Crimson Desert

by Melissa Jane

  “The fuck?”

  My eyes weren’t playing tricks on me.

  As Hector stalked across the room, he pulled a frightened Laila in his wake. She was still dressed in the underwear I had left her in earlier that night.

  “Danny!”

  “What is it?” His tone was cautious as he picked the fear in my voice.

  “Laila, is here.”

  “What? How?”

  “I don’t fucking know, but she’s here. Hector has taken her through the east wing door that links to the study. I am heading down there now. Are you right to take on the rest?”

  “On it.”

  “Stick to the original time. I will see you soon.”

  “Fuck the original time. If you’re not at the spot in twenty I am coming for you.”

  “Got it. Out.”

  Taking off down the hall, I took the servants’ passage down to the lower floor that would take me to Hector’s office. From here on out, the plan would be completely improvised, but what choice did I have?

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Laila

  Hector’s eyes were ablaze with pure hatred. He paced like a wild caged animal in front of me, his contemptuous gaze never leaving mine. The man was on edge and rightly so. He and his guests had almost been blown to pieces by the earlier explosion. He knew Aiden was here. Dusting debris off his suit, I could feel his rage morphing with every second that passed.

  “You don’t look worried?” Hector asked, maintaining his pace.

  “Should I be?” Putting on a brave face was difficult, but I was ever so thankful he was blinded to my terror.

  He laughed at my nonchalance.

  “Always a smart bitch. You are about to be butchered in front of your lover’s eyes and you don’t care.”

  Well, yes, I did actually, but I wasn’t going to let him know.

  “We wouldn’t be here right now if Juan had done his job right the first time.”

  Yep, I went there.

  Hector paused for a moment, his eyes not revealing his thoughts on the truth I spoke. What he did next both frightened and disturbed me. Hector threw his head back as he bellowed a deep laugh. It sounded so unnatural, it was almost as if he were possessed. When he finally came to a stop, he walked forward, wrapped his hand around my throat and pulled me to my feet.

  “Yes, you are right.” Hector said calmly, but I wasn’t fooled. I had seen this side of him on more than one occasion. “I trusted my son to take care of it, just like I took care of my problem many years ago.” The asshole was referring to when he brutally killed Aiden’s mother and father, like it was just some common sport of his.

  “You are a cancer, so filled with hate and destruction.” I snapped, my voice was strained and husky from Hector’s unrelenting chokehold. I was unwilling to feel threatened by him any longer. This man deserved to die in the most inhuman way possible.

  Again, Hector laughed, but this was more out of impatience and disbelief. He rubbed an exasperated hand over his face before pushing me away from him.

  “Where is Ethan?”

  “In the depths of my basement awaiting punishment.”

  “Aren’t you sorry that after tonight you won’t even have the chance to make him suffer?”

  He snorted in derision. “And why is that pray tell?”

  “Because you won’t survive to see tomorrow.”

  “Even after all that has happened to you, all that you have seen, you haven’t changed a bit from the first evening we came face to face. Still insolent. Still fucking smart mouthed.” His tone was bitter, as if I had put a dent in his good reputation.

  Hector reached behind his back, a menacing expression stilling me, my mouth suddenly dry with terror. He unsheathed a knife and brought it to his side. His casual approach to scaring me was working.

  I could only watch as Hector lurched forward, his hand catching just above my elbow. Before I could blink, I was dragged screaming across the carpet as I struggled to right myself.

  “Let me go!” I swung around to face Hector, my hand rising to his cheek, my nails gouging into his skin.

  “Fuck!” Hector barked in frustration as he twisted his face away from me. There was no time to even marvel at the damage I caused. With a violent push, my feet left the carpet, my body suddenly horizontal in the air. I knew what was going to happen and no matter what I did I couldn’t prevent it. My hands flew to cover my face, but it was too late. Upon contact with the coffee table, the glass shattered under my weight, my skin feeling like it was being torn away from my body. Tiny shards of glass cut through me like millions of angry razor blades. My breasts, stomach, arms and thighs were on fire, the pain excruciating. I was hurting badly and could barely manage a breath. The glass beneath stabbed into the soft padding of my hands as I attempted to ease myself up. Over the top of my groans I could hear Hector cursing me in every way he knew how. Still on a rampage, he grabbed my hair and my scalp screaming for mercy. Yanking me off the ground, he threw me over the seat of the armchair, the shards that had stuck to my body assaulting me for a second time.

  Pinning me down with a knee to my back, he pressed the sharp blade of the knife against my throat and leaned over the top of me. Any slight movement and I would be decapitated.

  “Are you scared of me now?” he panted heavily against my cheek.

  “My fear pales in comparison to the hatred I feel towards you.” I was out of breath, but not so much that I wouldn’t put up a fight.

  “The feeling is mutual. Lucky for me, both of you will no longer be my problem.”

  “That’s what you have always said, but look where we are now. Look what we have done to your business.”

  He dug his knee in further and my spine threatened to break. His wicked laughter blended with my scream.

  “You know what?” Hector began. His lips grazed my cheek, the stench of his cigars invading my senses. “No matter how this night ends, I know I have had in your head. That I have fucked you up and destroyed a part of you. You have no idea how happy that makes me.”

  Chapter Forty

  Aiden

  The coast to Hector’s office was now clear. I knew full well the commotion of the night was continuing downstairs as Danny took care of the rest of the guests. These were all people who deserved what they had waiting for them. They would fight back, each carrying their own weapons, knowing full well this business carries its own dangers. They would be no match for Danny.

  Hector’s irate voice was clearly audible through the closed office door. I couldn’t deny the immense satisfaction it gave me to know his empire was crumbling around him.

  However, the sense of satisfaction was short lived. If he was in there, so was Laila. If he was mad, Laila would be hurting.

  Gently trying the door handle, I found it to be firmly locked. Standing back, I kicked the door with enough force the wood on both sides splintered.

  “Well, well, well. Fucking risen from the dead. My boy, how are you?” Hector asked, a sickening smirk spreading across his face as he watched me taking in the sight. I felt that familiar sense of dread and hatred mix together.

  Hector pulled Laila off the couch, her back against his chest, a sharp as fuck knife held against her slender throat. It was then I also noticed the slits of red covering most of her torso. She was fucked up.

  “Let her go,” I said calmly.

  “Unlikely.”

  “Your issue is with me not Laila.”

  “Collectively, you have royally fucked things up. So yes, my issue is with you both.” Hectors knife pressed firmer against Laila’s neck, a streak of blood running down her porcelain skin.

  “How did you know where she was or that I was still alive?”

  We both remained in our standoff.

  “The loose end you left at the hospital,” Hector announced with a hint of joy.

  “Jorge? Where is he?”

  “You were a fool to think hospital walls could stop us,” he mocked.

  “
He would never have told you without being coerced. What did you do to him?”

  “Perhaps you shouldn’t surround yourself with weak-minded men. He had a choice. You or his cousin in San Diego.” There was a satisfied gleam in Hector’s eyes at the thought he had one over me. I heard Laila gasp at the mention of Maria. “Since you are here, I am sure you know what decision he made. Now put your gun down, son.”

  I heard a click behind my head followed by Juan’s voice. “I would do as he says.”

  Risking a glance at Laila I could see she was putting on a brave face. Only I knew the look in her eyes was terror.

  “Don’t have all day, puto. Put the gun on the floor.” Juan pressed the tip of the barrel into my head. Reluctantly, I did as I was told, his Glock still trained on me as he kicked my gun to the side out of reach.

  “Aiden!” Laila screamed, but not before I felt the crack against my skull. My legs gave out underneath me courtesy of Juan. The room spun slightly, leaving Laila’s desperate face blurred. Touching my throbbing head, I felt the stickiness of blood beneath my fingers.

  “Why not just kill us both now?” I asked, after reclaiming some composure.

  “There is no fun in that,” Hector began. “You know I like to entertain. I want you to watch as we make your bitch suffer.” His free hand cupped Laila’s breast and squeezed hard, smearing blood from her cuts over her white skin. “Then, we will finish you off.”

  Anger surged through me. He was taunting. Bringing back ghosts from the past. Reviving the images in my head I had tried for so long to bury.

  “It’s all coming back to you now, isn’t it, boy?” Hectors beady eyes narrowed. He threw Laila carelessly to the floor.

  I knew I shouldn’t have delved into it. I also knew this was the last time I would see Hector alive. “You let them carry on with their lives for so long. What was the point of waiting?” I was referring to my parents and how my mother lived in fear for so long.

  “Satisfaction.”

  “Satisfaction of what? She had moved on from you!”

  “Satisfaction that every time your cheating bitch of a mother looked over her shoulder it was because she was thinking of me. Do you know how often that was?”

  I knew just how often. I saw it numerous times a day. I wasn’t going to bring him any pleasure from my admission.

  “If she couldn’t love me, I would have her fear me. And it worked. She knew when I was watching, she knew when I was close. She could smell me, feel my presence, but she could never see me.”

  “That was a lot of wasted energy.”

  “On the contrary. It brought me much joy.”

  “You never answered why it took you until I was seven for you to do it.”

  “That night, your father was going to announce his retirement from the marines.”

  “How do you know?”

  “My boy, I have eyes and ears everywhere. I also knew that he was planning on moving you all up to North America. Your mother would have been ecstatic with that, knowing that she could escape me. She was a coward and had never told her husband she had once been my whore. Instead, she chose to live in fear. Foolish woman. That night, the three of you had been out celebrating. I was there. I had never seen your mother look so fucking happy. Dancing and laughing as if she didn’t have a care in the world. But she did. She just failed to look over her shoulder that whole time.”

  “So, what are you saying? That you killed my mother that night because she was so happy she never graced you with a single look?”

  “She was gloating, rubbing it in my face. Like she thought she was now safe from me. That I couldn’t touch her, that I couldn’t get inside her head anymore. She was wrong.”

  “Then what?”

  “Are you sure you want to hear?” There was not an element of care in his voice. “Very well. I watched the hours pass by, your father groping her ass while she danced, the way she melted into his arms when he kissed her and I knew then it had to end. No sooner had you all arrived home, I made my move. Your father answered the door first and I knocked him to the ground. I was covered from head to toe in black, but your mother knew as soon as she saw me. She never forgot me. My cock got hard at the fear in her eyes. The fear I craved.

  “She tried to make a run for it, but not before throwing a glance up to you on the second floor. You were watching. It couldn’t have happened better. I fucked her first, then I let my men have at her. She didn’t plead, just took it like she used to, like she wanted it. I saw you watching as I slit her throat. You didn’t even flinch. Strange for a child to seem so undisturbed at what he had just seen. So cold, so emotionless. You were perfect. Even from the age of seven I knew I could carve you into what I wanted, what I needed.”

  “Perhaps a child’s brain is too innocent to comprehend that level of violence.” Why I felt the need to defend my seven-year-old self, I had no idea. What I did know was I needed to get Laila out of here.

  “I should have seen the warning signs, even then,” Hector continued. “Both you and your father could do nothing to save your mother. Or, perhaps, wouldn’t do.” I ignored the jibe. “So he had what was coming to him. A few bullets in the head was the least the fucker deserved. I waited a few weeks before I came for you. You had no idea who I was, that I was the man who fucked your mother in front of you or the one who slaughtered your parents. It was perfect.”

  “You deceived me for twenty-three years.”

  “Indeed, I did. Sent you to be trained as a marine like your father and then brought you into the world your mother ran from.”

  The asshole had the nerve to gloat about his two-decade-long ambition to single-handedly destroy a family.

  “That is sick.”

  “I beg to differ.”

  “You wasted away two lives purely to satisfy your own narcissistic vendetta?”

  I watched as Hector made his way to the decanter to pour himself a drink. He seemed to be carefully considering his response yet a part of me already knew he had been planning this very discussion for a long time now. “I don’t consider it to be wasting, per se. I was doing the world a favor.”

  This time I couldn’t help but scoff at his admission. He truly believed what he had done was for the best.

  “You are not God. You had no right to pass judgement.”

  “So, what? All of a sudden you think you are the epitome of fucking morals? You are just like your father.”

  “And that is supposed to be a bad thing?”

  “I would consider it so given you are preaching on what’s right and what’s wrong.”

  “Really, you wanna go there? You compare yourself to a man who served his country to you, a worthless piece of shit who has done nothing but actively destroy the fundamentals of a functioning society.”

  “Yeah? Is that right, miho? You think he was so good? You believe he was some fucking saint?

  “Please even for you its distasteful to speak shit about a man who isn’t here to defend himself.”

  “Because your mother never told him her past, he never put two and two together. Only I knew what really was happening.”

  I shot him a look of confusion and he snorted with a mix of satisfaction and distaste. “Your fucking father was on my payroll, you stupid fuck!”

  “Bullshit!”

  Hector sauntered forward, taking pleasure from his new revelation. Stopping just shy of me, an evil smile spread across his smug face.

  “With the borders so well protected we needed a way in for large shipments. For nine years, the fucker worked to smuggle our goods to every continent.”

  I shook my head more out of shock, trying to tame my rage.

  “You don’t believe me?”

  I didn’t grace him with a response.

  “So you see, miho. You can keep pretending as much as you like, but as far as saints go, I haven’t yet met one. And now here you are on your high horse thinking you know better. For years now you have aided in the sale of over five billion dollars
in drugs and three dozen girls. So don’t think for even a second that you are better than us.”

  I rose to my feet, barely able to control my urges to rip him to shreds.

  A sharp jab to my back issued a warning. “Get the fuck back down, puto.” Juan hissed.

  “Fuck off.”

  Another jab. “The fuck you say?”

  Rounding on him, I ignored the Glock now pointed at my chest. “Tell me something, asshole. Does Hector know of your plan?”

  “Shut the fuck up!” he snapped, furious at the sudden change in tack.

  “What is he talking about, Miho? What change of plan?” Hector grunted.

  “Nothing. The fucker is just delaying the inevitable.”

  Satisfied that he had taken the bait, I faced Hector with an amused smile. “You have your son to thank for single handily ruining your name and reputation. Juan, was never planning on allowing Alexsonov to take Laila. All this time, his intention was to take her for himself. He’s delusional, obsessed, and has been working against you since he first saw her in San Diego.”

  “Is he speaking the truth, son?” Hector snarled.

  “Don’t listen to the lying fuck. Let’s just end him and be done with it.”

  “I should be dead right now, but you failed,” I taunted.

  “You got lucky, puto,” Juan spat angrily. “How was I to know – ”

  “How were you to know?” Hector bellowed, causing both Juan and me to jump. “You shoot him in the fucking head, not in his bullet proof vest, you fucking idiot. That’s how you do it. Now look what has happened because of your idiotic incompetence.”

  “Papa, listen – ”

  “Shut the fuck up. Just how the fuck am I to clean this mess up?”

  “We finish it tonight.” Juan yelled. His own father was getting to him, making him crack.

  “We? You are too fucking useless to end it!” Hector spat. “And you,” Hector pointed his finger menacingly at Laila, “you fucking whore, you are the cause of all this.”

  “I came looking for my brother. I never asked to be abducted,” she seethed.

  “That part wasn’t the issue,” Juan interjected. “The issue was when you started whoring around with my brother.”