by Karina Halle
Hiberto, Emilio and the tall, rangy warden were there, armed to the teeth with guns, knives and batons. If they were nervous or excited, I couldn’t tell.
One of them handed me a machete and “thank you” was the last thing I’d said until the slaughter was over.
I don’t know how many people I’d killed. It didn’t matter. At some point Diego had to stop me from chopping up an inmate into even smaller bits. I had let the hate and anger fuel me until I was some sort of machine.
Naturally, my first stop was the ugly guard who had first teased me when I walked in. I did as I told myself I would. Only, before I slowly ground the machete across his throat and took off his head, I hacked off his hands and feet, then shoved his foot in his mouth. I thought it would be ironic. Maybe it was barbaric.
After that I just went crazy, adding to the mayhem, while the two guards, warden and Diego stood by my side for protection, even taking part. I wasn’t going to walk around here without them. They kept the fuckers out for blood at bay while I was able to let my lucid fire unleash.
By the end of it, the whole prison block, filled with the worst of the worst, was filled with dead bodies, and there was more blood underfoot than floor. There were only about twelve of them that remained. They looked like the walking dead, chains and steel bars and knives in their hands.
But they knew who I was and they fought well and they were willing to walk free, out of this place with me, while I exacted my revenge. Esteban might have been building an army of depravity, but now I had mine and then some. I had everything except my boot on his throat and I was going to get that next.
I marched out of the prison with blood on my hands, under a dark and empty sky. I was a free man. While the prisoners were taken into waiting SUVs, Diego walked me out to Evaristo, who was standing in an ill-fitting suit that could have only been a product of a government agency.
“Congratulations,” he said to me, holding out his hand. He didn’t seem the slightest bit disturbed that when I half-heartedly shook his hand, it left his palm sticky with blood. “You made it out alive.”
“That was always the plan,” I said wryly while I eyed Diego for support, just in case. Diego only nodded, giving me his okay once again that Evaristo was to be trusted. I couldn’t be sure about that, even though, so far, he let me walk out of prison, the very prison that his company had put me into. Not to mention that he just let a slew of other inmates go. And the other half were brutally murdered.
“And I know I’m a new addition to your plan,” he said with a quick smile. Though the torture happened weeks earlier, his face was still puffy in places. It made him look older, more respectable. “But I can help you.”
“And what do you want in return?’ I asked. There was always a catch. In the distance I could hear choppers and some of the men looked to the distance in fear.
“To have opportunity,” he simply said. “To have respect. A chance to go further than I ever thought possible.” He nodded at a man who had been standing silently next to him. “Get them wherever they need to go. I’ll take care of this. As far as the country will know, a prison riot broke out, decimating all of the most heinous criminals. Javier Bernal remains in his cell, unharmed and Puente Grande remains the unescapable prison that the world thinks it is.” He looked to me again with a smirk. “They’re all yours, every one of them. You’ll be taken to a safe house and I’ll be in touch later tonight.”
At that he strode off toward the building, the sirens still going, the choppers coming closer. If we didn’t move now, we’d be on national news.
We quickly hurried off into the waiting SUV and were taken into the night.
***
I didn’t know where the safe house was, somewhere between Guadalajara and Mexico City, but it was remote and more secure than I could have imagined. It was pretty much a bunker cut into a swath of jungle. Even if it were daylight there was no way you’d see it until you were literally right on top.
It was also surprisingly spacious inside the bunker. The whole underground structure must have been the size of a mansion, simply decorated but still more than just a hole in the ground. There was a kitchen, bathrooms, dining and living rooms, plus various bedrooms with bunks and offices. Many of the doors were closed and locked. The crazy escapees, who I guessed were “mine” as Evaristo had put it, were led down the hall to the bunks. I didn’t know how any of them could sleep next to each other after that.
There was something entirely unnerving about being underground, trapped like a misdirected gopher. I kept expecting for someone to point a gun in my face and demand my return to Puente Grande, or, at the very least, kill me.
But that didn’t happen and as the night wore on, the more I realized I needed places just like this. Yes, mansions and spacious grounds and all the beautiful things I cultivated were something I wanted in my daily life, but I also needed to feel safe. After everything that had happened, I knew being safe and feeling safe were too different things.
I didn’t sleep that night. The adrenaline from the slaughter, from the escape, was still coursing through my veins. I changed into a spare set of clothes that Evaristo’s man had brought out for me – black pants and a linen dress shirt – and stayed up in the living area with Diego, drinking the few beers we found in the safe house’s fridge, trying to calm down. For all my impatience, I knew we had to wait here for Evaristo before we did anything else. If I acted just on instinct, I would have stolen an SUV and driven right up to the compound near Culiacan, ambushed the house and hoped Esteban was home.
I still didn’t know what to do about Luisa. The more I thought about her, the more disquieted I felt.
After I had lapsed into silence for a long time, Diego nudged my beer with his. In the dead air of the bunker, the sound fell flat.
“What are you going to do about Luisa?” Diego asked, reading me so well.
I exhaled out my nose, then shook my head and leaned back in my seat. “I don’t know.”
“Will you kill her?”
I closed my eyes and tried to find the truth. The truth could hurt me but at least it was real.
“I want to kill her,” I said and then corrected myself as I imagined her dead in my hands. “I need to kill her. For what she has done to me.”
“Javier, I don’t mean to play Devil’s Advocate here, but I don’t think Luisa had anything to do with putting you in jail.”
My throat felt thick, closing in. I looked at my hands, the blood still in my cuticles. “She was fucking Esteban. Isn’t that enough?”
“That’s up to you, my friend. But if you want revenge on her, you will have to wait your turn. Esteban comes first. He must be dealt with.”
“I’ll deal with him,” I said, my eyes hard as I stared at him. “I’m more than ready to.”
“I know. I just don’t want things to go to shit when we find him.”
“If anyone is to find him, they aren’t to kill him. They are to bring him to me.”
“That I think everyone knows. The whole country is awaiting your revenge, you know. Esteban has set himself up to be the villain here, not you. In some ways, you’ve got more of your people’s respect. Being in prison while he walks free with your wife, the same woman he publicly tortures, has made you out to be a martyr. And when you finally do get your revenge, they’ll revere you more for it. Without meaning to, Esteban has led a whole new victory into your hands.”
“But at what cost?” I asked quietly.
He’d killed my sister. He’d stolen my wife. Those were things that could never be made up for, no matter how much the country believed in me or set me up to be a demi-god, like so many narcos before me.
Diego nodded grimly. “You tell me what to do and I’ll do it. If you decide to kill Luisa, I’ll look away but I won’t help you. But if you tell me to protect Luisa and save her from him, I will. I have your back Javier.”
I gave him a wry look. “She has a way of worming into your heart, doesn’t she?”
His smile was grave and I knew how much he actually respected my wife. I had wondered if Diego had ever fallen in love, ever married, ever had children. He never talked about his past like that, but so many people wiped their past clean when they became a narco or sicarrio. They couldn’t hold onto memories because memories were just fire and would burn in their hands. You couldn’t hold a gun if your hands were scarred.
Mine were only bloody.
It was almost morning when Evaristo appeared in the bunker, coming down the narrow staircase from the world up top.
“Didn’t get any sleep?” he asked, peering down at Diego and me as we sat on the couches, tapping our fingers and feet from boredom and anticipation. It was odd to see him now with that authoritative slant, after everything I’d done to him.
“We’ve been waiting for you,” I said, suddenly exhausted. “Like little bitches.”
He smiled and shoved his hands in his pant pockets. “You know, I’m the one who should have the problem with you.”
“Is that right?” I asked carefully, sliding my tongue over my teeth.
“I’m the one who is still missing a toe.”
I shrugged. “And I had to wear the same orange jumpsuit for a few weeks, all while you made a deal with the actual devil.”
He sighed and sat on the arm of the opposite couch, rubbing his hand on the back of his neck. “Normally I would argue that. Javier, I know a lot more about you than you can even imagine. About your rise within the ranks of Travis Raines, the gringo, all the way to your takeover. About your little scuffle with the Americans in California, which then had you thrown into a US prison, then your release and the kidnapping of Luisa Reyes. The fall of Salvador. The Sinaloa cartel that you took.” He paused. “But despite all you’ve done, I know you’re not Esteban Mendoza. That there is a line between ambition and lunacy, between, well, evil and pure evil, if you want to be dramatic.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to be on the more dramatic side?” I asked.
He shook his head. “You know, I had a brief talk with your wife.” I stiffened. “When you sent her to look after me. She’s a good, kind woman you know. But full of spikes, as my grandmother would say. She told me you would go far, all the way to the top, and you would not fail. And I believed her. I wanted in on that. Esteban is just a rabid dog. He’s dangerous and deranged and getting more psychotic as this goes on, as the power is finally passed on to him. I haven’t just been studying you, I’ve been studying him. But he doesn’t have your intelligence, your charm, or your connections. He is the losing side. You are not. You will take it all back and for once, I will be on the side that wins.”
After a moment I said, “That’s a nice speech. But you probably should have arrested Esteban while you had the chance.”
“There was no chance with the federales. Contrary to your belief, they do things by the book. And that’s why they always lose and will continue to lose in the end. Being good and just doesn’t guarantee success. If anything, it can mean your failure.”
I exchanged a glance with Diego. “A pessimist,” he remarked.
“A realist,” Evaristo countered.
“And so young at that,” I added.
“It’s in our blood, what can I say.” He got up off the couch. “Unless you have any objections, tomorrow we strike your residence near Culiacan.”
“My objection is that I’d rather strike it right now. While they are both there and are both alive.”
“And you’re too smart to know that we aren’t about to rush into anything. Try and get some rest,” he said, undoing his tie and walking into the kitchen.
Sleep would be unlikely. But I found myself drifting away on that couch for a few hours, despite my own objections.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Luisa
Javier always used to tell me he didn’t think he had a soul, and if he did, he was sure it was a dirty one. I was more inclined to believe he did, despite the ways he ruled his life. I believed that everyone had a soul, somewhere deep in their body, and it was up to them to let their real spirit free. Even those deemed bad, corrupt, immoral, had light shining through them from time to time. In Javier’s case, I likened his soul to a dirty window. The glow was muddled and what did come through was in little cracks and smudges.
But those little cracks held the brightest light, piercing through the darkness and shining a spotlight in some of the blackest places of the heart. Javier had those cracks, that sharp light, and it was blinding sometimes. I felt I was special just to witness it.
That was just a memory now. I’d met men that had no soul, men like Salvador, who proved my theory wrong. And now I was with Esteban, a man who was far, far worse than my ex-husband and abuser. Salvador was rough and wicked but for all the bad that he was, it wasn’t unusual. Men like him thrived in the cartels, they were born to be narcos. You knew who he was from the start. He made no apologies, he wanted to frighten the world.
But Esteban Mendoza was pure evil. He wasn’t even human, I knew that. If you believed in absolute evil, he was evil absolute. He hid under the persona of being young, dumb, careless man and even though he certainly wasn’t smart, his capacity for inflicting pain and suffering was beyond my understanding.
And what I couldn’t understand, I had no choice but to fear. This was a man beyond reasoning and help and what hurt most of all, what made me feel like I was too stupid to live, that I almost deserved his cruelty, was that I had never seen it coming. I fell for him. Not the real thing, but at least a tempered version of that. I fell for the illusion of someone that was bad, but not that bad. I was lured in by a man who said all the right things and was there when my husband wasn’t and made me feel like I was someone worth loving, if not liking. If not respecting.
I never dreamed that beneath the easy smile and jealous tendencies, the devil incarnate was lurking.
He was a living nightmare.
And I couldn’t wake up.
Esteban kept me locked in my room most of the time. The irony was that it used to be the very room that Javier had held me captive in, the one with the windows that didn’t open, couldn’t break. Looking back, I would have given anything to have been under Javier’s wrath instead of this. I held strong with Javier during that time because somehow, somewhere, I knew that I could get through to him.
Instead, Javier had gotten through to me.
But now, now it was different. It wasn’t even a place. It was this black, nebulous hole of pain and humiliation. Sometimes it was Esteban who had his way with me, other times it was Juanito. At least he was someone I could appeal to. My tears seemed to keep his violence at bay, because Juanito’s violence was only taught through Esteban. It wasn’t in his nature, like it wasn’t in so many people’s nature. He wasn’t born this way, it was thrust upon him and he was molded by the bad and the wicked. We were a nation of people under this heavy hand.
But Esteban’s nature was evil from the moment he came out of the womb, disguising it from day one from the rest of the world, fooling us all. The minute his plan went into effect was the moment that he let it blossom, flourish, transforming himself into someone bad into someone straight from Hell. And when he dealt with me, I could feel it.
It was all I could feel. Nothing but evil. I was sleeping in my own feces and urine, forced to drink water from the same water they let the hogs drink out of. Sometimes live chickens would be placed in my room, chickens who were angry and starved and they would peck at me over and over again until I had no choice to kill them. I was given no food at all and when I asked for some Esteban shoved their rotting carcasses in my face, telling me that was my food.
By day five, I stripped the chickens of their feathers and was forced to eat them raw. It was either do that or starve and I needed every ounce of strength I could get.
Because despite everything that was happening to me and the brutality that I kept witnessing, that kept branding me, I needed to fight back. It didn’t matter if the room
was covered in feathers and I was cowering in the corner naked, bruised and beaten, with matted hair, tearing into a putrid chicken with blood-stained teeth. I had plans to get out of here.
Or I was going to die trying.
And if I was going to die, I was going to try and inflict as much pain and bloodshed as I could as I went out.
Maybe then I’d die with a smile on my face.
I may have underestimated Esteban.
But I would make sure he underestimated me.
The days and nights passed slowly in the house. I had no way of keep track because sleep rarely came for me and I kept the curtains closed all the time. I lived in darkness and in that darkness, I grew something sharp and ragged in my heart. It was strength and it was vengeance and it was enough to keep beating, to keep me alive.
It must have been the night because the room was dense black, more dead than usual. I was sitting, back against the wall, trailing a chicken feather up and down my bare body, trying to pretend I was somewhere else. That the feather was a soft caress, skin on skin, a lover’s touch. Something nice, something sweet, something hopeful. Even though Javier could be rough with me at times and I liked it, he could also be gentle, tender and passionate too. I wanted to pretend the feather was him, his lips, his forgiveness for all my sins.
I sat there, just letting myself believe each stroke was full of hope, the tickle on my scratched arms, a balm on my cuts and wounds.
The door opened abruptly, light from the hall cutting abrasively into the room, and Esteban strode inside, his shadow menacing and seeming to hold more depth than it should have. In his hands was a toolbox, which he carefully placed on the floor before locking the door behind him.
We were engulfed in blackness again. I told myself to not be afraid, that he couldn’t do anything worse to me, that I was strong enough to get through this but I couldn’t help but suck in my breath, holding it in like it was too precious to spare in the same room as him.
“Sitting in the dark,” his voice said, always so jovial. It made everything that much more wrong. “It’s not healthy for you.”