by Karina Halle
“And what about your wife?”
A block of ice froze in my chest and my eyes became cold as I glared at him. “What business is it of yours to even mention her?”
I could practically watch him think. He knew the wrong thing would get him in a lot of trouble. And he knew what I’d been up to lately, more than once. Sometimes he helped.
“No business at all,” he said after some time. He started for the door, then paused. “Though I should tell you that your appointment is here. Should I show her in?”
After his comment, I should have said no. But while it made me think twice about what I was doing, it also made me mad. Still, maybe this one wouldn’t piss me off tonight. It didn’t always end in blood.
I nodded at him, and in that moment, I wondered if it made me seem weak. I knew Este was no better when it came to women. Maybe I only thought that because I used to be better.
He disappeared down the hall and I quickly checked the clock on the wall. It was already ten p.m. Luisa would be settling down for bed herself.
I was about to call after Este and tell him I’d changed my mind when he appeared at the door with a tall, striking woman. She didn’t look like any of the other whores. Though all of them were beautiful, this woman had her nose right in the air, as if she were better than me, better than her whole profession.
I immediately disliked her. Perhaps there would be blood after all.
“This is Judia,” Este said.
Judia? Named after a bean?
Este turned to leave but I called out after him. “Actually, Este, you can have her.”
He stopped and gave me a funny look. I knew he didn’t need my charity in this regard but I thought I’d offer it anyway. Even with the scar down the side of his face and his teenage clothes, Este was a ladykiller.
Then again, so was I.
“No offense, Judia,” he said to her before eyeing me, “but I don’t need anything you think I can have.”
Judia smirked at him. “Am I supposed to be flattered, two men not fighting over me? What, are you both gay?”
I had to laugh. I hadn’t laughed in a long time and the sound was jarring to my own ears.
“Yes, completely gay,” I said, getting out of my chair and walking over to her. “Gayest patron that ever was.”
She shrugged with one shoulder and looked down at me. “That will make things easier. I don’t get off with men who are shorter than me anyway.”
Este sucked in his breath. My mouth gaped open slightly. Did this puta just have the nerve to make fun of my height?
I nodded at her, unable to keep the smile from stretching across my face, and walked back to the desk. “You’re very honest, Judia. And daring, really. But I don’t think it’s a very good career decision to be so choosy, especially with patrons.”
My fingers slipped under the desk and closed around a wide, wooden handle, the cut on my hand stinging from last night. I wore my smile well.
“You know, I am five foot nine, which is fairly average for a man,” I told her, keeping my movements quiet. I may have added an inch. “How tall are you?”
She swallowed hard, seeming nervous for the first time. I’ve been told my smile can be unnerving if I use it long enough.
“Five foot eleven,” she said.
I licked my lips, feeling my blood run hot and wild. “So I only need to take off about three inches or so.”
Her eyes widened in a mix of confusion and then horror as I brought the machete out from underneath my desk. I’d been trained for this, to maximize force in a small space. It’s all in the legs, in the way you spring. In one smooth motion I swung the machete better than any golf club, swiping across her legs mid-calf.
She screamed as she became an amputee in an instant, blood spilling to the ground as she fell to one side and her severed legs fell to the other. I guess I took off more than three inches, but it was better to overachieve than under.
“There,” I said as I peered down at her face, an arc of blood spurting from her legs in time with her fading heartbeat. “Now you are shorter than me. Think you can come now?”
Judia screamed again, but her voice was fading, choked in her throat as shock overtook her. I sighed and stared at the sheepskin rug. First dirty with Este’s feet, now this.
“You keep a machete under your desk?” Este asked, looking over my shoulder at it, the long bloody blade still in my hands.
I gave him a look. “Why wouldn’t I keep a machete under my desk?” I handed it to him. “Here, put it back and get Juanito to clean this up.” I gestured to the soon to be corpse and the bloody mess of an office. “I’m going to bed.”
Este tried to take it from my hands but I found my grip tightening. “On second thought, I’ll take it with me.” I didn’t want Este to think he could go on about “respect” again, even though I knew he was thinking it with Juanito having to clean up my mess half the time. Everyone had to pay their dues, though.
I took the machete upstairs, my bodyguard Diego following me down the hall as he always did. I barely noticed him until I was about to go into my bedroom.
“Mrs. Bernal is sleeping in one of the guest bedrooms,” he said in his low, baritone voice. He didn’t speak much, one of the reasons I liked him. “The one at the end of the hall.”
“Oh?” The one that used to be her prison cell. “Did she say why?”
“No sir,” Diego said. “She just came up to me to let me know.”
As if it would go unnoticed. “All right,” I said, straightening up a bit, as if this arrangement was the new normal. “Can you make sure we have someone stationed outside her door as well? Artur?”
“Of course,” he said before he strode off to gather Artur from one of the barracks on the property, probably interrupting his sleep. Artur was as equally as trustworthy as Diego but usually worked in the early morning hours. Still, I wouldn’t compromise her safety. The chances of someone getting into the house to get at her, or me, were practically nil, but sometimes you couldn’t trust the people in your house either. I knew better than to underestimate those closest to me. I knew better but I never let on.
I closed the door behind me and got ready for bed. For all the troubles, this was the first time I’d gone to sleep without her. Perhaps she should have done this a long time ago. Perhaps she was tired of having to go to bed and fall asleep first, such a vulnerable stage of life, all alone.
And now, now I was alone. With those thoughts again. Knowing the dreams were waiting. The ones filled with guilt and grief and regret. The ones that made me a little more scared of myself, a little crazier, day by day.
As I fell asleep, I could still smell the blood I had spilled. It worked as well as a sleeping pill.
CHAPTER FOUR
Esteban
Fucking animal, Esteban Mendoza thought to himself as he surveyed Javier’s office. Blood was absolutely everywhere, even on the walls, which meant Juanito would be spending all hours of the night wiping that shit down, not to mention disposing of the body. He had to do the exact same thing the other day, after Javier got carried away with a piece of barbed wire. The pigs he kept out back were getting fatter by the minute.
It wasn’t that Este really felt bad for Juanito, it was more that it would steal his time away from him. After all, Este was having him do all sorts of things that in some ways were far worse. Juanito wasn’t even gay. Not that Este was either, he just liked to get off and it usually didn’t matter who was sucking his dick. It was more about the power. The control. And that need to humiliate someone the way he used to be humiliated himself, back when he was a little punk hanging on the corners of the colonias of Juarez. When he told Juanito to get on his knees and put his cock in his mouth, he felt like a king. The king he always should have been. The patron he’d dreamed about.
He’d bided his time long enough. Put up with Javier long enough. He had to act now, before Javier really went to the dark side. It wasn’t that Javier would slip up. Este had told
Luisa that her husband was getting sloppy, but that wasn’t really the case. Ever since Alana’s death, he’d become sharper, like a new knife. He’d become more focused on building his empire and taking the jagged pieces of what was once one federation of narcos and putting them back together again, with him at the helm.
Javier was lost, yes. Grieving, no doubt. But he wasn’t letting go of the business. And if anything, he was becoming more dangerous. Unpredictable. Inhumane. Este had never, ever feared Javier before. He had no reason to. He knew Javier had always looked at him like a lackey, a joke, and that was something he purposely cultivated. Because who would ever suspect Este of really using his brain? He was smart enough for the techie stuff, but no one would expect him to be devious. Or calculating. In fact, Este grew tired of the surfer look a year ago but kept it up because appearances were everything in this place. He fucking hated wearing flip-flops.
But now, Este wasn’t so sure that Javier wouldn’t snap one day and have his own head chopped off, for no real reason at all. What Este had wanted to accomplish by offing Alana — (he had offed her, hadn’t he? He wondered that sometimes at night, the image of the boat exploding in the background again and again. Were the female remains Alana’s? The DNA findings on Alana were faked to bring certainty to Javier, but Este wasn’t quite certain himself.) — was to bring Javier to his knees and make him vulnerable. In a sense, it had worked. But Este had to act fast now before it took a turn for the worse and Javier became harder to manage.
His grace was gone. His elegance was still there, but when Este looked into those golden eyes, he only saw rage, and behind that rage, madness. The old Javier would never have killed a whore without reason, and now he was just doing it out of this newfound bloodlust. The old Javier probably wouldn’t have cheated on his wife (even though the old Javier did have a habit of cheating on other partners, and later, beheading them, so maybe this wasn’t new). And the old Javier would never have been so ambitious as to kidnap a federale as a means to assassinate another cartel leader.
The first step was Luisa. He was almost there. Even though Javier’s behavior surprised him, he wanted him to keep pushing his wife away. He wanted Javier to cheat on her. He wanted Luisa ruined and helpless and looking for love and affection anywhere.
Este wanted Luisa to come to him. He would show her what she was missing, how a real man fucked. He would give her everything that Javier couldn’t. He would do this, in secret, for a long time, until the secret came out. He would then take her for his own, and when he was bored of her one day, kill her. Make sure Javier knew about that, too. Maybe give him a front row seat.
Of course, he would take the cartel as well. The plans were being set in motion for that. He could have kissed Javier for being so ballsy and ambitious.
It was all pretty much perfect.
But if he didn’t act now, he could end up dead.
And death was something Este feared. Death before getting to show the world what a fool Javier Bernal was. Death before getting to show the world it had underestimated Esteban Mendoza.
Esteban left Javier’s office and strode down the hall, down the stairs to the basement. This was where Juanito lived. He actually had it pretty good, at least in Este’s mind he did. He had more money than he knew what to do with, but because he was under Este’s command (and yes, Javier’s, as he had so recently demonstrated), he couldn’t have his own fancy house with fancy cars and fancy hookers. He was told he could have all that later. It was always later. Now, his job was just to do as they said, no matter what it was, and in time he would rise in the ranks.
What Javier didn’t know, though, was that Juanito was loyal to Esteban and not to him. The minute that Juanito joined the cartel, Este had taken him under his wing. At first Este had explained everything as a bit of hazing. He’d had his own little torture session on Juanito — pulling off toenails with a clamp, waterboarding, using a heated hammer to make burns on his back. Things that Javier would never notice. But Juanito sure did. And fear of Este was built into him from the start.
It made him so much more compliant. The rape came later (though Juanito was willing to go through with it, Este liked to think of it as rape — it turned him on even more). More torture here and there. Pretty soon Juanito was willing to do whatever Este asked of him. And one of the first things he had asked was to help orchestrate the murder of Javier’s sister.
If Juanito had any objections to that, he didn’t dare voice them to Este. He went through with it. Took Alana’s phone call for help and instead of patching her through to Javier, told her help was on the way.
Este picked up Alana, and the rest was history.
Now Este wanted Juanito’s help with the next phase of the plan, and he knew he could get it. But just in case Juanito was starting to fear Javier like Este was, he needed to put that fear back into him.
Este opened the door to Juanito’s room without knocking. It was dark, so Este flicked on the lights. Juanito was in bed, sleeping, but sprang awake in a second. No one knew how to sleep through anything in this compound.
“What is it?” he asked, wiping the sleep from his eyes. Juanito was such a young kid. Este forgot at times until he saw that emptiness instead of youth in his eyes. But that loss of innocence was pretty much all his fault and he might as well take pride in it.
“I made a mess in Javier’s office, hey,” Este said. “I need you to take care of it. After you take care of me.”
Este made an elegant gesture with his fingers for Juanito to turn around. A current of fear passed over his eyes, and it made Este immediately hard.
Juanito knew the drill. He shuffled out of his boxer shorts — a stupid pair with bananas on it — and got on all fours, his small, flabby ass facing Este.
Este didn’t admire his body, didn’t admire anything except his compliancy. He knew he was going to cause him a lot of pain and that helped with the hard-on.
Thank god the room was soundproof. Este slammed into him, his grip merciless on his hips. Juanito cried out in horror, in pain, a scream that would have made anyone’s dick shrink in an instant, but it did the opposite to Esteban. Besides, now he wasn’t even thinking about Juanito. His thoughts were all on Luisa. On what he would do to her. This same thing. She was going to go along willingly at first — that was part of the plan. Get her desire, her trust. But in time, that desire would turn to fear.
And when Este tired of the fear, he’d fuck her with his gun. He did that to a woman once, the only woman he remotely had feelings for. He would do it again. Luisa would love the danger of it all. He knew she liked fucked up shit like that.
And then Este would pull the trigger while it was deep inside her.
And then he would rule the world.
CHAPTER FIVE
Luisa
Sometimes, lately anyway, when I thought back to the day I had married Javier, my mind got all lost and jumbled. Confused. I brought up images of my wedding to Salvador Reyes. Perhaps because I was terribly nervous before both.
Of course I was nervous with Salvador, because I knew how powerful he was. I knew he had the capacity to hurt me, I knew I wasn’t in love — or even “in like” — with him. And I was a virgin. But I hadn’t expected to be nervous with Javier.
It was only a month after he killed Salvador and I joined Javier at his compound — this same compound — that Javier proposed to me.
We were in bed one Sunday morning. Sundays were the best days. We’d awake when the sun rose in the east and streamed in through the windows, then we’d spend a few hours under the covers. Sometimes we’d make love right away, other times we’d wait until coffee was delivered. But we never got out of bed unsatisfied.
That morning, Javier was in a quiet mood. This was nothing new — sometimes something dark and heavy would befall him. I could see it in his eyes. They didn’t quite have that intensity anymore and he seemed to be tortured subtly by some inner demons. I knew he had a lot of them.
We made love slo
wly. He took his time, not in a torturous, teasing way¸ but as if he were trying to memorize me, hold on to every second, every moment. It unnerved me because I wasn’t used to it. I was used to dangerous, rough, wild sex, or quick and passionate sex. But not this forlorn, pensive emotion. Not from him.
After we both came with soft cries, he slid out of me from behind then flipped me over so that I was on my back. He climbed on top of me, his weight on his elbows on either side of my shoulders. He brushed my hair off my damp face, the sun and our sex heating up the room, and those wonderful eyes of his peered down at me.
They were searching, like a hawk, golden in the light, but they were sad. I didn’t think I’d ever seen him sad. It made me hold my breath and I wrapped my hands around the small of his back, brushing gently against his skin, holding his body to me.
“Do you love me?” he asked, his voice low, almost hesitant.
I stared up at him in surprise. Of course I loved him. With everything I had. Didn’t I tell him that all the time? Even though I had yet to hear it back, I still told him because I was unashamed of the truth.
“I love you,” I told him.
“Do you want me to love you?” he asked, fainter now. He ran the tip of his fingers along my forehead, down my cheekbones, across my jaw, more gentle than a feather.
I didn’t know how to answer that. Did he not love me?
Could he?
Would he?
So I said, “Yes.”
He carefully licked his lips, brows furrowed slightly in thought.
“Do you want me to marry you?”
Now I was really surprised. I felt like the wind had been knocked out of me. My mouth dropped open and my brain and heart battled each other for a moment, wondering if my answer would set me up for some sort of humiliation.
But still, the truth. “Yes,” I whispered.
“Good,” he said, and only then did he give me the quietest of smiles. “Because I love you, Luisa. Even when I thought I didn’t have it in me, I do. I love you. And I want you to be my wife. My queen. My everything. Rule with me.” He leaned closer and kissed me delicately on the lips. “Marry me.”