Enemy Sworn

by Karin Tabke

  God, how desperate had she sounded to him? She needed some distance STAT.

  “Where’s my nightgown?” she demanded, sitting up and bringing the sheet with her.

  He pointed to the foot of the bed where it was neatly folded. She reached out and snatched it up and quickly pulled it on. Not that it covered much, torn as it was. “How did it get there?”

  “I put it there after I took it off you last night.”

  “You mean ripped it off?”

  He rose from the chair with the grace and confidence of a man who had nothing to hide. He poured her half a cup of cream, then added steaming coffee. As he handed it to her, he said, “Settle down, Sophia. You were in pain last night. I tried to make you feel better and then”—he grinned and shrugged—“you were in another kind of pain and there was only one way to make it go away.” He turned back to the table and said over his shoulder, “Next time I’ll let you writhe in pain until you can’t stand it.”

  He poured himself another cup of coffee and sat back down. Never once taking his eyes off her. “You talk a lot in your sleep.”

  She sipped her café con leche. It was perfect. Then let the topic go. She’d acted worse than a cat in heat, and despite her emotional outburst she wasn’t sorry for the sex. It had been amazing. “Did I say anything good?’

  “I picked up a few fun facts.”

  “Such as?”

  “You didn’t care much for your fiancé when he was alive and even less now that he’s dead.”

  She sipped her coffee. “That’s not news to you. What else?”

  “Why were you so pissed off about his death when you couldn’t stand the guy?”

  She stiffened. “My feelings for Javier were irrelevant. You killed my fiancé. On principle I should have been angry.”

  “Ah.” He sipped his coffee. “You should thank me.”

  “When hell freezes over!” She sounded like a child, but she didn’t care. He made no reference to what she said to him last night and by not acknowledging the elephant in the room, to her that meant he didn’t come close to feeling the same for her. Not being in love, she got it, but maybe he was a little in like?

  He stood and set his cup down. “Being contrary for the sake of pride is wasted time and emotion, Sophia. I did you a favor. Hurry up and get yourself together. Your father was bellowing for you earlier. I’m anxious to find out if he knows who’s peddling that crazy pill.”

  The horror of last night came crashing back. “Lily!”

  “Considering what happened last night, I asked Manny to let your school know you were taking the day off. We’ll go over to the clinic after we’ve had breakfast with your old man. Now hurry up, I’m hungry.”

  “Go down without me, then.”

  “Oh, no, we go together. You know, a united front.”

  “Fine,” she grumbled as the horrible vision of Lily’s attack flared in her head. The poor girl. God, please help her.

  Twenty minutes later Mateo held out a chair for his wife at the main table in the dining room. Just as he was about to sit down, Manny strode in. “El patrón wishes you both to breakfast with him in his office.”

  Something was up. Mateo stood and pulled Sophia’s chair out and together they walked down the hall to her father’s office. The door was open and the king of the jungle stood tableside, pouring three cups of coffee.

  “Ah, good morning, children.”

  Mateo looked past his jovial mood; he was smart enough to know that it signaled a covert attack.

  “Good morning, Papa,” Sophia said, taking the cup of coffee he offered her. She wrinkled her nose and added cream. Mateo didn’t point out the fact that he had known Sophia less than a week and he took the time to ask the cook how his wife liked her coffee and her father didn’t care enough to notice when she had lived under his roof all her life.

  Mateo took the proffered cup and as he did, he set the little yellow pill on the supreme leader’s gold-trimmed plate. He caught the surprised look in the old man’s eyes before he hid it.

  “What is this?” he asked, picking it up and holding it up to the light.

  “We were hoping you could tell us,” Mateo answered, holding a chair out for his wife. She sank into it and looked to her father, who looked curiously at Mateo.

  “Where did you get this?”

  “How about you don’t answer a question with a question. Do you know what it is?”

  “I might.” He set it on the tablecloth next to his plate. “Where did you get it?”

  “I took it off a crazed rapist last night after he and two of his buddies tore an innocent girl apart.”

  “Dios mío!” he gasped.

  “It was horrible, father. Horrible!”

  His eyes widened then narrowed furiously. “You witnessed this . . . attack?”

  “Yes, we were on our way back to my car when we heard the screams.”

  Dumas looked at Mateo. “What does this pill have to do with the attack?”

  “I think it hyped them up. They were out of control.”

  “Did you speak with any of them?”

  “No.”

  “Father, when we went to help Lily they attacked us.”

  “They will pay for touching you.”

  “They’ve already paid. I made sure of it,” Mateo said, impatient with Dumas. He was intentionally being vague. “Sophia told me you have a basement with a lab. I’d like them to analyze it, and if it’s what I think it is, then you have a big problem on your hands.”

  “What exactly do you think it is?”

  “A hybrid of crack, ecstasy and speed. One pill turns the average man into a super-powered maniacal rapist.”

  “I have never heard of such a thing.”

  “Word on the streets is that Mexicali has experienced a seven hundred percent increase in sexual assaults over the last six months.”

  “Paul would have mentioned that fact to me.”

  “I guess he has a reason to keep it quiet, then.”

  “Reason?”

  “C’mon, sir, don’t play coy with me. He’d keep it on the QT because he has a vested interest in keeping it out of the news. As mayor he would simply keep it quiet for PR. There’s a lot of money in Mexicali. Citizens and merchants would flog his ass if they lost business because of bad press. It’s one of the few cities in Mexico that tourists actually feel safe in. But let’s set that aside. If he had a hand in the manufacturing, or was an investor in the drug, the last thing he would want was for anyone to know the extent of its damage, because if he was ever fingered, he’d rot in hell.”

  “Mayor Sandoval would never be a part of supplying something as terrible as this type of drug!” Sophia interjected. “You’re wrong about him, Mateo.”

  “Really?” Mateo asked. “Then why hasn’t he quietly put a team together to investigate the increase in sexual assaults? You saw what those bastards did to Lily. It’s happening in So Cal as well as in Mexicali.”

  “How have you come by this information?” Dumas dangerously asked.

  chapter fifteen

  Mateo was a firm believer in sticking as close to the same lie with everyone so that when they compared notes there were no discrepancies.

  “My brother was investigating the origination of the drug when your boy Javier shot him in the back of the head like the coward he was.”

  “I am sorry for your loss,” Dumas quietly said.

  “Papa, what are you going to do about this?”

  “I have my suspicions on the source of this little yellow pill, and if my assumptions are correct, I also know how the information is being squashed.” He patted her on the head as if she were a child who was worrying about adult things. “Trust me to see it handled.”

  Sophia swept her father’s hand away and stood. “I’m not a silly little girl, please
don’t treat me like one.”

  “I was merely trying to reassure you that—”

  “No, Papa, you were once again talking down to me in that condescending tone like you always do. I’m tired of it. If we cannot converse as two intelligent, equal adults, then we simply will have nothing to say to each other.” She strode to the door and said to Mateo, “Feel free to finish your breakfast without me. I have Barbies to dress.”

  She slammed the door behind her. A smile twisted Mateo’s lips as he looked over at his father-in-law, who didn’t look amused.

  Dumas opened a humidor on his slate-topped desk and waved to Mateo. “Pick one and we’ll go out onto the veranda to have a smoke and discuss a few matters.”

  Several moments later Mateo sat back in an overstuffed chair, puffing on a very fine Cubano, his father-in-law enjoying his own cigar in the identical chair beside him.

  “Sophia is very much like her mother.”

  “How so?”

  “She allows her emotions to get the better of her. She doesn’t think past the individual. As patrón of Dumas, it’s my job to look past the individual’s needs to the needs of the entire entity, or in this case, Terra Oro.”

  “Are all of the inhabitants of the village indebted to you?”

  “No one is forced to live here, they choose to. There is no debt to Dumas to be paid. They work for a living just like you and I do. They just happen to pay rent to me.”

  “But you control everything in the village, including the justice?”

  “Of the three thousand people that reside within these city walls, not one of the villagers will tell you they are afraid to sleep at night, can’t feed their children or are underpaid for their labors.” He bit down on his cigar and laughed. “They are as simple to manage as a herd of sheep, these fat Americans.”

  “Your wife was American. Your daughter is American. I’m American. You mock Americans, you mock Sophia’s heredity and her husband.”

  “I was a fool to succumb to her mother’s spell,” Dumas snarled. “A mistake I cannot undo.”

  Mateo looked pointedly at the miserable old bastard. “If you’re so disgusted by your wife and daughter, why keep Sophia around? Why not cut her loose?”

  Dumas turned ice-cold eyes on him. “She is my daughter.”

  “But she is not pure reconquista,” Mateo said. “I have no sangre de reconquista, and any child of mine she bears would be unable to head la familia.”

  Dumas growled and bit down again on his cigar, this time so hard it snapped in half. He spit tobacco from his mouth and tossed the two pieces over the balustrade.

  “If you live long enough to sire a grandchild of mine, he will bear Dumas blood, and will step into my shoes when he is of age. It will be so because I will deem it so.”

  “I understand your stance, sir, but there are four other families who would challenge that.”

  Dumas’s eyes narrowed. “They will not when they understand the consequences of doing so.”

  Mateo sat back, and crossed his legs at the ankle. He took a slow puff of his cigar and slowly exhaled, and watched the gray blue smoke curl around his face before the breeze broke it apart and carried it away. When he raised his eyes to his father-in-law he found him watching him intently.

  “You realize, you have no power here,” he softly said.

  Mateo nodded and took another puff of his cigar and once again slowly exhaled. “You realize you have lost your daughter to me. And in losing her, you lose everything that comes with her. Namely any child she bears and my loyalty, which if you knew me at all you would covet.”

  His dark eyes narrowed. “Sophia is right—you are loco.”

  “Your only child. The sacred womb.” Mateo sat up and stubbed out his cigar on the inlaid-tile tabletop beside his chair. “Let’s cut the bullshit, Dad. You have something I want. I have something you want. I propose a trade.”

  “You have nothing I want, Loco.”

  “I can walk out that door with your daughter with a snap of my fingers. Then what? You run out and make another heir?” Mateo slapped his knee and laughed caustically. “Oh, wait, you can’t ’cause your balls are fried.”

  “Sophia is my heir, and as such she will remain here,” Dumas said, his voice dangerously low.

  “Not if I want to leave.”

  “Hypothetically, if I were to ask you what it is you want from me, your answer would be?”

  “In on the little yellow pill.”

  Dumas laughed. “For that you’ll have to ask our guests tomorrow evening.” So the date had been moved up. Interesting. “Originally we were to have our summit here in Terra Oro, but, in light of recent events, we have agreed to meet at a mutually agreed upon location in Mexicali.” So the family heads didn’t trust the lion in his own den, did they? Couldn’t blame them.

  “I don’t buy what you’re selling. The chemical stench of those three rapists smelled similar to the stench coming from your underground lab. You know? The one where you have the best chemists in the world working on a cure for your dead wife’s disease.”

  Dumas snarled.

  “Sophia and I are very close,” Mateo taunted.

  “Many chemical components have similar smells.”

  “Those men had a distinct stench.”

  “If Sophia knew what you really wanted it would destroy her.”

  Mateo shrugged, playing off his true feelings for the boss’s daughter. “And there you will be to pick up the pieces.”

  “How is it that your brother was a law-abiding citizen and you—are not?”

  “Our father was a cop. A cop’s salary didn’t go far in a house of eight. I found out when I was very young that I liked expensive things. I also learned that stealing them was easier than working for them. Tom followed the straight and narrow, and I hopped a train on my way to school one day. I never looked back.”

  “El Reconquista will not give up any part of their share of the O.”

  “How can they when they don’t know about it?”

  Dumas shook his head. “They know, and they want in on the action; it’s why they have all agreed to meet in one place.” He moved over to the balustrade. Placing his hands on the top rail, he looked over his shoulder and said, “As long as one of them lives, I cannot give you what you want.”

  “So exterminate them.”

  Dumas inclined his head in permission. “I give you my blessing.”

  Mateo stood and nodded. “Before, during or after the festivities?”

  “I would prefer that each die in their own bed after.”

  “Consider it done.” He moved to exit the veranda.

  “Juarez?” Dumas called.

  Mateo turned around and caught the deadly glare in Dumas’s eyes. “Betray me, and I will destroy you.”

  “That goes both ways, sir.”

  Mateo left the veranda and walked unhurried through the office. He had some serious work ahead of him. He was going to need all kinds of backup on this one.

  He decided to grab Sophia and go see how Lily was doing, and while she was visiting the girl sneak over to the rectory and call in the strike.

  He noticed his wife in the main dining room of the hacienda speaking with an elderly woman who, when she caught sight of Mateo, hurried away.

  Sophia looked up and scowled.

  “What?” Mateo asked defensively. “I’m not allowed to hang out with your father?”

  “You could have supported me by leaving with me!”

  “I could have but then I wouldn’t have been able to verbally smack him down the way I did. We’ve come to an understanding, and he will no longer speak to you like you’re a child.”

  Sophia smiled. “What did you say?”

  “I said if he couldn’t treat you with respect I was taking you to a place where others would.”
>
  “What? You threatened him?”

  “Yup. He was pissed, but I stood my ground.” He took her in his arms and tried to wipe the guilt from himself by giving her that good news and a kiss on the nose. “Let’s go see how Lily is this morning.”

  “I was just going to do that.”

  “Without me?” He tsk-tsked.

  “I didn’t know how long you and Father were going to be, and in all truth I didn’t think you’d be interested in seeing her. She’s going to be a mess.”

  “After what I witnessed last night, I want to see her and reassure her that not all men are animals.”

  “Apparently they were all on that stuff.”

  Mateo scowled. No one was safe from an O fiend.

  As they walked to the clinic, Mateo once again enjoyed the village views. It was pristine. Like a coastal Spanish town. Most of the buildings were white stucco with the requisite terra-cotta-tile roof. Cascading blooms hung from the doorways of the open shops, the shopkeepers chatty and friendly. Few cars occupied the cobblestone street. Most everyone rode Vespas or golf cart–like vehicles. There were occasional small cars and pickup trucks and even the occasional burro with baskets of fruits and vegetables piled high.

  “It’s like a fairy-book village, only with a Latin twist,” Mateo said.

  “My father has worked very hard to maintain the pueblo. Tourists flock to our shops. Some of the most talented artisans in the world live and work here. There is no crime in Terra Oro. Only harmony.”

  And a laboratory cooking a lethal rape drug right beneath it all. “I can see why you want to leave this paradise.”

  She smiled up at him and blushed when she took his hand. “Maybe I will stay after all.”

  He smiled down at her and squeezed her hand. “I could be talked into staying, so long as your father respected our privacy.” If this marriage were for real, Mateo would have his wife moved not only out of the hacienda but the entire region in quick fashion.