by Karina Halle
“Luisa,” Javier said quietly. His gaze held me even when I wanted to look away. “You know I don’t care.”
I anxiously rubbed my lips together before saying, “About what?”
“What you’re worried about.”
He reached out and ran the tip of his finger along the scar that one of Esteban’s men had left on my chest, the one that led all the way to my stomach. The scar he left before he raped me. Before they all did.
I could still see them, could still smell them, even when I didn’t close my eyes. They were always there. They had permeated my soul.
I shuddered and Javier abruptly took his hand away. A few heavy beats passed between us.
He swallowed. “We can get past this,” he said thickly.
I couldn’t answer because I didn’t know what he meant. There was so fucking much to get past now, how could we ever get ahead.
“It’s just skin,” he added.
“No.” I stared up at the ceiling fan. “It’s not just skin. It’s a memory. My skin remembers.”
He breathed in sharply. “Does it remember me at all?”
I turned my head to look at him, taken aback by the rawness in his voice.
“I hope it will,” I said.
I hope that more than anything, I thought.
He held my gaze and I could see that frustration and impatience mount. He was thinking that Esteban was out there still and all the damage was in here.
***
“Here you are,” Javier’s voice rose above the crashing waves.
I turned my head, hugging my shawl close to me as he walked out onto the beach barefoot, in linen pants and a dress shirt. He was holding two glasses of red wine. It was hard to get the good stuff in El Salvador, let alone the reserves that we owned back in Mexico, but it would do for now.
At the moment, it seemed like everything would do for now.
We’d been at the safe house on the beach for just over two weeks. Everyone was well-fed, well taken care of, but tensions were high.
With no action at all, the criminals needed an outlet and one was found wandering around the bedroom while I was trying to take a shower. Needless to say, Javier showed up and shot him on the spot. Diego was berated for letting his guard down for one second, though I wouldn’t and couldn’t blame the man. He’d done so much for me, for all of us, already.
Me, I felt myself spin the other way, toward fear, sucked in a big black hole I couldn’t quite crawl out of. I shut down and closed myself off from everyone, including my husband. It just wasn’t worth the risk.
Meanwhile word had gotten out that Javier was no longer in Puente Grande. The prison director was sacked, the warden was found beheaded in a ditch and a handful of guards went missing.
As predicted, Evaristo was on the chopping block for that fiasco. He promptly disappeared from the agency, having already put a new life in place. Javier found it grossly amusing that Evaristo had taken on the identity of a priest, Father Armando, but desperate times seemed to call for desperate measures. At the house he was still Evaristo but when he went out into the nearest towns for supplies or recon, he was Father Armando, complete with the whole black-robbed garments.
No one here seemed to be living anymore. We were just existing. Waiting. It’s funny how far revenge can drive you, you’re willing to give up so much for just one sweet taste.
I still wanted mine. It’s all I ever thought about. The more Javier, Evaristo and Diego scanned networks and emails and plotted and mapped, searching for him, the more despondent they got. But me, all I could think about was murdering the man who put us all here. After a while even my guilt seemed to abate, just long enough for me to believe I had the right to kill him as I saw fit. After that was done, then I would deal with everything else I had shoved aside.
Including my husband. Now Javier had handed me the glass of wine, reaching out to me when I’d been anything but receptive.
I took the glass from him, thanking him quietly.
He eased himself down on the log beside me.
“How is your shoulder?” he asked. Normally I’d say he was making conversation but I’d barely seen him lately. Most of the time I slept. Dreamed of blood.
I pressed the small bump on my collarbone where it had broken. I didn’t need a sling anymore, which was good. “It’s fine. I can’t lift my arm over my head or far out to the sides but at least I can use it now.”
He nodded and brought his attention out to the waves. They pounded against the shore, sending ocean spray into the air that only seemed to add to the heat. “It’s been dead-end after dead-end.” He sighed angrily. “I know you said revenge is a dish best served cold but the longer this takes … the more I fear we’ll never get him.”
That doesn’t sound like you, I wanted to tell him. Javier’s determination usually knew no bounds. Strangely enough he was an eternal optimist in such a negative business, always believing he would get his way in the end.
Then again, I didn’t feel like myself either. I don’t know who I felt like. Everything was different. Our location, our team, our relationship. Even the face that looked back at me in the mirror wasn’t of Luisa Bernal. She was no queen. She was a scarred, broken woman.
“Talk to me,” Javier said imploringly.
I slowly met his gaze. “I don’t know what to say.”
He studied me for a moment. “Did Esteban ever say anything to you about his plans, about safe houses, about where he might go in an emergency?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
“Think!” He smacked his hand against his thigh.
I balked, gripping the stem of the wine glass. “You seriously think I want to remember? Do you want me to pull up the memories of what happened there? I’m trying to block it out, Javier! Don’t you know what he did to me?”
“Of course I know what he did to you,” he said sharply. “You won’t even let me touch you. I’m your fucking husband.”
“You’re also a fucking liar and a cheat!” I yelled, overwhelmed by the anger blanketing me. I got to my feet, the wine splashing around the glass.
Javier got to his feet too, eyes blazed, nostrils flaring. “You were the one fucking him to begin with!”
“Only because you did it first, only because you pushed me away. You treated me like garbage. I thought our marriage was over and he was the only one who showed any interest in me. And yeah, I regret it a million times over and over and over because I was an idiot who slept with the devil and invited him in to fuck up her life, our life. I was so, so, so stupid and this all happened because of me. But I can’t forget …” I sucked in my breath, trying to calm down. This was the first outburst I’d had since being in the clinic.
He reached out and put his hand behind my neck, holding me. “I am sorry.”
I looked away but he squeezed me harder. “I am sorry,” he repeated. “I’m not going to make excuses because I was just looking for excuses to hurt you, hurt myself and I don’t know why. But it happened and there is nothing I can do about it.”
I stared at him with sadness. “You’ll do it again.”
“No,” he said adamantly, shaking his head. “I will not.”
“You will. Because when you touch me, I remember them. I can’t be with you like that … and I know there’s only so much you can take. You’ll go elsewhere. It will happen again and I’ll have no choice but to watch.”
“You will not remember them,” he said, pulling me to him, wine spilling everywhere. “I will make you forget.”
“It doesn’t work that way,” I protested.
He kissed me anyway. I froze but his lips were persistent, drawing out a deep, hard kiss. His tongue was wet, warm, feverish against mine, desperate to unleash something in me. I wanted to give in right there, I wanted to succumb to the lust, to the love, to his wildness. He moaned into me which only shot vibrations right into my core, making me swell with need and want.
I had to have my husband back.
<
br /> He threw the wine glass to the sand while I barely held onto mine. He put one hand on my head, where if I had long hair he would have made a fist, his other hand to my waist, pulling me close to him. He pressed me into him, his dick hard and straining against me, while he slid his fingers down over my ass, taking a hefty squeeze that normally would have sent me into overdrive.
But I couldn’t do it.
“No,” I mumbled against him, pushing him away.
“No?” he repeated, breathing hard, trying to come closer again but I shoved him off as much as I could with my arm.
“I can’t do it,” I cried out softly. “I can’t do it, I’m sorry.” It hadn’t been his hand on my ass, it had been Esteban’s and it hadn’t been his cock vying for me, it had been one of my rapists. That vile look, the sour breath, the humiliation, the pain. I closed my eyes and opened them again, hoping Javier’s face would set me right.
The man was hurt. Angry. Frustrated. He stared at me so intently I thought he might be able to see all the ugliness inside, the traces they left behind. Maybe he did see that, because he stepped back and turned away from me, running his hands through his hair, breathing out hard through his nose.
“I’m sorry,” I called out softly. “When you touch me, it’s not you.”
He stopped a few feet away, his hands balling at his sides. He leaned his head back, seeming to ask the fading sky of something. Finally he turned around to face me.
“Don’t you think I need this too?” he asked, voice breaking. “That I need to do this? This isn’t about fucking you Luisa. This is about erasing him.”
There was a bitter taste in my mouth. As hard of a time I was having with this, Javier was too. He was a possessive man through and through and he needed to own me both body and soul.
Esteban was a tar-black cloud, hanging over every inch of us, never letting go.
“I know,” I told him, suddenly just so empty and weak with everything. “I’m sorry.”
We stood there on the beach for a moment, the wind picking up and brushing his hair across his face, and stared at each other. So much space between us now, a space I didn’t know if we’d ever bridge.
“I’m sorry too,” he eventually said. He opened his mouth to add something else but then closed it and walked off toward the house, leaving me to the early stars and dark waves.
Later that night, I dreamed of Esteban.
This wasn’t new, I had nightmares nearly every night. He would douse me with acid again and again or tie me to the bed and let the chickens peck me to death.
But this dream wasn’t frightening. I was in it like an apparition, floating past him and Juanito as they planned at the kitchen table. Discussing a map. A place that Esteban wanted to go, a place he’d been before.
The dream ended.
But it was enough to jog my memory.
I woke up in the middle of the night and reached over for Javier, shaking him.
“What is it?” he asked, immediately awake. I could see his eyes shining in the dark as he sat up beside me.
I put my hand over his and squeezed it.
“I know where Esteban is.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Esteban
“Are we there yet?”
Esteban wasn’t sure which one of his idiots had asked that question. Though there weren’t many of them left, they were all starting to look and act the same, like monkeys who’d been given Kool-Aid and AK-47s. Esteban had thought he was being smart by recruiting such derelict soldiers, but that was just another thing that wasn’t going his way at the moment.
Now they were hiking through the jungle outside of Catacamas in the Honduras. His lone helicopter ate shit weeks ago, just before the PFM raid in Guatemala, and he’d been on the run ever since with no time to bring up new supplies.
Yeah, things really weren’t going as planned.
Javier had become a thorn in his side once again. The prick had escaped from prison without anyone noticing and the next thing Esteban knew, his compound was under attack from him and that bootlicking fed, Evaristo Sanchez, who was obviously no longer working for the federales and had cut some sort of deal with Javier.
Esteban hated the fact that he didn’t see that one coming. If only he’d used his brain he could have brought Evaristo over to his side before this all happened. He’d been too cocky and that was his downfall, as usual.
But Esteban wasn’t really using his brain anymore. He was dipping into the cocaine a bit much, which, even though it made him feel smart and invincible, it was really doing the opposite. In the past, Este would take it to just get through the day, even though it had a tendency to make him more violent. The more coke that Este did, the more his logic was derailed, the more that he made stupid mistakes.
He was on the brink of insanity, if not far over it. He was doing things that even he thought he’d never do and had reached a new point of depravity. Unfortunately it was costing him. If he had thought a little clearer, perhaps Luisa wouldn’t have been able to drive those scissors into his eye.
He didn’t even miss his eye. Sure it fucked up his depth perception and he was pretty much useless with a weapon of any kind, but he thought it made him look cool. He refused to wear an eye-patch too, preferring for others to stare into the ugly, gaping hole in his face that complimented his facial scar so well. “Eyeless Este,” his men had started to call him.
He liked the nickname. It was better than “Erectionless Este,” which some puta had called him back when he was a teenager. It was because of her that he discovered he could get an erection after all, but it was only when violence or the thought of violence was involved. He never killed the little bitch but he sure did make her scream. After that, she never uttered anything towards him again. None of the girls did.
What he didn’t like about his whole situation though, is that half his hair at the back of his head had fallen out in clumps because of the acid. He’d started to wear a baseball cap after that, cursing Luisa for being such a crazy cunt.
So with Evaritso and Javier now working together, Esteban had to work hard to stay one step ahead. There had been too many casualties though and now that it was common knowledge that Javier Bernal was alive and well, whomever Esteban had tried to coax over to his side was going back to Javier.
That was a hard pill to swallow. To know that after all he’d done, Javier was still on top and still calling the shots. It didn’t even bring him any pleasure anymore to know that he’d made his beauty queen less of a beauty. She was still with him, still his queen, her crown tarnished but wearable.
The drugs made things better. They always did. It’s too bad his crew were starting to dip into it as well, making them even more apelike than normal.
But Esteban had one last card up his sleeve, one last place to go.
A place he’d discussed at length before with Juanito, poor naïve Juanito, just in case something were to have happened.
At least he was smart enough to have had a back-up plan.
They would journey up the thick, unyielding jungle to the compound in the trees. He at least knew from the last time it was used that there were more guns, ammo and even a helicopter there, if they were lucky. In that fortress where so much blood had once been spilled, so much drama had taken place, Esteban would recoup. He would re-plan. Then he would do whatever it took to rule again.
There were hostages he could take – Javier still had a sister in New York, did he not? Luisa had her parents in San Diego – and there were enemies of Javier’s he could convince to join his side. Hell, the federales might even want to strike another deal. If Javier was put away again, there was no way he’d be walking out of there alive.
Esteban smiled at all the possibilities. He just needed to get to his new castle and wait.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Javier
I stared at Luisa for a moment, trying to see her features in the dark. She squeezed my hand, a simple gesture that shot fire up my arm.<
br />
“You know where Esteban is?” I asked, trying to not to get my hopes up even though my pulse had already kicked up a few notches.
She nodded. “Yes. I had a dream just now. But it wasn’t a dream, I was remembering something I’d heard. Him and Juanito discussing the fincas and safe houses that they knew of. Esteban said there was one in the Honduras, inside a national park. He said you’d never go back because of what happened there. I think that’s where he is, where he thinks you’ll never go.”
All at once I knew she was right. The place she was talking about could only be the former compound of the former Travis Raines. It was a place where a lot of shit went down a few years ago, even though it felt like another lifetime. It had been another lifetime, back when Raines was still alive and I was caught up with enemies and ex-lovers. I left that place the leader of Raines’ cartel, even though I’d lost something, someone else, in the process.
I never did well with humiliation. Esteban knew that.
“It’s not easy to get to,” I told her, even though I knew I’d go through hell and high water to take that man’s life.
“I don’t care,” she said. “And I’m going with you.”
I knew she’d say that. “Am I bad a husband if I don’t object?”
She shook her head vigorously. “I wouldn’t expect anything less from you.”
Honestly, I didn’t like the idea of her coming along. I wasn’t kidding when I said it wouldn’t be easy to get to. To attack Este undetected meant we could only drive to a certain point and then hike the rest of the way. We couldn’t bring helicopters, they’d give him too much warning. The journey would take at least a day and a half and I wasn’t sure if she could handle it in her condition, even if she was healing up nicely. And I sure as hell didn’t know if she could handle the actual ambush. It was risky to have her there.
But I also knew it was riskier to leave her behind. I needed Diego for this one. Besides, I owed it to her. I promised her she could get her hands dirty. I wanted to see what she’d do to Esteban if she had half the chance. So even though I was purposely putting my wife in harm’s way by letting her come along, it was still the right thing to do.