by Karina Halle
But the glass empties quickly.
Javier pulls it back but he doesn’t leave. He stays right up in my face, peering at me curiously.
“Your resolve surprises me,” he says, eyes skirting over my face. “Your strength. But you’re not hard. No, not yet. You’re soft. Especially inside.”
He places the palm of his hand on my chest, on my heart, making me jump.
“Yes, I can feel your fear fighting to come through. And then maybe you’ll be different. Or maybe not. You intrigue me more than I thought you would. I didn’t think something so good could come from someone so bad.”
I blink at him, anger coursing through me.
“Oh, there it is,” he says wryly. “There’s the tenacity. I could only hope you had a little of that in those veins of yours.”
He sits back down in the chair.
The moment he does, his words from earlier bounce in my head relentlessly.
“Vicente,” I whisper. “What did you mean why he found me? He didn’t find me…”
But from the crooked smile on his father’s face, I know the truth.
Just like that.
Our meeting was no accident.
“Your mother and I were lovers a long time ago,” he says. “I say that loosely, because I’m not sure how much love was between us. But there was something anyway, even if it was all just based on lies. Terrible lies. I was her mark, you know. She wanted to get to my boss and she did so through me. Pretended to love me. She was so good at pretending. And I fell for it. Because I was a fucking fool. In the end, she stole my money and ran.”
He sighs. “Do you know why I have this?” He lifts up a hand, pulls back his sleeve and the watch band. The word WISH is a faded tattoo on his wrist. “Because of your mother. Do you know why she has the tattoo of the music notes on her arm, Dire Straits On Every Street? Because of me. Because after she left me, I came looking for her on every street. For eight fucking years, chasing a lie. Do you know why you have the name you have?”
I can only shake my head. The shock is unreal. I’m more stupefied than before.
“Because of my sister, Violetta. Ellie liked her and visa versa. Violetta died in a car bomb meant for me.”
And it’s not a lie at all. Vicente had told me that very same thing the day I met him, the day he asked about the classes, the day we went to the bar. The day I saw him scoping me out at the coffee shop.
It all clicks into place.
It was never about chance.
My romantic little mind just wanted to see it that way.
“Oh yes, we go way, way, back,” he goes on, adjusting the watch so it covers the tattoo again. “The reason she went after my boss, pretended to love me, is because he’s the man who scarred her leg as a child and she wanted vengeance.” He pauses. “It doesn’t end there. Your mother’s Uncle Jim? I killed him. I kidnapped Sophia and your half-brother Ben. But in the end I killed the rest of the Madanos, so it evened out. And do you want to know how your mother repaid me at the very end, after all that, after eight fucking years of looking for her?” He’s nearly yelling these last words, straining in his seat. “She handcuffed me to a fucking fence, like a fucking carcass waiting for the vultures to pick it off. Before that, she tried to shoot me. Gun to my face. Lucky there was no bullet in the chamber. How about that for love?”
My mother and Javier. Javier and my mother.
All these years he was this horrible snake at the foot of her bed.
She pretended for the sake of everyone that he didn’t exist.
How can you pretend you were never involved with one of the world’s biggest drug lords? Javier has had as much news coverage as El Chapo over the years.
“I know you didn’t know all of this,” he says. All cool now. Composed. Examining his nails with a sigh, as if he’s about to behead his manicurist next weekend. “So I can’t blame you for being stunned. But now you must realize why I sent Vicente to get you.”
Sent Vicente to get me?
I stare at him, blinking, wishing my heart wasn’t closing up in a fist.
He sent Vicente to get me?
“I needed you Violet. And Vicente was more than willing to please me. He’s learned from the best over the years. Knows the right words to say, the right ways to fuck. He duped you, the same way your mother once duped me. And yet I wish I could say we are even. But we’re far from even Violet. We’re just getting started.”
I am shaking my head. “No. No, Vicente…he loves me.”
Javier stares at me like I’ve lost my mind.
Then he bursts out laughing.
A loud, sour sound that bounces around the room.
It’s so devastating in its honesty.
And because of that it embeds itself deep.
I don’t think I’ll ever not hear that laugh.
“Oh, my dear,” Javier says when he calms down, wiping the tears away from his eyes. “You don’t even know what love is. And Vicente will never even come close. Maybe a few hookers thrown his way over the years. If he’s lucky we’ll find him a virgin to knock up, someone from a neighboring cartel. But no one he loves. That’s not in the cards for him. That’s not what this life is about.”
He shakes his head at me, exhaling as he gets up. “You are so young. So terribly young. I see that now. I didn’t know it when I sent Vicente for you, but I see it now. You have been sheltered your whole life.”
He stops in front of me, sticks his fingers under my chin and tilts my face up to look at his.
His eyes probe mine. Amazed. Pitiful.
“I’m sure your mother knew what was best for you,” he says. “Your father too. They wanted to protect you from all the bad in the world, even when they were the bad in the world. But you can see how that did them no good. No one can escape their pasts. It lives as shackles at your feet.” His hands drift lower to my chest. I instinctively freeze as his hand goes off my chin, down my throat, between my breasts.
He closes his eyes, sucking in a deep breath through his nostrils, then withdraws his hand. Takes a step back, eyes me. “Vicente never loved you,” he tells me.
And to be honest, that hurts most of all.
“He never loved you because that was his job. To make you believe it. To lure you to Palm Valley. And he was believable. I’m proud of him, the way he handled Ellie Watt’s daughter. So don’t worry, he’s in my good books again. But the truth is, Violet, you’ve been fed nothing but lies and cock for weeks and look where it’s got you. Right where we all wanted you.”
“You’re insane,” I manage to say. I couldn’t stop the words even if I wanted to.
He raises his brows. “Insane? That would imply there is no real thought into any of this and I guarantee that’s not the case. Maybe my appetites are ruthless and my methods are extreme but that doesn’t equal insanity.”
“No,” I tell him. “You’re insane because you kidnapped me because of what my mother did to you over twenty fucking years ago.”
Another brow raise but this time I can tell it’s a slap to his ego. It stings him.
“I didn’t take you,” he says. “It was Vicente. It was always Vicente’s idea. Ask him yourself, if you ever see him again, ask him and you’ll know.” He peers at me closer. “Think back to everything. Each moment, each word. Think back to the moment your mother first saw him. Tell me you believe in coincidences.”
And I am back there. I’m back in that moment, my mother’s face, even my father’s. They knew. Oh they fucking knew!!
That’s why they were so against him!
That’s why they had a problem with him, acting like he was more than just a stranger.
Because he was Javier’s son and they knew it the moment they laid eyes on him.
But they couldn’t tell me, not then, not without unravelling every single thread of the web they’d tried to weave.
Holy shit.
Javier is telling the truth.
And my heart is dropping out of me.
/> I can’t even look at him anymore, can’t keep my head up.
My whole body deflates knowing that Vicente had done nothing but lie to me from the start.
So why is there a small part in my soul that still doesn’t believe it?
Because you know him.
You know his heart.
You know his lies.
And you know his truth.
I look up at Javier and though I say nothing, I am defiant.
He sees this. Reads it.
Adjusts.
“You really are a stubborn little thing aren’t you?” he says, his voice taking on a silken quality. “Do you know what I do with stubborn little things such as yourself?”
“Try it,” I tell him through grinding teeth. “I fucking dare you.”
The lines in his forehead deepen. “You’ve got a mouth on you.”
The way he tenses up I expect him to hit me.
But he doesn’t.
He just straightens up.
“I’ll have someone in here to deal with you soon,” he says. “Do you have any last requests? Because this room is a place you’re going to spend an awful lot of time in.”
“I want to see Vicente.”
“Still? After all that?”
“I want to hear the truth from his mouth. Not yours.”
He rubs his fingers over his jaw, nodding. “Tricky. Tricky little thing you are. You’re more like your mother than I thought. I can’t tell yet if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.”
“Does your wife know you’re still in love with her?”
He glares at me sharply and I know I’ve hit a soft spot.
I also know I’m playing with fire.
But I can’t help it.
“You know nothing about me and my wife,” he says quietly.
“Does your wife know I’m here? Does she find it weird that you’ve kidnapped the daughter of your ex-lover for some punishment you should have let die twenty years ago? Because if she doesn’t find what you’re doing disgusting, she doesn’t sound like a very good wife.”
He moves out of his chair.
A flash of glass.
Quick.
A snake striking.
I don’t see it coming.
I just feel the sting.
The pain.
The agony that eats me to the bone.
I scream.
I scream over and over again until it’s all I hear, echoing back. I don’t know where I start and the screams stop.
And then, when I’ve caught my breath just an inch, I realize what’s happened.
He’s holding the jar in his hands, the sealed one that was beside the bucket.
My leg is burning pink on fire.
Whatever liquid he just threw on my leg, it’s eating my flesh, my muscle, my bone, alive.
He’s staring at me in disbelief, like he himself can’t believe he did that.
But I can.
From all the things I’ve heard about him, I can.
He drops the jar.
The glass shatters on the cement.
He leaves the room, the door closing in a whoosh behind him.
I can only feel knives upon knives, slicing and digging and burning their way deep into my skin, from my knee down to my ankle.
I feel it until there’s nothing else to feel.
Then I pass out.
Back to the black lake.
A place I hope I never wake up from.
Chapter Twelve
Javier
“What did you do to her!?” Luisa shrieks, bursting through the door into his office.
He flinches at the sight of her, his grip on the glass of tequila tightening.
It’s only 10 am but this is needed.
Oh, it’s needed.
“Please lower your voice,” Javier says quietly, trying to look calm. In control. As always.
But Luisa knows him too well. She saw him flinch. She knows he’s drinking too early.
She knows he fucked up.
And he did fuck up, he knows he did too. Did a thing he didn’t think he would do, at least not at this point in the game. But he did it right out of the gate.
After he first met Ellie, when he later learned that her scarred leg was because of his ex-boss, Travis Raines, a monster that poured acid on her leg as a child, he wanted nothing more than brutal revenge for what he did to her.
Brutal revenge, coupled with the total takeover of his cartel.
In the end he got both. Even Ellie got her revenge on him, though it came at the cost of her own mother.
Travis was a sick man with a lot of power, one of the worst combinations possible. A rich gringo with no soul who thought he could waltz into Mexico and take from the Mexicans.
And he did. His cartel flourished until Javier took it over.
Never in a million years did Javier think he could ever relate to him.
And yet here he is, numbing it with alcohol, wishing he could be anywhere but here, listening to his wife.
She’s adept at making him feel bad.
“I didn’t do anything to get yourself worked up about.”
“I heard her scream, Javier. All the way from the basement. That scream…” she presses her palms at her ears, pinches her eyes shut. “I can still hear it.”
Javier takes a slow sip of his drink before he says, “She’ll recover.”
“She’s twenty years old,” Luisa says. “She’s far from home, taken by a fucking madman, the father of her lover.”
Javier eyes her sharply. “You know I am not a madman. I am doing what I’ve always done.”
“Sometimes you have to change, Javi,” she says, leaning against the desk, pleading with her eyes. “Sometimes you have to adapt. What works for some people…she’s a child. I know you want to toughen up Vicente but you have to change your tactics. She’s not a rival. She’s not a snitch. She’s done nothing to you.”
Javier’s jaw grows tense.
Luisa is right. She’s also right about him being a madman.
It’s something he’s prided himself on, pretending to take no pleasure in the suffering of others. At some point that was true. Over the years, when the bitterness took over his heart, that stopped being valid.
But he’s rarely tortured out of anger. If his ways are mad, they are done with reverence.
What he did to Violet was sloppy.
It was an impulse he didn’t mean to let loose.
She pushed all the wrong buttons.
She wasn’t afraid enough.
But she is afraid now, he tells himself. And that’s what counts. So in the end, you did the right thing.
Besides, the acid he used was nowhere near as strong as what was done to her mother. It will hurt for a long time. It will leave some scarring. But nothing modern technology can’t fix. There will be no nerve damage.
She got off easy. You could have done so much worse. You’ve done so much worse.
“You’re not…” Luisa trails off and looks away, afraid to see the truth in her husband’s eyes. Afraid to go down that path. She’d rather not know.
Javier watches her, knows what she’s thinking. And he’s shocked.
“I’m not raping her, if that’s what you mean,” he says coldly.
“Sorry for me to think that.” She doesn’t sound sorry. “I know what you did to me when you first took me hostage.”
“I treated you with nothing but respect.” He sits up straighter, seriously confused as to how she could look back on that, what happened to her, and think otherwise.
“Javi, you carved your fucking name in my back with a knife,” she reminds him. “Because you wanted me to be yours.”
“That wasn’t romantic?”
Luisa says nothing.
“My queen, you know I did those things to you because I wanted you. I’d fallen in love with you. I don’t want Violet. She’s a child. Barely older than Marisol.”
She gives him the side eye. “Not even if she r
eminds you of her mother?”
He fights the impulse to roll his eyes. “That was long ago. You know this isn’t about that.”
“Remind me what it’s about again then? Is it breaking your son so he can be a hardened man with no soul and no heart? Or is it settling the score for something Ellie had done to you before I even came along? Was it that she chose another man other than you? Or that she put you in jail? Which one of these things is it? Or is this whole thing one big scapegoat because you can’t handle being second best anymore and you know you can’t get back to the top without your son?”
It’s Javier’s turn now to say nothing.
His silence singes the air.
Luisa presses on, quietly. “I hate to say this to my own husband, but I don’t trust you.”
He looks at her with raised brows, like he’s been struck. “What?”
She shrugs and straightens up, crossing her arms across the front of her sun dress and walking over to the window that overlooks the compound. White cattle egret fly from the trees, looking like angels in the morning sun.
“You have that same look in your eyes as you did, back when you were sleeping with hookers before chopping their legs off or choking them with barbed wire.” She says this calmly. Javier hopes she’s made peace with it by now. “Those women meant nothing to you either. That’s what you said. So how am I supposed to believe you when you tell me that Violet is just a girl? And you would never do such a thing?”
He’s surprised how much emotion she’s wringing out of him. “Because,” he says thickly. “You have my word. I would never do that to you. Luisa, I am your husband. Your family. I would never betray you like that. Don’t you know who I am?”
She nods, still not looking at him. “I know who you were. And I know you’ve changed. We all have. Most days I’m not sure I like what I’ve become.”
He should get up and go over to her. Put his hand on her shoulders, pull her into a kiss. Tell her how much he loves her and that he’d never betray her trust.
But he drinks instead. Finishes the glass. Let’s the pain melt away.
“I want to see Vicente,” Luisa decides.
“I don’t know if he’s awake yet.”
