by Karina Halle
He placed a large envelope down on the desk. “Got the email from Martin just a few minutes ago and had these printed out for you.”
I stared at the envelope for a beat before laying my fingers on it and sliding it toward me. A quiver of anticipation ran up my arms and I did my best to quell it.
“I didn’t respond,” Este went on. “He mentioned that the location of the wedding changed at the last minute yesterday, but he was still able to get everything done. I printed out the email. It’s in there too.”
I nodded and slowly opened the flap.
“Should I get anything more from him?”
I shook my head and slid the papers out of the envelope and onto the desk. “No, it doesn’t matter. Martin is dead.”
I glanced up to see Este staring at me with a stunned expression. “So soon?”
“Yes,” I said absently, looking back to the paper in my hands. I skimmed the printed out email.
“What a shame, I liked the guy.”
“I didn’t,” I said. “But he got the job done and that’s all that matters.”
“Kind of like the whores.”
I pursed my lips. “Mmmm,” I conceded. From the email, Martin had done the job well. He had observed Salvador Reyes and his bride from a few days before the wedding and gotten photographs during the ceremony. “But killing women is always so ugly, isn’t it?”
“You see,” Este said, crossing his arms, “right there, that sort of shit surprises me. You know, considering your issues with women and all that.”
I shot him a piercing look. “I don’t have issues.”
“No,” he said slowly with an easy smile on his lips, knowing all too much. “Of course not.”
It was those moments that I hated Esteban Mendoza. Hated that he was my right hand man, hated that he was the closest person to me, even though that never amounted to much. I hated that it would hurt me so to kill him.
“Martin would have talked,” I said to him. “Much like the whores. He did well. Don’t worry, his wife and children will be taken care of.”
Este raised his brows.
“With money,” I supplied quickly. “They will be fine without their father, who was stupid enough to get involved with us to begin with. I’m not cruel.”
“Well, you’re not shooting whores,” he said. “And I’m not worried. You know I rarely worry about you.”
“How touching,” I said wryly.
He walked around the desk and stood behind me, looking over my shoulder. I hated when he did that. “I’m interested in what you think,” he said.
“About what?”
“About her,” he said while I slid a photograph out of the pile. “Mrs. Reyes.”
It was black and white and printed on paper, making it less sharp than a photograph, but it did the job. It was a picture of a woman in a white strapless wedding dress, very fluffy and extravagant from the waist down. Her hands were clasped demurely at her front, her face caught in a nervous smile.
She was extremely beautiful but that was to be expected. The country’s most flagrant excuse for a drug kingpin would never marry anyone less than stunning, and this woman, Luisa, fit the bill. But despite her body, with her round, perky tits and elegant neck, her long dark hair and classic face, there was another layer to her that immediately got me hard. It was this look in her eyes. They were so pure and soft, giving her radiance that seemed to leap off the page.
I wanted nothing more than to have her on her knees, have her fix those round, angelic eyes on me and watch as I pinned her down and came right into them. I would take her purity and make her see the world for what it really was—a hot, sticky mess at the end of my dick.
“I bet she’d be a tight little fuck,” Este leered over my shoulder.
I shot him a disgusted look. “She’s not a whore, Este,” I chided him.
“Not to you,” he said, as I looked at the next picture of her, now with Salvador at her side.
“I mean it,” I said, my eyes drawn to her again and again. “No one is touching her. Not you, not Franco.”
“I give you my promise,” Este said. “But Franco can barely control himself around the whores.”
“No one is touching her,” I repeated. “She will be our hostage. She is collateral. No one is laying a hand on her.”
“Except for you, I assume.”
She almost seemed too good to even touch. I couldn’t wait to break her down. “She is very valuable,” I admitted.
I flipped through a couple more photographs and grew harder at each one. I wished Este would just fucking leave so I could deal with it. I almost wished Laura was still alive so I could flip her over and come all over her back. I never fucked the women around here, but that didn’t mean I didn’t use them.
“You know,” Este said, his lazy voice starting to grate on me. “If Martin had been there close enough to spy on them, close enough to photograph, why didn’t you just get him to put a bullet in Salvador’s head? Especially if Martin was going to die anyway.”
I eyed him warily, disappointed that he could be so rash. “Because life is a game and we’re all just trading cards. We play the right hand to get ahead.” I studied the smiling, ignorant face of Sal as he stared at his bride. “Death stops the game. It’s too final, too inflexible. Death is viciously stubborn.”
When Este didn’t say anything, I looked up to see a dull gleam in his eyes. I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose, annoyed at his ineptitude. “What good would killing Salvador do? Right? David Guirez or whoever, anyone, someone, they would step in and take over faster than you can shit after your coffee, and nothing will have changed. Look at Travis Raines. The moment he died, I was able to slither on through to the top, to right here, right now.”
“Only because you killed Travis,” he noted. “More or less.”
“We killed Travis,” I corrected him. “Anyway, the point is that the dead make lousy deals. If we want the shipping lane, we have to force him to give it to us. Killing him does nothing. Taking his new bride, now that will do something.”
“You sound so sure,” Este said, walking around the desk.
“I have no reason not to be sure,” I said. “They are newlyweds. He needs her, he wants her. We will get her soon, before he gets bored of her cherry ass. Sal has pride. We all do. It is our weakness. I know that enough about myself to know it about others.”
He smoothed his hand over the scruff on his chin and gave me a smooth nod. “All right.”
I stared at a photo of them at the altar, a lavish outdoor ceremony. He was staring at her with that pride I was talking about. And she was staring at him with a look that was all too familiar to me.
“She doesn’t love him, though,” I commented, almost to myself.
“How can you tell?” he asked, taking a step closer and peering at the photos again.
I shrugged. “I just can. She doesn’t.”
“So is she marrying him for money then?”
I took the papers and sorted them until they were neat and evenly stacked before slipping them back into the envelope. “Probably. Does it matter?”
“No. So when do we act?”
“Soon,” I said, putting the envelope in the first drawer. I knew I’d be taking it out again after he left. “But we’ll do it slowly. Start with recon first, perhaps see if we can track down Derek to help us with this.”
Este gave me an odd look. “Derek … we haven’t talked to him since he … I’m not sure he’s even in Mexico anymore.”
“Perhaps not,” I said. I wasn’t too worried. Derek Conway was an American ex-military man, an assassin for hire. He had been contracted to us during some of our more important moments. In fact, the last time I saw him was three years ago. He’d put a bullet through Travis Raines’ head. Ordered by me, of course. Then he screwed us over, but I couldn’t fault him for that. He would be loyal to whoever paid him the most.
But he wasn’t the only man at my disposal. Since I had taken
over the cartel, I had a whole legion of men to do my dirty work, the best of the best. For the next month or so, I wanted someone who would be sleek and loyal. Kidnapping the wife of Mexico’s largest drug lord wasn’t going to be a walk in the park, but with the right people, it wouldn’t be impossible.
Perhaps I was just being overconfident, but it had only served me well in the past.
I gave Este a levelling stare. “I’m putting this in your hands. Can you handle it?”
“When haven’t I?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I sent you to Hawaii once to finish a job but you ended up fucking some suicidal surfer chick instead.”
“I still got the job done. What’s the difference if I get action at the same time?”
I rolled my eyes at his crassness and gave him a slight, dismissive wave. “Go put this all together. And don’t disappoint me.”
“Funny,” he mused. “I’m not sure what it’s like to not disappoint you.” Then he turned and left the office, shutting the door behind him.
I got up and walked over to the window. The driveway was wet where Carlos must have watered it down, and the body of Laura was gone, the blood all washed away. It was like nothing ugly ever happened. I took in the mountains, the violently green foliage that stretched beyond the property and melded into the cliffs of The Devil’s Backbone. Sometimes I wondered if there was someone out there plotting something in the way I was plotting for Salvador. I usually decided there was. You didn’t run a cartel without having an army of people out there wanting to kill you. After all, I used to be a solider in that very army. I just never dwelled on it—I moved through each day thinking that I was better off alive, a card that kept the game going.
I also clung to the archaic, and perhaps slightly naïve belief that everything happened for a reason. I hadn’t cheated death so many times, I hadn’t had my heart ripped out, my soul lost, my family murdered, my future trampled all for nothing. I was put away in an American prison for three months, and thanks to the grace of God and friends in high places, I miraculously walked away and back into Mexico where I was able to jump back in to the cartel that had rightfully become mine. All of that, all of those miracles, all of that grace, hadn’t happened for no reason.
My destiny was constantly being rewritten and it would continue to be until it was fulfilled. Until I was at the top of the world and I had everything I’d ever wanted at my feet. Until I could crush everything with none of the mercy that was bestowed upon me.
I went over to the wet bar, and with some pleasure, pushed back the curved top of the old-fashioned globe that revealed the bottles of alcohol beneath. The bar used to be Travis’s, something he had picked up at an antique store in Mississippi where I had worked for him back in the simple times. I’d always admired it, the vintage elegance, of a time when men were really men and when they got up in the morning they showed up for the world.
I poured myself a glass of old Scotch, opting for that instead of my usual tequila, and went back over to the desk. I sat down and gently brought the photographs of Luisa out of the drawer. I felt a foreign pang of indignity as I looked them over again, as if someone was watching me, judging me, for something I shouldn’t have been doing. But I needed to look at her. I needed to study her. I needed to know the exquisite creature I would be bringing into this house. I needed to know the woman I would destroy through and through before I handed her back to Salvador.
I needed to ask her soft, radiant, pixelated face for forgiveness for what I was about to do.
She would soon be sorry she ever married Salvador Reyes.
CHAPTER FIVE
Luisa
“You look nervous,” the makeup artist said to me as she dusted a light coating of glimmering blush across my cheekbones. “Don’t be. You look beautiful.”
She had a singsong quality to her voice that would have soothed any bride-to-be, but there was no soothing me. If I got up and looked out the window, I would have seen the plaza below absolutely filled with people here to see me and Salvador get married. I would have also felt, though not seen, the countless snipers that were lined up to take out anyone who might have … interfered. That should have made me feel better, safer, but it didn’t. I felt I was only safe until the moment I said “I do.” After that, I was just a rat scurrying through the desert, the hawk biding its time from above.
“And you said your parents are here,” she went on, her voice quicker now, trying to get me to talk, to say something. I’d been more or less silent the whole time. Perhaps she was nervous too. She knew who I was marrying, after all.
“Yes, they are here,” I said, my throat feeling strangely raw.
“They must be so proud,” she said, tilting my chin up with her fingers in order to line my lips with precision.
“They don’t normally travel,” I said by way of explanation, barely moving my lips. My parents weren’t so much proud as they were scared out of their minds. My father hadn’t been himself for days now, and it was only by luck that he was calm and under control. Luck, or perhaps some medication my mother borrowed from a friend of hers. My mother herself was rigid and unyielding, trying hard to be happy for me but failing at it. For the first time in my life, I could hardly stand to be around her. She only reminded me of what I was giving up and giving in to.
“Where do they live?” she asked.
“In San Jose del Cabo,” I said.
“They won’t be joining you with your husband?”
I shook my head and then smiled apologetically when I realized it messed up her work. “They wanted to stay where their friends were. It’s too … inconvenient for them to be living with me and Salvador.” Not to mention that with Salvador’s help, I was able to buy them a beautiful new home close to a retirement center and hospital. Both my parents had a full-time caregiver now, a tough but lovely woman named Penelope, and they had their activities and their friends. It happened fast, and we were all still adjusting to the change. I did what I could to ease the guilt since I couldn’t live with them anymore, but it was so much better than them risking their lives to live with us in Culiacán. Though they were out of my reach, I felt they were much safer in the Baja.
“Well, perhaps that is for the best,” she said, giving me a quiet smile. “Nothing ruins a marriage like in-laws.”
I returned the look, and to my relief, she finished up my face in silence.
The wedding ceremony itself went a lot smoother than I thought. The three glasses of champagne I nicked off a waiter certainly helped. It was quite elaborate with the priest and our vows and the endless sea of people watching our every move. But I did my part, acted in the play, and did my best to pretend I was the blushing bride eager to be wedded to her powerful husband. I could only hope that my face would not betray me and show the world just how terrified I was.
The moment he slipped the ring on my finger—a big, blinding diamond that cost more than most people would earn in their life—and we said our vows, I knew I should have wept with power. I was the wife of the jackal, nearly the most powerful man in the country. But while others would see power resting on my shoulders, I knew deep down the cape was an illusion.
And it didn’t take very long to find out how fake it was.
For our honeymoon, Salvador and I headed to the coast to a quiet little village that was completely under his jurisdiction, where he had a massive beachfront property. I barely had any time to say goodbye to my mother and father, my hands still clasping theirs, holding on for dear life, as I was ushered away from the ceremony, flowers in my hair, and into the waiting limousine.
It was bulletproof. But I was not.
Salvador and I sat in the back, the only inhabitants, while I craned my neck around and watched as my parents disappeared from sight, two frail frames against the relentless sun.
“That was rude of me,” I said, even though I knew it was best to keep my mouth shut. I wished my voice wasn’t shaking. “To just leave them like that.” It was more than rude; it
frightened me more than anything else to have them out of my reach, so fast and so soon.
Salvador turned in his seat to face me. He looked almost handsome in his tuxedo, his hair slicked back, his mustache trimmed. His eyes though, they always betrayed him. They were frazzled, sparking, like bad wiring.
“You’re my wife now,” he said with a grin that was far too wicked to be genuine. “You no longer answer to your parents, you answer to me.”
I swallowed uneasily, trying to decide on whether to wear defiance or pleading compliance on my face. It was a split-second decision and defiance won out.
It got me a smack across the face.
I took a few moments, my newly ringed hand on my cheek, trying to soothe the throbbing. I stared at Salvador in dumb shock. I knew that everything had been for show so far, I just had no idea it would turn to the truth so fast.
“You answer to me,” he repeated, his eyes growing thinner and hard as steel. “That means no talking back.”
I opened my mouth and he immediately backhanded me again, harder this time, enough that I saw lights flashing behind my eyes, my teeth biting down on my tongue as the back of my head hit the seat rest. I tried not to panic, tried my hardest to remain composed all while wanting to cry out from the pain. The fear was greater than I’d ever known.
After a moment, I straightened up in my seat, inching away from him. He only leered at me, as if the whole thing was one giant joke. Perhaps it was.
“When I say no talking back,” he said, running his fingers over his mustache, “I mean it, like I mean everything I say. We can have a nice, happy marriage if you learn to behave. I will still give you the world and you will want for nothing. But there are rules that you will have to follow. Nothing is free in this life, do you understand?”
I nodded, not daring to speak.
Suddenly he shot forward and was in my face, a vein throbbing at his temple. “I said, do you understand!?” he screamed, spittle flying onto me.