by Pinky Dior
Alana held the side of her face and crawled on the floor. Alana somehow managed to hold onto the chair, pull herself up, and sit back down.
“How dare you? How dare you betray your family like that?”
“I’m so sorry.”
“You’re sorry?” Vicente barked. “That’s all you have to say, that you’re sorry?” Vicente started laughing hysterically. “You got your sister killed, and now your niece is going to die too.”
“She’s your granddaughter!” Alana barked with tears in her eyes.
“I don’t give a fuck about that little bitch! Your sister knew the fucking rules! She betrayed me! And you betrayed me by trying to set me up!”
“I had no choice. She wanted her mother back, and she—”
“Shut the fuck up!” Vicente cut her off, getting in her face. Alana could feel every speck of spit that hit her face when he talked. “You knew this whole time! You knew she left to go to New York with Don Carter, and you fucking didn’t tell me! You knew all these fucking years.”
“I swear, I didn’t know until now—”
Vicente grabbed her by the neck and choked her so hard that her eyeballs were bulging out and her light skin turned a reddish color.
“You fucking liar!” Vicente barked. He loosened up his grip around her neck and she broke out into tears, trying to catch her last breath. “Call her,” Vicente said calmly. He looked at her and she didn’t budge. “I said, fucking call her!”
Alana jumped back, threatened by his tone. She quickly reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone. Her hands were shaky as she began dialing Mercedes’s phone number.
“Put it on speaker,” Vicente demanded.
Alana placed the phone on speaker. The phone was ringing and then Mercedes finally answered.
“Hello?” Mercedes answered.
“Hey, Mercedes.”
“You had me waiting here for at least thirty minutes now.” Mercedes sounded disappointed.
“I know; I’m sorry. I was in the shower, and didn’t hear my phone ringing.”
“Are you all right?” Mercedes recognized a change in Alana’s voice. She sounded a little nervous or scared.
Alana looked up at Vicente, who now held the gun pointed directly at her face, aiming particularly for her head.
“Yes, I’m all right.” Alana squeezed her eyes together. She wanted to tell Mercedes not to come. “It’s about your mother. I need to speak with you in person.”
“All right, I will be there in a few minutes.” Mercedes hung up.
Vicente snatched the phone away from her and threw it against the wall. “Now it’s your time to die.”
Alana kept her eyes wide open and she spit at Vicente. “You bastard! Mercedes is not going to take her mother’s death lightly.”
Vicente laughed as his shoulders bounced up and down. “Fuck her! Fuck Maria and fuck you! That little bitch ain’t going to know what hit her! She came to the wrong place, if she thinks she’s going to kill me. She got something else coming for her. I run these motherfucking streets! I’m the fucking man in Cuba. I run shit. Goodbye, Alana.”
“I hope Mercedes kills you!” Alana blurted out.
Vicente shot Alana once in the head, leaving her body slumped over in the chair.
“Kill who?” Vicente laughed hysterically, leaving his daughter’s dead body.
Chapter Thirty
The Carter war
When Mercedes arrived at the hotel, she waited on the elevator as it slowly rode all the way up to the fifteenth floor. Mercedes looked down at her phone and noticed the button was flashing red.
“Voicemail?” She dialed her voicemail and listened to Alana’s message.
“You need to get out of Cuba ASAP. I need to talk to you. It’s about your mother, Mercedes, but I’m warning you, just go now, while you have the chance.”
Mercedes hung up the phone as she arrived on the fifteenth floor. She wasn’t leaving Cuba without her mother, and she was determined to get her back. Even if it was a risk, she had to take it, even if it meant dying. Mercedes had no choice.
Mercedes walked down the corridors of the hotel, and slowly walked towards Alana’s door. She noticed it was cracked open. Mercedes pulled out her gun and aimed it towards the door. Pushing it open, she called out Alana’s name.
“Alana?” Mercedes kicked the door open and aimed her gun, just in case someone was about to jump out.
What jumped out at her was Alana’s body leaned over in a chair, with a single bullet hole in the middle of her forehead.
“It’s a fucking set-up!”
Mercedes quickly ran down the corridors and pressed the button for the elevator to arrive. She looked up at the elevator’s numbers, biting down on her bottom lip as she noticed it was getting closer to the fifteenth floor. Mercedes dialed Hazel’s phone number and put the phone up to her ear.
“Yo, Alana is dead. We got to get my mom and get the fuck up out of here. Vicente is on to me and he killed Alana. She called me over to the hotel and she’s dead. It’s a fucking set-up. I’m on my way back.” Mercedes hung up as the elevator door opened.
To her surprise, Vicente was standing in the elevator with four men; their AK-47’s pointed directly at her. Mercedes turned around, looking for the exit sign so she could run, but she couldn’t. There were two men beside her with guns pointed at her as well.
“Shit!” Mercedes mumbled, knowing it was about to go down.
“Let’s take a little ride.”
Vicente smiled as one of his bodyguards grabbed Mercedes, and pushed her into the elevator. Mercedes stood next to Vicente. He quickly nudged her in the stomach and she bent over, holding it in pain. He got her in the corner of the elevator and kneed her with continuous blows to the stomach and face. Not once did Mercedes cry; she just made faces. She had no choice, but to endure the pain.
A hotel staff member walked right into the elevator with her head down, and when she looked up, there was a gun pointed at her head. Her eyes shot wide open and her jaw dropped. She slowly backed up and the doors slowly closed. People knew who Vicente was and didn’t bother reporting anything connected to Vicente. He was one of the most feared men in Cuba.
Mercedes’s eyes fluttered up and down, as she felt the elevator come to a stop. Before Mercedes fell unconscious, all she heard was the constant ringing of her cell phone.
***
A couple hours later, Mercedes woke up from her unconscious state. She looked around and noticed she was in a warehouse filled with broken windows. The warehouse reeked with putrid smells. She tried to move, but she couldn’t. She looked down and noticed her body was taped to a chair, along with her feet. Mercedes tried to utter words, but her mouth had been duct-taped as well. She looked up at Vicente and mumbled something.
“Oh, the sleeping beauty is awake now?” Vicente smiled as he looked around, joking with his bodyguards. “Trying to say something?” He titled his head to the side, as he snatched the duct tape off her mouth.
Mercedes moaned from the excruciating pain of the tape being ripped from her mouth. “Fuck you!” Mercedes barked.
“Fuck me?” Vicente asked. “No, fuck you! You ruined my family.”
“You fucking killed my father and my uncle; you tried to bring the Carter family down, but I’m not ready to die yet,” Mercedes told him. “You sent a motherfucker to set up my family and kill them. But I killed Emilio…Romeo…Carlito…all them motherfuckers!”
“I don’t give a fuck about Emilio or Carlito!” Vicente yelled. “But Romeo was one of my strongest soldiers,” Vicente said, shaking his head from side to side in disbelief. He had sent Romeo once he heard Emilio had died. “I want you dead. You’re the last one standing in the Carter family.”
“Where’s my mother?” Mercedes questioned. “What the fuck did you do to my mother?”
“Easy there.” Vicente smiled, as he signaled one of the guards to bring her out.
Mercedes’s eyes teared up as she saw one of
the guards bring out her mother. She looked as if she was passed out, but Mercedes knew she was dead. He held Maria in his arms. Her body looked limp, her head was leaned all the way back, and her long hair swayed as he walked and placed her down on the cold concrete floor. Mercedes held back the tears as she saw her mother lying there. She was a spitting image of her mother, and her mother was like her best friend. She couldn’t believe he had killed her.
“You killed my mother,” Mercedes whispered. “How could you kill your own flesh and blood?” Mercedes asked.
“She betrayed me, she disobeyed my rules, and so she and everybody else have to suffer for what she did!” he informed her. “I got your father, brother, Alana, and whoever else had anything to do with Maria’s escape and knew about it. Now it’s your turn to die.”
“The Carters never die.” Mercedes spit on the floor next to Vicente’s shoe as a sign of disrespect.
Vicente raised the gun, pulled back the trigger...
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