His amusing smile turned into a frown. “Or perhaps, Alexa is simply the perfect puzzle, ready to be solved?” he said. “How much would I have to pay for a night with her, do you think?”
My adrenaline surged and I stifled a frown. The last thing I wanted was to make Marco think I actually cared about Eva.
Which I did.
What the fuck does Marco not understand about the fact that Alexa--Eva--is mine?
Shit, maybe I didn’t know what Eva and I were yet, but I sure as hell knew that whatever we were didn’t involve Marco getting in on the action. It was a strange feeling, this possessiveness that had taken hold of me. And more so now after the night we had last night, which I was still trying to piece together. I was able to fake our time in bed for all of thirty seconds before my attraction for Eva overwhelmed me and that shit became real. I didn’t know if it was real for her, but it was real for me.
I took a deep breath and looked around at all of the fancy, lavish settings that surrounded us. It was like we were in a Pitbull music video for God’s sake. I was reminded that money couldn’t buy happiness. For all of the millions the Reyes family had made, a cloud of sadness seemed to follow them around. Mo' money, mo' problems was a way of life for them.
In a strange way it made sense that Marco would want Eva, who was precisely the only girl within his reality who was off-limits to him.
I realized I’d been staring off at the clouds for seconds—minutes?
“Corbin? How much for the girl?” Marco squinted. His square face and mustache came back into focus. Whatever number I named, Marco could pay it. Money wasn’t even an issue in the slightest. “Just one night.”
“Alexa isn’t for sale,” I quipped.
Marco leaned forward and frowned.
“You’re quite protective of her for just your sidepiece. You’re not getting attached to her, are you?”
He was mocking me, searching my face for a sign of weakness. Like the great poker player I was, I gave him nothing to work with. Marco kept on staring at me until we were interrupted.
“Hey boys,” I heard Eva’s sing song voice call out from the sliding glass door that led out to the patio.
My head automatically swung in her direction. Today she had donned a sexy red dress, looking every bit the part of a prostitute. She also looked hot as fuck in the daylight.
I gulped and hoped Marco didn’t see how fast I looked her way.
“Interesting,” Marco said. I could feel his eyes still burning on the back of my head.
“What’s interesting?” Eva asked as she approached us. She brushed an affectionate finger across my shoulders.
“Oh, nothing, nothing at all,” Marco answered as Eva sat down next to me. “I think that I’ve figured out what needs to happen with this Rubik’s cube to solve it, that’s all.”
20
Eva
Later that day, Marco took us on a tour of the grounds. A few miles away from where we slept, there was an entirely separate mansion. It wasn’t quite as big inside, but it had a plethora of rooms in a dorm room style set up for all of the workers who worked at the mansion: everyone from guards to porters and maids staff.
I felt strange and out of place riding over the dirt roads of the Reyes property in a Rolls-Royce convertible. Marco sat in the front seat while Corbin and I rode in the back, the warm afternoon breeze flowing across our faces. Marco’s attachment to me was growing, and it showed in how he spoke to me.
“You should be proud, Alexa. You are the first woman I have allowed to come on this tour," Marco turned back with his hand still on the wheel and looked at me in the back seat as I rode, my body pressed up against Corbin. "But I think you'll be good to give the men some motivation," he added.
"Is this where Luis lives?" Corbin asked in an attempt to change the subject.
"Luis lives wherever he chooses," Marco said. I was curious as to why Marco would give such a non-answer about Luis. "So, Alexa, where are you from?"
"My mother is from Mexico," I began my made up backstory. "We moved to San Diego when I was seven. We lived south of Nogales in a little town called Santa Ana..."
"Santa Ana? You don't say. I'm familiar with it. And your father, where was he from?"
I gulped. I wondered if he'd have the resources to check up on me, find my real name. "He's a gringo," I said.
"Oh," Marco answered. "Well that explains your freckles, doesn't it?"
I blushed.
"So, like mother, like daughter?" Marco asked me.
“Excuse me? I don’t understand what you mean?”
I noticed that I was holding on to Corbin's bicep in the back seat like it was an anchor. He felt like one.
"I mean to say that you like gringos, just like your mother," Marco said with a wink. I couldn’t tell where he was going with this.
"Aww, are you getting jealous?" I ribbed, reaching forward and rubbing Marco’s shoulder. He smiled, one of the only genuine smiles I'd seen him have in the time we'd interacted. "I can give you a little love too, you know."
As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I regretted saying them. I felt Corbin's bicep twitch; he didn’t like the thought of my giving Marco love either.
But out here, there was a very real possibility Marco might ‘request’ me for a night.
And that could get real interesting.
"That's good to hear," Marco said. "Corbin can be a little protective sometimes. Even of his mistresses."
"Oh Papi," I said, putting my hand on Corbin's chest. "How could you be jealous? You know you’re my number one."
"I'm not jealous," Corbin retorted without expression, and I couldn’t tell if he genuinely didn’t care if I slept with Marco, or if he was just playing along. "Why would I be?"
Marco was still playing with the rubik's cube in one hand as he drove. He had taken quite the attachment to the thing.
"Oh look!" he said, and showed us that he'd made a cross on each side. "I'm finally getting good at this."
He turned around in his seat, handed the rubik’s cube to me, and put his hand on my bare knee. I had to resist recoiling at his leathery touch as the car pulled to a halt in front of mansion number two.
“Alexa, I’m having a party for my staff tonight, and I’d like you to attend. I need a gorgeous woman to bartend for the party…and I would just love for you to step in and help out Louisa. A pretty girl like you will help keep up the men’s morale. It can get lonely here, being so isolated. What do you think, Corbin?”
“I think it sounds like a fantastic idea,” he said. “I know all about isolation. Plus, it’ll give us some time to talk business tonight.”
The two men stared each other down like two alpha mountain lions who knew only one could be king.
“It sounds fun,” I murmured. “I have a new dress I’ve been wanting to try out anyway. I’m sure the men will get a kick out of it.”
I snuggled closer to Corbin, and I swear I saw his jaw twitch from the tension.
21
Corbin
As the sun was setting that night, Marco and I sat down to talk business while the ladies got ready to put on their “bartending show” or whatever the hell they were doing, and then head to the other mansion.
I came down the steps and walked outside to find Marco sitting down at a table with several of his finest servants standing at the ready.
“Hello Corbin,” Marco said. “Have a seat.”
He had made up a place just for me with all the trappings for a several course meal as well as two giant wine glasses. Marco’s was already filled.
The table was long, with enough room for at least 10 people, but it was only going to be Marco and I. There were only two place-settings.
“Luis couldn’t make it, I’m assuming?”
“Luis is held up taking care of some business right now. And as you know, he has entrusted me to do his bidding anyhow.”
“Of course,” I said as I sat down and a servant pushed my seat in.
/>
A server brought the first course for us, a cold gazpacho.
“Enjoy, sir,” the server said.
“Shut the fuck up,” Marco interjected, scowling at the server suddenly. He turned to me. “One of my pet peeves is when the server tells me to fucking enjoy my meal. Why wouldn’t I enjoy it? I fucking picked it.”
I shrugged. “Personally, I don’t really give a shit what a server says to me.”
“Exactly,” the server said, nodding.
Marco turned back to the server. “Did I ask you to talk?”
“No, sir. I just thought that—”
“Now there you go, talking again. Again, I didn’t ask you to talk.” Marco rose up from his seat and grabbed hold of a large metal candlestick from the table.
“Please, Sir.”
“That wasn’t very smart,” Marco said with a scowl. He wound up like a baseball batter, and, spilling wax on the ground and on his own shirt, struck the man in the head.
He screamed as he fell, trying to put his arms up to stop the blows. I’d seen shit like this before. Hell, I’d been Marco before. Maybe I still was Marco. Even though I hadn’t killed since before prison, I knew the violence and the evil lived inside me.
For a moment he paused. “See everybody? This is what happens to people who disobey my instructions.” Marco bellowed.
Marco continued striking down blows on the man’s head until it turned bloody and his body went limp while his other servants looked on in horror. I knew the feeling that was surging through Marco’s veins. There was an extreme power in taking a life—or getting close to it. I wasn’t sure if this man was fully dead yet, but he’d certainly need life support after this beating. “Do not fuck with Marco fucking Reyes,” he yelled, and wiped the man’s blood from his own forehead.
In the end, the drug world was a wilderness. Kill—exert your power—or risk being seen as weak and get taken advantage of. There was no middle ground. Kill or be killed.
And Marco’s over-the-top evil was one of the reasons I was damn happy I was playing for the other side now.
Marco stood; his chest heaving, bloody weapon in his hand. The bloodied body was on the ground below him and didn’t even seem to be breathing any more. I supposed the servant was dead. That’s when I saw her walk by.
Eva and Louisa, escorted by a couple of armed guards, came out of the door and onto the patio, clearly on their way to the show they were putting on.
“Oh Hi ladies,” Marco said to them, smiling.
Eva looked so sweet and innocent, but I saw her fight not to break into tears when she saw the dead man. She suddenly looked worried as fuck.
Marco walked toward them with the candlestick. I got up from my chair and made a beeline for her, arriving a few seconds before Marco.
“Don’t you ladies look gorgeous tonight,” Marco said, looking like an insane man with all the blood on his shirt. “I’m sorry you had to see this. This isn’t a sight for a lady. In fact, Pablo, why the fuck are you taking them through the patio?”
The guard said nothing. He simply whisked Louisa and Eva away, into the house, and through the front door. Smart man. Better to not get into an argument with Marco, because we all knew how those ended.
“What are you all staring at? Get a fucking cleanup crew over here and clean this shit up!” Marco yelled to another servant.
A minute later, the body was carried away, and Marco was wearing a new set of white linen pants and a button down t-shirt that his servants brought out to him. He and I sat back down at the table.
“Pardon the interruption,” Marco said solemnly.
“It’s alright. Glad to see you are dealing with the dumb fucks in your organization appropriately,” I said through gritted teeth.
Marco looked at me with a scowl, but let out a single laugh. And then another. Then he broke out into full-on raucous laughter, and I joined him.
“Yes. Good thing gazpacho is supposed to be served cold!” he said with a chuckle.
I smirked. Seeing the utter power that Marco held over his staff and the fear they had for him, I suddenly envied him. Even when I was a major drug dealer, I’d never risen to such ranks as to have people fearful of me murdering them for no reason.
“So, where were we? I believe we were discussing the terms of your agreement with us,” Marco said as he took his first sip of the red gazpacho. “As I said, we want to take care of you financially for what you’ve done for us. In addition to the ten thousand I gave you yesterday, we have another ten here for you.” He clapped, and a servant brought out another briefcase. Marco snapped it open in front of me to show me it was filled to the brim with bills.
I looked at the cash, and then glanced up at Marco. He took a sip of his wine and gauged my reaction.
“How much product I gotta move for this?”
“I’m giving you a cool thousand for every pound you move. So that’s twenty pounds total.”
I nodded and motioned to the man to take the cash away.
I took a long, slow sip of my wine, letting its tart, full taste linger for a moment as I did some mental math. I could make a hundred thousand cash easy if I played my cards right with Marco. I was his golden gringo, the one who knew how to sell the shit out of his product and get the most money for it.
Now, with the money in front of me, my mind started to wander. What if I took the money and fell off the face of the earth? The feds were getting me out of my sentence, but they weren’t paying me shit. As soon as they got what they wanted—Luis Reyes—I’d be out on my ass on the street again, and banned from doing the only kind of business I knew: dealing coke.
“What kind of wine is this, Marco?” I said as I put the glass back down on the table.
“It’s a Malbec from the high mountains in Mendoza. The only kind I drink.”
“It’s delicious.”
Marco was starting to make a whole lot of sense. Maybe this was my chance to finally fulfill my lifelong dream of becoming a rich man who lived in the Caribbean, away from everything, with not a care in the world.
I wondered what Eva would think of my plan.
22
Eva
I woke up the next morning in a bed in the guest room mansion in a cold sweat, panicked about where I was.
I wished I was back in the regular mansion with Corbin.
It had been an interesting night, to say the least. The hundred or so members of the Reyes staff had gotten drunk, rowdy, and partied through the night as Louisa and I did a combination of bartending, stripping, and letting them take the occasional body shot. I had overheard the drunken men speaking about the whereabouts of Luis Reyes. Interestingly, many of them hadn’t ever seen him. Actually, none of them had, ever.
I rolled over in the single bed I was in and sat up. Louisa slept soundly in the bed next to mine under the sheets, her chest rising and falling in the morning sun. She looked beautiful. Feminine. I wondered if Corbin had ever looked at me like I was looking at Louisa now.
Corbin. Why couldn’t I get him off my mind? The sex we’d had our first night in Mexico had been under the guise of proving that I really was a prostitute. Yet when we were hooking up, it had felt more real than all the sex I’d had in my last relationship. Not fake at all.
But then there was the fact that I was fucking an ex-convict during my first field op as a DEA agent, and how wrong the logical part of my brain felt it was to do such a thing. I’m sure people in the world had done crazier things, but yeah—sleeping with your partner was a pretty big no-no. What was I supposed to do? Report Corbin and I’s relationship to HR?
I put my feet on the ground and walked to the window, looking out over the rolling hills of the Reyes property. This was the jungle, both literally and figuratively. In isolation here, the law was not the same as the civilized world. The law here was about power, money, and sex. Marco had the power to have you killed, so he was at the top of the chain. Corbin had the power to sell Marco’s cocaine, so Marco respected him. And m
e? My power was apparently in my sexuality, which pissed me off just a little. Marco saw me as a piece of property, and without Corbin to protect me, who knew what might become of me.
I wondered if the whole idea that I needed to even come here in the first place had been way off. Maybe I had been too bullish in requesting my promotion at just the wrong time. I glanced over at Louisa, who had seemed so relaxed yesterday putting on a show for the men, like she truly didn’t have a care in the world.
I let out a loud, frustrated sigh that I couldn’t have been born a man in the sixties, when sleeping with your undercover partner was the usual James Bond protocol.
Louisa, stirring from my sigh, opened her eyes and caught me staring at her.
“You’re up early,” she said groggily. Slowly, she sat up.
“I know,” I said. “I couldn’t sleep once the sun came in.”
She stood up and stretched her arms over her head. “Nice job last night by the way. I know you’re new to this whole thing since you’re just Corbin’s sidepiece. You’re a natural, though.”
“Thanks,” I replied, gathering up my things for the ride back to the main mansion. “So we should head back to the main mansion then, right?”
“Yes, but, have you ever been to the falls?”
“The falls?” I asked.
She smiled at me before getting into a sort of downward dog type pose.
“It’s barely sunrise. All the men got so drunk last night, they’ll be sleeping for at least another four or five hours. Let’s go check out the falls. It’ll be fun. I promise. We won’t get in trouble.”
I stiffened, but decided what the hell. I’d get to see a different side of the place. And maybe get closer to Louisa, to see if she had any information on Luis’s whereabouts, since she seemed to be so entrenched in this whole operation.
“Fine. I don’t have a bathing suit though.”
“You won’t need one,” Louisa grinned.
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