Dirty Angels

by Karina Halle

  She fixed her eye on me, head to the side. “Why? So Salvador will trade with you? I don’t want to go back. It’s a worse hell than here.”

  Something in my gut sunk like a stone. I inhaled sharply and said, “This isn’t about what you want.” I looked up at The Doctor who was watching her curiously.

  “Interesting,” he said in that slow voice of his. “But Luisa, he is right. It’s not about you. It’s about us. And it’s about other people you may care about.”

  At that her head lifted up to look at him.

  The corner of his lips twitched at her attention. “You do have parents. They were at your wedding. If Salvador doesn’t think you’re in danger, if he thinks you’d rather die at the hands of a rival cartel than come home, what do you think he’s going to do to your parents?”

  I felt her body stiffen beneath me, as if it had just crossed her mind. So this was what she cared most about. Her parents. It killed me that The Doctor knew this and I didn’t.

  “Just something to think about, anyway,” The Doctor finished. “I’m about to hit record. Are you speaking to the camera, Javier?”

  I nodded, shaking myself into the role, and pressed the knife down on her back, ready to make the slash for the I. I waited for The Doctor’s cue, then looked up at the camera.

  “Salvador, we’re a bit disappointed that you haven’t reached out to negotiate the safe return of your wife. My suggestion to you is to at least respond to us, otherwise you won’t be getting Luisa back in one piece.” I grabbed her hair and yanked her head back so he could see her face. To my surprise, she let out a cry of pain. I really had hurt her.

  The Doctor was smiling behind the camera at her reaction, and I had no choice but to smile as well. Only difference was, mine was fake.

  “You have a very lovely wife,” I went on to say. “Very beautiful. It would be a shame to ignore this because you didn’t think we were serious. I am very serious. You have two days to contact us. After that, she becomes property of my cartel. And I’m sure you know what that means. This is just the start.” I pressed the tip of the blade into her skin. Instead of feeling the thrill I normally felt, I felt my guts twist. But I persevered through the frivolous sentiment and dug the knife in sharply, an inch deep.

  She let out a scream. I didn’t know if it was because of the pain or the thought of losing her parents. It was what we wanted though. I slowly dragged the blade down, rivers of crimson pooling around the metal and spilling down her back and onto the bedspread. She screamed again until The Doctor told us we were done.

  Then her screaming stopped. She was breathing heavily beneath me, the blood pouring freely, but she wasn’t even whimpering.

  The Doctor shook his head slightly and said, “I’ll go upload this and check on Este. There’s been too much blood tonight, even for someone like me.”

  He gathered up the camera and left the room. Once we were alone, I felt completely flustered, a feeling that was foreign and terrible. I untied her wrists then got off of her and stared at the blood for a moment before going and getting a towel from the bathroom. I pressed it down on her back and she flinched under my touch.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  She didn’t say anything.

  I kept pressure on the towel and watched as the red monopolized the white. “It is a fairly deep cut this time. Ugly. I don’t like to make ugly marks.”

  I expected her to tell me off. I wanted her to tell me off. But she gave me nothing, as usual. It was frustrating beyond belief.

  “Interesting thing about your parents,” I told her, searching for that spark.

  Her muscles tightened beneath my hand and she looked like she was holding her breath.

  My heart danced. There it was. “I had no idea they meant so much to you,” I went on. “Of course, I don’t know anything about them at all, but I’m sure I could find out their names and addresses tomorrow if I wanted to. I’m assuming they weren’t living with you and Salvador. No, my guess is they are back in Los Cabos, completely unprotected.” I leaned in closer. “You know, my darling, most daughters don’t leave their parents behind to go off and marry a drug lord.”

  She suddenly sat up, hair in her face, her eyes blazing with fury. I kept the towel pressed against her wound, keeping her close to me. Fuck me, I wanted to put my tongue in her mouth and feel that anger. I wanted to take her fury right here on the bed, let the blood wash over the both of us.

  “You don’t know anything about me and my parents,” she hissed at me. “So don’t even try.”

  I grabbed her arm and pulled her even closer so she was almost pressed up against me. “Oh, I’ll try. Tell me then how it went? Girl ditches her proud mama and papa for a chance to marry the man of her dreams and become a narco-wife? Bet you regret that little fancy of yours, don’t you?”

  She raised her other hand to smack me, but I was quick. I dropped the towel and snatched her by the wrist. I forced her down on her back, holding her hands above her head and pinning her to the bed. She struggled but not for long as I climbed on top of her.

  I stared down at her and couldn’t help but smile. She’d be so easy to fuck right now, but I wanted to fuck that pretty little head of hers even more, see what was inside.

  “You don’t know anything!” she said. “I was a good daughter. I did this all for them. This was all for them. If I married Salvador, I could pay for someone to take care of them. They’re ill and I struggled every fucking day to provide for them, to make sure they were fed and happy, and it was never a guarantee. I did everything I could to give them the best life I could. We grew up poor but they made sacrifices for me. I had to make sacrifices for them. My life was the biggest sacrifice. So I married him because he asked me, and I knew I could give my parents the life that they deserved. I never expected love, I never expected anything good except knowing that they were going to be okay.”

  She wasn’t quite crying, but her eyes were wet. I frowned, a strain of compassion running through me for this strong little woman. She didn’t feel sorry for herself, she rarely got angry, and yet she’d been handed the shit card in life, just as I had.

  “You care that much about your parents?” I asked, aware that I was crushing her. “You’d marry Sal just for their happiness? Though I don’t see how any parent could be happy with you marrying that man.”

  Her brows knitted together as she stared up at me. “Don’t you care about your parents?”

  “My parents are dead,” I said simply.

  “Oh. I’m sorry.” And the curious thing, I could see she was.

  “I’m not,” I said, not wanting her pity. “Family gets you killed.”

  She shook her head. “That is not the Mexican way. Family is everything.”

  “Then perhaps that is what is wrong with Mexico.”

  “That’s a terrible thing to say.”

  True. “And I am a terrible person,” I told her glibly.

  “Yes,” she agreed. “You are. But that is nothing to be proud of.”

  “And yet here I am, lying on top of you, full of pride for all the terrible things I do. I worked hard to be this way. It’s not easy to have confidence in who you are, to say fuck it, the world thinks I am a monster because I am a monster. And I don’t care.”

  She bit her lip and I wanted to do the same. “You’re not a monster.”

  “Just a terrible person, then.”

  “Yes. There is a difference. I lived with a monster. I know what that feels like.”

  I gave her a wry grin and lowered my face so it was just inches away from hers. This close, I could see flecks of gold in the mahogany of her eyes. “Does it feel like a knife in your back?”

  She blinked, taken aback, realizing the truth. Monster, terrible person, it didn’t matter. I wasn’t so different from her husband. I was just another man playing the game.

  And it had to stay that way.

  I got off of her and pulled her to the edge of the bed so she was in a sitting position.
I turned her back so I could see the wound. The pressure of being pressed against the bedspread had stifled the bleeding a bit, but now her bed was soaked with blood. “I’ll get you new sheets.”

  She stared at me with a dull expression. “Don’t bother. I kind of like it.”

  I raised my brow at her. She was nothing if not always keeping me on my toes. “I think the bleeding has stopped. The Doctor may have to give you stitches tomorrow.”

  She gave her head a nearly imperceptible shake. “You’re giving a hostage stitches because of the torture you inflicted on them?”

  She had a point. A good one.

  I couldn’t care about that. I couldn’t care about her pain or her well-being or her past or her feelings. I was holding her for ransom, using her body and life to get what I wanted. I couldn’t care about any of that.

  And yet, I think I did.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Luisa

  I woke up in incredible pain, my back feeling like it was on fire. Memories from the night before came flooding into my brain, first a trickle, then a dam unleashed. My attempted escape from Esteban, the Taser shocking me, waking up with Javier watching over me with an unpredictable look in his eyes, Esteban’s half-hearted apology with dinner, then Javier coming back with The Doctor and filming his branding for Salvador.

  Javier had hurt me, really hurt me this time, but I did whatever I could to keep that hurt buried. That was until my parents were brought into it and the whole reality came smashing down on me. This was no longer about me—my parents’ lives were at stake. It was a cold desolate feeling knowing that what I wanted—freedom—I could never have. When I was with Salvador, my parents were safe. When I wasn’t with him … they would be cut off or worse. As much as every instinct in my body was telling me to never go back, to be glad that Salvador wasn’t giving in to their demands, I knew that my selfishness would cost everything.

  So when Javier told me to react for the camera, I was reacting to more than just the brutal, deep cut he carved into my back. I was reacting to the fact that I would never ever win, no matter what I did. I was reacting to the unfairness of it all, of my very existence.

  And somewhere on that bed, as a drug lord knifed his name into my back, I found the thread of anger that I’d hidden from for so long. It was starting to unravel, slowly, like a snake. I nearly welcomed it. I almost invited it to stay. I suppose it was enough to just know it was there, to know I had a wicked part of me that was mad, that wanted more than what was given to me and everything that was taken away.

  That morning, I spent the hours locked in my head. Every time there was a knock at the door, I was both relieved and disappointed that it wasn’t Javier. In some ways, I wanted to talk to him. He had made me open up about my family, about my life, and now I was itching to get the same kind of information from him. There was something so traumatic about the night before that I felt even he was affected by it. That was a silly thing to think, of course. He was a man used to torture on a much worse, much larger scale. But even so, some part of me felt like last night was a first for him, in whatever way that was. Maybe because as he dug that blade in on the side of my spine, I could feel the hesitation in it, like he didn’t want to hurt me to that extreme. I wanted to know why.

  Why would this man hesitate for even a second when he had so much at stake?

  I know what my mind wanted to think. It wanted to think that perhaps this man found me special, that he would change his ways because he saw me for me. But I knew that wasn’t true, and every time the thought entered my head, I felt sick because of it, because something in me wanted to entertain it. But I’d given up those fantastical notions a very long time ago. Fantasies were for young girls who had no idea how the real world worked.

  The last time I remember thinking that perhaps I was special and interesting and would one day capture the attention of a man was right after I had won my first pageant. There was a boy who worked at the restaurant, a line cook, who was only there for a few months. I could tell he liked and wanted me, and I wanted the same, but I was too afraid. So I locked myself in my mind, in daydreams about a better life, and I did that until he left. After that, there was no one else. There was nothing else. Because the truth was, as beautiful as some people said I was, it had done nothing for me but bring me pain. It didn’t end the threat of poverty and the constant struggle, and it didn’t prevent my father from losing himself.

  You’re an idiot, I told myself after Esteban left, the lunch tray lying on the floor. Get your head back in the game, this is about survival.

  And I was right. But even though it was a game, I wondered if I was playing it right. Javier was drawn to me in some form, and though I couldn’t figure out what form that was, he still seemed to take special interest in me. I needed to figure out how to make that work to my advantage. Javier was my only way out of here, I knew that much. Forget Esteban, his power seemed weak at best, and the others seemed ready to throw me to the dogs at first chance. As much as I hated to think it, Javier was the one person who could save me.

  I just didn’t know how.

  Javier

  “Good news,” Este said, limping into the makeshift office I had at the safe house. The door didn’t close properly, which cut my privacy down to zero and apparently other people’s manners as well.

  I sighed and snapped my laptop shut, looking up at him with dry interest. I’d been having a hard time believing in good news lately. Luisa had become this ticking time bomb in my life, her presence and predicament penetrating my thoughts, whether I was away from her or not. No matter where I was in this house, I couldn’t escape her.

  “Don’t look so happy,” Este said, and flashed me that cheesy dumbfuck grin of his.

  “Give me a reason to be happy, then,” I said, gesturing to the worn office chair on the other side of the desk. It didn’t help me get into the right frame of mind when I felt like I was setting up camp in a derelict’s house. Este had assured me the furnishings in the safe house were classy, but then again, he wouldn’t know classy if it took a shit right in front of him.

  He sat down and I exhaled hard through my nose. He was complying, which was good. It meant there were no hard feelings about the knife. Well, I’m sure he hated me as he usually did, but at least he was showing respect now. Sometimes subtle violence is all you needed to keep a man in line.

  “I just heard from Juanito. He says that though everything is being kept from the media, Salvador knows we have Luisa, has seen both videos, and is currently thinking of a strategy.”

  I raised my brow. “Strategy?” I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. A year ago we had tried to strike a deal with an informant for the Tijuana Cartel. He tried to strategize. We turned our assassin—sicario—on him instead of the narco we were after. That’s what happened to people who tried to outthink us.

  Unfortunately, I was no longer so sure that we were holding all the cards. We only had one, a queen, and I was starting to think she was worth more to me than to Salvador.

  Este shrugged. “I wasn’t sure. My call with him was brief. But it seems to me like Salvador is ready to make a deal. Perhaps we can’t get the Ephedra coming in from China, but maybe he’ll give us coke from Colombia.”

  A pang of anger ran through me. “We already have that. We want more.”

  He didn’t look too concerned when he tried to cross his legs; instead he winced from the pain in his shin. Good. “Well then we’ll have more coke. It’s better than nothing.”

  He was right, but it did nothing to make me happy. If I wanted more coke shipments, we could have easily gone east, after the Gulf Cartel in Veracruz. I just didn’t like the idea of returning to that city, what used to be the disputed territory of Travis Raines, a city that held filthy memories. I took Luisa because I wanted something I never had—an opportunity for new power from a new source.

  “Come on, Javi,” Este said. “If it makes you feel any better, I’m in a lot of pain.”

  I
frowned. “You don’t seem like it.”

  “Well, what good is The Doctor if he can’t get you high all the time? Poppies, Javi, from the very mountains we’re in, possibly from the very farms owned by Salvador. When in Rome…”

  I could tell Este wasn’t that high on morphine, otherwise he’d be floating, but I made a note to speak with The Doctor after this. Pain was a lesson, and besides that, we all needed to have clear heads. That was why I had such a low tolerance for drug use. I’m sure it was ironic to many, considering my empire was built on the drug trade, but I’d been burned too many times by past employees whose addiction not only fucked them up but made them mutinous.

  As for me, I almost never partook in it. After prison there was a period where I understood how drugs made a preferable reality for some people. It was one of my few moments of weakness, but even then I found strength in it. Discovering how dependent people got, how the right drugs could bury every broken heart and heal shattered pride, made me realize that in some ways, the cartels were doing the world a favor. We were giving people an escape from their sorry existences.

  I tapped my fingers on the desk, my gaze directed out the window and at the sunlight trying to break through the clouds. “I suppose the bright side is that we’ll hear from him in two days.”

  “How many letters do you have left?” Este asked.

  “Today is E. Tomorrow is R.”

  “And then we say goodbye.”

  “Yes.” I cleared my throat. “Then this is all over.”

  “I can’t tell if you’re sad it’s ending because you’re enjoying the torture, or … other reasons.”

  I shot him a sharp look. “What do you think?”

  He smiled and got up carefully. “I don’t think anything. You could say I’ve learned.”

  “Keep it that way.”

  I glared, and he nodded his head, leaving the room while trying to stifle his limp. Once he was gone and I was left in peace, I flipped my laptop open and stared at it. It was a picture of Luisa, the ones that Martin had taken at the wedding. It felt so much safer for me now to admire her from afar, even though I knew she was in the room above my head, even though I knew I would have to return tonight, knife in hand and face her once again.