
“It doesn’t matter who started this war,” Caleb replies, pushing his hands into the pockets of his jeans. Miel tightens her grip on the guns. “It ends with us, and it ends now.”
“If you wanted us dead, we wouldn’t be standing here, talking,” I say, redirecting the young man’s attention. “And if we wanted you dead, well, same deal.”
“So what?” Caleb asks. “I just let you walk out of here, so you can keep fucking up my business and killing my men?”
“I only ever wanted your father,” I say evenly. “Now I have no reason to fuck with you and your shit, if you don’t fuck with me and mine.”
We’re all silent for a moment. Monsters like El Sombrerón, their sons don’t mourn their deaths. More often than not, their sons are the ones who kill them.
“So everything just goes back to the way it was?” Caleb asks, eyes narrowed. “You stay out of my way? And Café Palacios keeps transporting our product?”
“No,” I say, before Selina gets a chance to lose her shit. “Café Palacios is out, for good.”
“I can keep you out of my business just as easily by just killing you,” Caleb says. “And that way, I don’t come out looking like a weak bitch.”
He’s right. Taking over his father’s criminal enterprise will be difficult enough without his first action as commander being to let their number one enemy get away with killing a king.
“So what do I get, if I let you live?”
“Your life,” Miel snaps, but Caleb just smirks at that. If we kill him, we die too, and no one wins.
“Names,” Selina says softly. “Your father had half the city in his pocket, but we own the other half. Let us live, and you get them all.”
They all look at me expectantly. Selina can offer a deal, but it’s no good if I don’t co-sign it.
I roll the idea around in my head. Without our contacts, we have no business. But the business was only ever about freeing ourselves from El Sombrerón. We can still stay plenty busy—and plenty rich—just running Café Palacios, even the clean way.
I look at Selina. I don’t know who we’ll be, now that this is all over. What are we, after the fight? What are we, without the blackmail and manipulation and danger? Who am I, a killer without a target? I don’t know yet, but looking into my wife’s eyes, I see what drew me to her in the first place, all those years ago.
Salvation.
As long as we’re together, we’ll figure this out. We’ve made it this far. With her by my side, my life can be about more than just survival.
“Okay,” I say, turning back to Caleb. “You let us walk, and stop coming after us, and we give you everything.”
“How do we know he won’t just kill us as soon as he gets what he wants?” Selina asks, eyes darting between me and Caleb.
“I won’t,” he says, and I know it’s the truth. He won’t get very far in this business if he’s known not to be a man of his word.
I reach my hand out to my enemy’s son, and he clasps it with confidence.
Javier drives us straight to the hospital. He’s mostly concerned about my arm, but I insist he and Miel get looked at too. Miel definitely needs stitches, and probably to have her nose set, and Javier is more cuts and bruises than he is man at this point. I also claim I won’t let doctors touch me until I get an update on Brock’s progress. It’s a testament to how upside down things are, that Javier doesn’t deny me anything. We’re all in shock now, but the past twenty-four hours are about to hit us like a freight train.
It’s over.
It’s really all over.
El Sombrerón is dead. I killed him.
We’re free, all of us.
And now what? We’ve been so singularly focused on this moment for so long, we never stopped to ask what would happen if we actually survived it.
“You know what’s cool about broken bones?” the doctor asks as he checks up on my arm, now reset and in a fairly unfashionable cast. I shake my head in response to his question. I think he must be used to dealing with children; he’s full of all these distracting factoids. “Broken bones grow back stronger.”
Once we’re all patched up, we’re cleared to go home, but Javier pulls some strings to get them to let us stay overnight again. We don’t really have a home to return to, after all. With the privilege of our money, resources, and newfound freedom, I know it won’t be hard for us to figure it out, but it’s nice not to have to solve another problem tonight.
Javier pulls his chair close to my bed, taking my hands in his. I flash back to the first time we were here. It must have been only a few weeks ago, but it feels like a different
life. In many ways, it was. I remember telling Javier that I loved him, and I remember the crushing weight of him walking away. For a moment, new fear washes over me. What if I was wrong? What if he still doesn’t love me, and never will? Is that really something I can live with?
“Last time we were here,” he begins, clearly falling down the same rabbithole, and I tense. “You told me you’d kill El Sombrerón. Well, you did it, princesa. Who’s next on your hit list?”
His voice is light, joking, but I still shake my head somberly. “I meant what I said. I’m done with it—the violence, the killing, all of it.”
“He was a bad man, Selina,” Javier says gently. I’m still not used to this new color on him, but compassion suits him well. “You shouldn’t feel bad about taking a monster like him out. You did everyone in this city a favor.”
“I don’t feel bad about it,” I say quickly. “Or regretful, or guilty, or whatever. I’m glad I killed him. For me, for Max, for Miel. For you. But it’s over now.”
“It is,” Javier echoes, and we sit in silence for a moment. It’s well past midnight now, and aside from the sound of machinery at work and nurses pacing up and down the halls, the floor is mostly quiet. “What comes next?”
“I don’t know,” I say honestly. I look down at my lap, where our hands are intertwined. “Are you going to let me go now?”
“Does it make you feel better, if we keep pretending I’m holding you against your will?”
I shrug. Call it destiny, trauma bonding, or love, it doesn’t really matter anymore. Javier and I belong together. We both know that.
“You can try to run, princesa,” my husband says, brushing those soft lips over my knuckles. “But I’ll always find you. There’s nowhere you can go where I won’t follow you.”
It might sound like a threat to a passerby, but I smile at the truth. The difference between a threat and a promise is just perception. And I know that this is how a man like Javier pledges his eternal love.
Caged: The Complete Trilogy Page 43