* * *
As the office cleared out for the day, I opened my desk drawer and pulled out the gun from the hidden back compartment. Holding it up to my face, I marveled at the intricacies, definition, and power behind it. One small squeeze of a man’s finger could extinguish another man’s life. It was simple to think about, but devastating on the psyche of a young man eager to find his place in a world he wasn’t wanted.
The room smelled of metallic rust. I may’ve only been sixteen; however, I knew blood when I smelled it. It singed my nose and gagged my throat, but I’d never show it. I steeled my expression, showing nothing on the outside, just as I’d been taught. One solitary overhead light swung, and my eyes followed it back and forth. Somehow it gave the room more of a death shadow than already hung over it. One chair rested in the middle of the dusty floor, and the rest of the room stood bare. I assumed the reasoning was for easier clean up, but what did I know? This was the first time I’d been brought inside. Every other time, I’d stood guard outside the door, hardening my soul to the screams for mercy. Eventually, the pleas stopped tearing at my insides.
Eventually, I’d become him.
A man, not more than twenty, sat bound in the chair with his face beaten and his eyes swollen shut. My two friends had worked him over good. I didn’t ask what he’d done. Sometimes no one knew. Sometimes the one in the chair didn’t even know. Strangely, no one questioned it. That’s how you knew power ran deep. When you sat tied to a chair, bleeding and waiting for the hammer to fall on your execution, and you didn’t ask why. You’d crossed the wrong people.
I smelled him before I heard him. My father had a distinct permanent scent of gunpowder and charred wood that roiled my stomach every time he drew near. Standing in that small room, I stood straighter. I squared my shoulders. I showed no fear.
“Take it, son,” he commanded, handing me a black .22 caliber handgun. Curling my fingers around the trigger, I stared at it as a frenzied war raged quietly inside of me. I knew what he wanted. He’d been warning me that I’d be expected to prove my loyalty to the cartel.
I just didn’t expect it to be so soon.
My father walked over to the weakened man with a sadistic smile, removed the cigar from his mouth, and pressed the lit end into the man’s exposed shoulder. His tortured cries forced my eyes downward, the stench of burnt skin filling the room.
Alejandro’s voice echoed against the bare walls. “Pon atención, Valentin!” Pay attention, Valentin.
My head snapped up in time to see the smile curl my father’s mouth, his dark moustache curled heavy at the ends from weeks of moving locations. Usually a very meticulous man about his appearance, his dishevelment gave him a sinister look I had no desire to push into a corner. We locked eyes, and he nodded to the victim, showing off by sliding into broken English.
“This man. He’s committed a crime. Take him out.”
Knowing this was a test, I stared at my father. If I failed, I could be in the chair next. Blood ran deep in cartel lines, but loyalty ran deeper. Steeling my breath, I raised the gun and aimed it at the man’s heart. A clean shot seemed the most humane. I was a killer, but I wasn’t an animal.
The dark side of me wanted him to curse me or spit at me. I wanted anything to provoke me into a rage. Instead, his eyes bore into me with a finality of acceptance. No fight remained inside of him.
At some point, I must have lowered the gun because my father’s voice boomed from across the room. “Valentin!” Our eyes met, and as always, his coal black stare burrowed its way into my head. “This man, he raped his sister.”
Bright white light burst across my vision. I no longer saw a defenseless man resigned to his own death. Rage welled beneath a bubbling surface of hate. I didn’t hesitate.
I blinked and pulled the trigger. One clean shot between the eyes. The back of the man’s head blew across the room, and my father laughed maniacally.
“Valentin,” he said, clapping me on the shoulder. “It is done now. A new life for you, yes?”
It was a new life. One that would turn me from a boy with a shred of decency into a man with nothing but twisted black regret.
The man I killed was an only child. He had no sister.
I ran my fingers across the smooth metal. I supposed somewhere deep inside a sliver of a soul remained, but beatings and threats ripped most of it away years ago. Now, most all I felt was a sense of relief when I killed.
Relief that it was them and not me.
Kill or be killed.
Shoot or die.
At the end of the day, I’d trained myself to wipe their last gasp of breath from my memory and forget their empty eyes over a glass of tequila and a willing woman.
Live by the sword and die by the sword.
Eventually it’d come for me. Because of my solitude, there’d be no innocent family members to suffer my same fate. At least I’d learned that valuable lesson from Alejandro.
Shoving the gun in the back of my pants, I pulled my suit jacket from the back of my chair. My head swam with ways to navigate shit, now that the Muñoz cartel made the first move against a civilian employee of mine. That kind of thing didn’t happen on American soil. That was a practice from home that’d specifically been left there.
As I adjusted my collar, my office door burst open, causing me to rip the gun from my back and aim it at the dark head that emerged.
“Shit! Boss, it’s me!” Emilio stood crouched in the doorway with his hands held high and his chin ducked, as if that would stave off a bullet to his brain.
“Jesus, Emilio, knock! How many times do I have to tell you people to fucking knock?” I shoved the gun back in my waistband. “I could’ve blown your head off.”
Emilio stood frozen in the doorway, with matted hair and bloodstains splattering his shirt and pants. The sight alone would’ve sent most people screaming for their phones to dial the police, but the scene was nothing new in our world.
Nothing new except for the ravaged look of regret on his face.
That look concerned me. Not because I particularly cared, but because regret had no place in our lives. It had to be checked at the door, along with a conscience if a man was to survive.
“Emilio?” I asked with an annoyed tone. I’d had a long day and was in no mood for this.
Emilio ran a shaking hand over his oily, slicked back hair, repeating the move as he mumbled. “I don’t know what happened. We never get it wrong. Never wrong. And so, what if we do? It happens. It’s the way of home, right? You play, your family could pay.”
“Emilio?”
“But they pay with torture. That’s the way you taught us, boss. There are no mistakes. Never admit mistakes. But I didn’t look in the side lot when we brought him in. I never thought…”
“Emilio!” I yelled, fed up with his incoherent ramblings.
He looked up, his eyes rimmed red. “We got the wrong guy.”
“I thought you said it was done?” Alarm crawled up my spine as I ran over every order I’d given in the past few days.
“Lachey. The debt he owed us.” He stopped and shook his head as if remembering something unpleasant. “We got him and took him to Caliente after hours. I did just as you ordered, but boss…” He trailed off, tugging at his collar. “I just found out my crew were taken out. The men who dropped off Lachey at Caliente weren’t our men, and they didn’t get the man who owed us. They got his son.”
I walked past him, pulled him inside, and slammed the door. Circling him, I crowded right beside him and growled in his ear. “What the fuck? What son?”
Emilio visibly swallowed. “Lachey had a son who worked at his store. The old man has been MIA for weeks. My men wouldn’t have gotten it wrong. This had to be Muñoz work. I swear, boss, I only took his fingers and roughed him up. That’s when I went outside to call you.”
Emilio’s normal commanding presence shriveled as he shook his head violently. A sense of dread filled me that I couldn’t explain. I motioned for him
to continue.
“I saw her car after we hung up. I called out to her, but there was nowhere for her to hide, and Lachey distracted me. The cantina was empty, boss. She told me she’d gone home, and I know sometimes she leaves with dates, but I don’t have a good feeling. I don’t know what happened.”
My fists curled inward at my side. “Who?”
He closed his eyes as if blocking out sound would block out the punishment he knew would come. “My bartender, sir. I think she was there. I went back to make sure my men had taken Lachey home.” He paused, his face growing pale. “But others came in after me and put a bullet in the back of his head.”
“What makes you think she didn’t leave with a man as usual then?”
His fist curled around a gold bracelet as his face grew pale. “I found this in the kitchen near Lachey.”
Recognition fueled me as I scanned the intricately looped gold bracelet. “Was there a message?”
He nodded fiercely. “Carved into his chest. La Muerte.”
I vibrated with anger and pushed past him. Scaring my secretary was one thing. Brewing a war by interfering in my business was on a whole other level of uncharted territory. I wouldn’t sit by and wait for another message from the Muñoz Cartel. I’d almost stepped over the threshold when Emilio’s bloodstained hand stopped me.
“Let go,” I demanded.
“Boss, my bartender is an innocent. If they have her, you know what will happen.”
I knew all too well what happened to innocents who’d seen too much.
“Name?” I had no time for conversation.
“Eden,” he sighed. “Eden O’Dell.”
Whether driven by lust, fear, or revenge, my body stiffened and my blood boiled as I made the connection. I had no idea why, but I just knew.
Cereza.
Chapter Eleven
EDEN
After stopping three times to throw up, the car barely stopped moving before I threw it into park and tore out of the driver’s side, almost taking the door off its hinges. Blood roared in my ears, and I knew a momentary break in my stride would snap the control I held onto by a thread.
Climbing the stairs to the front porch of my childhood home, I opened the glass door and pounded on the huge paneled door with my fist.
Nothing.
I pounded harder, each slam of my skin against the wood timed with the slam of my heart against the wall of my chest.
Still nothing.
“Dad, open the door. I know you’re in there!”
The night replayed in my head as if looped on an eight-millimeter film. “Dad!” I screamed, the adrenaline starting to fade, and reality setting in. “Open the damn door!”
A slight movement inside caught my attention. Desperation took hold, and a cry gurgled out as I pounded one last time with my hand flat against the door. “Dad,” I pleaded, my voice breaking as I fought to breathe. “It’s Nash. He’s...God, Dad…” I couldn’t say the words. Saying them aloud made them real.
Slowly the door creaked open, and I stumbled to regain my footing. My father stood in sweatpants and a t-shirt, unshaven and unkempt, his graying beard overtaking his round face. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days. His eyes were rimmed red, with dark circles smudging the skin underneath them.
“What’s wrong with your brother?” he asked, moving aside and motioning me in. “Eden, what are you doing here so early?”
The minute I stepped inside my father’s house, the air changed. Tension filled the room, and apprehension practically vibrated off him. Sticking his head out of the door, he quickly glanced around before shutting it and twisting two locks and a deadbolt.
I rubbed my chest, trying to relieve the suffocation that had built since running from the cantina. I leaned against the kitchen table, taking weight off my shaking legs.
“You’re drenched,” he commented, inching toward me. “Eden?” Almost hesitantly he reached for my arm, wiping off the smattering of rain that still clung to me like a second skin.
Flinching, I ran my hands down my face and stared at him as Nash’s words flashed through my head.
“Cherry, I don’t do drugs. They got the wrong guy. I swear.”
“Then what’s this all about, Nash?”
“Dad.”
As a tear escaped, I let out a slow breath. “What’s going on, Dad?”
He gave me a chagrined glance before turning his eyes away. “I don’t know what you mean.”
His face told me everything. My father was a shitty liar. Me? I was a pro. I’d crafted evasion into an art form, but my father couldn’t look anyone in the eye and lie.
That’s how I knew.
Catapulting myself off the table, I grabbed handfuls of his t-shirt and screamed in his face—all the anger, fear, and anguish inside of me releasing at once. “You’re lying! Goddamn it, Dad. Do you want to know what happened to Nash tonight?” I released my hold on his shirt and twisted around to show him my back. “This is what happened tonight. This is Nash’s blood.”
I turned back around in time to see him pale, and his chin quiver. “God, is…is he okay?”
“No, he’s not okay!” I bellowed, my body shaking violently. “He’s dead! Drug runners shot him in the head!” Hysterical, tremors in my voice became audible as every word I spoke felt like acid on my tongue.
It was real. My brother was gone. The only constant in my life.
Dad stumbled backward, his eyes filling with unshed tears as his knees buckled. Running one hand across his mouth repeatedly, he pulled at his wayward hair with the other. “Jesus. It doesn’t make sense. Nash had nothing to do with…” A mask of clarity blanketed his face. “Oh, Jesus.”
His words took root in my head and exploded. One second later, I was on him. My father had a good eight inches on me, but grief rendered me unstoppable.
“Nash had nothing to do with what, Dad? What the fuck are you into that Nash got mixed up in, huh? Those men said something about Lachey owing money for cocaine. Why would…” My words trailed off as a closed suitcase and duffle bag perched on the couch caught my eye. Spinning back around, I wiped tears with the back of my hand and pointed to it. “What the hell is that? Going somewhere?”
He lowered his head, blinking back emotion as he walked past me. Wrapping his shaking fingers around the handle of the suitcase, he dragged it over the top of the couch. “My life is over, Eden,” he said, hugging it to his chest. “Everything’s over.”
“Fuck this,” I muttered. He could spout his philosophical bullshit all he wanted. I’d had enough. My brother deserved more. If nobody else gave a damn, I’d call someone who would. Reaching into my purse, I grabbed my phone and started dialing.
“Who are you calling?”
“Not that it’s any of your business, but I’m calling Brody. I care about catching the sons of bitches who murdered your son, even if you—hey, what the hell?” He snatched the phone out of my hands, staring at me as if I’d said I was calling the moon.
“Are you crazy?” he shouted, dropping it in his pocket. “We’ll both be dead before you end the call.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? And answer my question.”
“I’m a shamed, broken man,” he replied, looking to the side as if an invisible vision of the past had appeared. “May God have mercy on my soul, but I have to leave.”
“You do that,” I hissed, clenching my arms by my side so I wouldn’t take a swing at him. “You run like a little bitch while your son lays on a cold kitchen floor. Go hide, but I won’t. I watched my brother die, and I’ll take my last breath getting justice for him.”
“Don’t be stupid, Eden.”
I felt his impatience but refused to budge. “I’m going after them. Every one of them will pay.” My body shook as anger tore through me. Vengeance replaced the last traces of my humanity. “I don’t know how I’ll do it, but I can’t go back to my same life after what I saw. That life is gone. It died with Nash. I’ll live revenge, breathe it, and crave
it until it’s served.”
We stared at each other, each of us unrelenting in our resolution.
Dejected, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a silver necklace. Closing his eyes, he let out a long breath and extended his hand, holding it by the chain. “Here. Take this.”
“What is that?” I blinked furiously, trying to rid my eyes of falling tears.
“Take it,” he repeated with finality, nodding once.
I couldn’t explain why, but I took the medallion out of his hand and squeezed it. The rough metal and smooth porcelain contrasted starkly in the dim light.
Studying the face, I glanced up quizzically. “St. Michael?”
He dipped his chin. “The Archangel. The guardian of souls who triumphed over hell. He was a spiritual warrior in the conflict against evil.”
Earlier images flashed in horrific sequence. “It’s a little late for a triumph over hell, Dad. I’m in it.”
Taking it from my hand, he draped it over my neck, and the chill of metal rested against my chest. “Never take this off, Edie. You’re a warrior, and so much stronger than your old man. You can win this war, but you have to be smart and vigilant at all times.” Finally looking at me, he stared at my face as if he were trying to imprint it into his mind. “Save yourself, Eden. Don’t get involved with that man. They’re watching you.”
My brows creased. “What man? Who are you talking about? Stop talking in riddles!”
Without another word, my father grabbed his suitcase, kissed my forehead and headed out the back door. My feet felt planted in concrete. Even as my brain commanded them to move, I stood rooted to my spot, watching him as he closed the door and walked out of my life.
Fuck him.
I’d spent most of my adult life on my own. Today would be no different. My face had been the last thing Nash had seen. I knew he saw the promise in my eyes. I wouldn’t fail him.
Dropping the medallion from my hand, it landed with a thud against my chest. I never looked back as I stormed off the front porch, not caring if I disturbed the entire neighborhood. Children would be waking for breakfast in a few hours, and normal families would be making their way to church.
Blurred Red Lines: A Carrera Cartel Novel Page 8
