Dirty Promises

  He pulled a knife out from a holster around his waist, the sun glinting off the sharp, narrow blade, and placed the tip at the neckline of the cotton dress the federales had given me to wear. Pressing the blade in until I felt it lightly puncture my skin, he began to drag it down, slowly. I stared as blood spilled down my chest, the dress ripping down the middle as he went.

  The pain was intense, almost sickly. I sucked in my breath, trying not to scream, trying so hard to hide my fear but when he got to the soft of my stomach and pressed the blade further in, I couldn’t hold back.

  I cried out, turning my face away from the sight as he quickly brought the knife down, ripping the rest of my dress. Without undergarments, I was completely exposed, naked and bleeding before them like I was about to be burned at the stake. My gash stung from the air, causing tears to well in my eyes.

  “Spread her legs,” the man said to the men below him.

  I wouldn’t plead. I wouldn’t ask them to spare me. I would take it like I had taken it from Salvador, from his men, once upon a time when I thought life was a worse fairy-tale than this.

  I’d been wrong.

  Nothing had been as bad as this.

  My legs were wrenched apart.

  The man undid his fly, took his disgusting appendage out and started stroking it in front of me. I looked away. The other men started hooting and hollering and I shut my eyes, praying that Esteban wouldn’t want to share me this way, that he would have a change of heart. But I knew my wishes were useless. Esteban wanted this and I, I brought this all upon myself when I believed he was better than the person he was.

  “Look at me bitch,” the man said, grabbing my face with one hand, sending me into a swirl of pain. He forced me to face him as he grinned at me and his grubby fingers thrust between my legs. With an angry push of his cock, he entered me and I felt as if my body were being torn apart. More than that, I felt my soul was too and that I might never be able to piece it together again. I felt stolen. My insides were nothing but dirt.

  The man licked up my face with his sour, wet tongue as he thrust hard in me, the pain almost splintering, like it was breaking off into slivers that dug deeper and deeper. I closed my eyes tight and did what I could to go off into another place, like I had done before, but that place felt out of reach. As he jabbed himself inside me over and over again, like a sweating, fat pig, his greasy hands clawing painfully at my breasts, only then did I hear Esteban.

  “That’s enough,” Esteban said loudly from behind me. “Pull out of her, you fuck. She’s not getting fucking pregnant by someone like you.”

  The man sneered at me, on the verge of coming, but did as he was told. He then proceeded to jack off until he was coming all over my body, his semen mixing with the blood. After a satisfied grunt, he leaned in close to me, snorted up something deep from his throat and spit it directly in my face.

  I flinched and he laughed loudly in my face – “fucking puta” – before walking away.

  “Have you learned your lesson yet, Luisa?” Esteban asked and then he appeared in front of me. His shaggy, highlighted hair fell across his face, making him look younger, something I hated. I hated that a monster could walk around in this disguise, pretending to be human when he was anything but.

  I didn’t say anything. I could barely breathe from the pain.

  Esteban reached over and wiped the spit from my face. He took the spit, looked at it dripping down his hands, then put it between my legs, roughly pushing his fingers inside me.

  “You’re still not wet,” he said, his mouth close to mine, eyes watching me like I was his to eat, to destroy. “I thought a whore was always ready.”

  I turned my face away.

  “You think I’m disgusting now, don’t you?” he went on, voice amused but with an edge, like he would snap at any moment. “You didn’t before. All those times we fucked but I guess I was just fucking you. You are such a fucking cunt, you know that. A god damn stupid little twat who thought she could cheat on her husband and get away with it. Did you actually trust me? Could you actually have been that dumb?”

  Suddenly he grabbed me by the crown of my hair and shoved my head back into the pillar, my skull nearly splitting. “Are you that fucking stupid!?” he screamed in my face. He thrust his fingers further inside me, but the pain from my head was still washing over me like thick, hot sauce. “I was such a waste of your time! You thought I actually liked you. You thought I was actually attracted to you! You’re nothing but this, a fucking cunt!” He curled his fingers inside me and with great force, dragged them out of me, his fingernails scraping down my inner walls until I screamed.

  I screamed and screamed and screamed until he head-butted me and then unconsciousness came for me like a dark, welcome blanket. Esteban ordered the next guy to take me but by the time the man came up, his dick in one hand, a belt wrapped around his other, I went under, to a place I hoped I would never arise from again.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Esteban

  Even though the federales had help upholding their end of the bargain and had let Esteban (and Luisa, begrudgingly) walk free, Esteban still couldn’t help but feel uneasy the moment he left their institution in Culiacan. He didn’t trust them, obviously he trusted no one but himself, so he wouldn’t have been surprised if they suddenly showed up at his door, wanting his arrest.

  They hadn’t though, not so far. Esteban wasn’t really sure if they knew where Javier’s compound was. They hadn’t asked for any of that information the whole time he’d been in contact with them. He was sure they did know, but all they seemed to focus on was the capture and arrest (or, maybe the body, depending on how much “justice” they felt needed to be served) of Javier Bernal. He was all they ever wanted, all they ever needed.

  In fact, it annoyed Esteban a little that they weren’t at all concerned about what he did. They should be following me, watching me, Esteban said to himself as he stood in new office, staring out the window and unconsciously imitating his old boss. They should fear me.

  But they gave him something akin to a slap on the wrist and he and Luisa were let go. Of course, Esteban was already annoyed that the raid didn’t exactly go as planned. They were supposed to show up in the early hours of the morning instead of at night. He had planned for them to get Javier when he was sleeping and vulnerable. Instead it all happened when Javier was on his A-game, ensuring he had a chance to try and escape.

  What Esteban had really hoped for was for them to kill Javier, accidental or not, and really take him out of the picture. Instead they botched it. He knew he should have been somewhat grateful that they interrupted Javier when they did, otherwise he would be less one appendage, his weapon of choice and the symbol of everything he was, but at the moment he couldn’t quite muster any gratefulness up.

  There was one plus to having Javier alive and in prison though. Instead of doing away with Luisa like he had originally planned, he had reason now to keep her alive. Not just alive, but alive and ruined and ravaged. She’d become his new punching bag instead of Juanito and he made sure that every brutal thing he was doing to her would eventually get back to Javier and Sinaloa people. He wanted them all to know that he was the one with the power now, he had the control, and Javier had nothing. Javier couldn’t even protect his own wife.

  He hoped the message was getting across. His team was still small, though they were fiercely loyal. He had been building them up in secret for a year now, which was easier said than done. Most narcos wanted to serve Javier, not him, so he had to prey on ones just like Juanito – the weak-minded, the hopeless, the poor and desperate. Perhaps they weren’t the most intelligent or quick soldiers, but at least they didn’t possess any morals whatsoever and they would do whatever Esteban asked of them.

  Esteban had made sure of that last part. Taking a page from the initiation tactics of the Zetas or the Juarez cartel, when he rounded up his troops, one by one, he’d made them do a slew of horrid things, from slaughtering live animals and
working their way up to slaughtering live people. The last initiation that you had to pass through to make it into Esteban’s good graces was to pick up an elderly couple off the street and decapitate one of them in front of the other, before burning the other alive in a barrel. Very few were able to do it – those who chickened out were decapitated by the others who did make it through the last test.

  Those who passed though, they became part of Esteban’s team. The moment that Javier was captured, they quickly infiltrated his compound and killed everyone loyal to Javier, even those who said they weren’t, that they would be willing to switch.

  Esteban had taken no chances. By the time he and Luisa arrived back, it all belonged to him. And so did she.

  Now, Luisa was locked in her room and given no freedom. She was tended to by Juanito because Esteban couldn’t stand to look at her beautiful face half the time, bothered by her strength and still apparent devotion to Javier. Juanito was a good choice anyway. He was starting to come into his own and he seemed to enjoy exacting the same pain on Luisa that Esteban had acted on him. Funny how the cycle always worked. So damn predictable.

  And Luisa herself would cycle into a new life of horror and depravity. There would be no Javier now to rescue her, and even if there was, Esteban knew he wouldn’t want her cheating, double-crossing ass anyway.

  The circle will go on.

  Esteban smiled at that thought and then looked around Javier’s office. He sat down at Javier’s chair, took a deep slug from his bottle of tequila and put his dirty bare feet up on the desk.

  Now, he was home.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Javier

  “They’re going to eat you alive in there, patron,” one of the prison guards said to me as I was led down the darkened hall. The guards always had that look to them, like their acne-scarred faces and missing teeth were part of the starchy uniform. Of course, most of the guards were no less criminal than the prisoners, it’s just that they knew how to suck all the right dicks.

  I mean, prisoners did too, but that was just to survive, not get ahead in some shitty job so they could continue living their shitty lives.

  I nodded at the guard with a tense smile, making a mental note to take his head off at the first chance I got. I was counting on having more than a few chances and I was sure I’d have more than a few people I wouldn’t mind decapitating before my time here was served.

  But that would all wait. Puente Grande was no joke. The biggest and baddest prison in Mexico, it held the worst of the worst. I wasn’t even the only kingpin in the joint – Almorez Fuente, who used to head up the Juarez Cartel before I had his local police force – La Linea – corrupted, was serving a long sentence somewhere in the building. I made another mental note not to be near him anytime in the future. He’d be out for revenge, though I knew a lot about that by now.

  I was making a lot of mental notes. The minute the helicopter lifted away from my burning finca, I made the mental note of tracking down Este and Luisa and killing the both of them for what they had done to me. More mental notes followed after that. It’s the only way I knew how to compartmentalize what exactly had just happened to me. It was the only way to know what to do next.

  One was to be extra nice to the two prison guards who were leading me down the hall and past the assholes. They had done such a good job explaining to the other guards what exactly was going to go down. That I was going to be placed in a cell in the worst block of the prison, after being in solitary confinement for a few days. That I was going to have to shit in front of people and possibly eat it. That I was going to be fed oats mixed with rat droppings and rotten milk. That my tight little ass was going to be brutalized every hour, on the hour, until I was shitting out blood.

  Not exactly the most politically correct talk from the guards, but it was enough to get all the prison workers to feel sorry for me.

  Well, not all of them. Not the one guiding me on the left, Hiberto, with his tall, lean build and shaved head, and not the one on the right, Emilio, with his crooked smile and beer gut. They didn’t feel sorry for me. They loved me, just as the warden did, just as the sniper on the roof, the cook in the kitchen, the administrator and about ten of the forty guards working here.

  They loved me because I was a wonderful boss.

  Hiberto and Emilio continued to lead me until we entered the middle of the prison block and then it became more of a parade and I was on display. The whole place, this dank, cold, cement, piss-scented hellhole, erupted into volcano of lewd language. Some of the inmates, the more crazed ones, were yelling things at me that I think could have been complimentary. It was hard to tell since half of them didn’t seem to know how to speak. The other half, the quieter ones with the bitter eyes, hissed shit at me. One actually threw legitimate shit, but I dodged that one quick.

  I was a man who either made them a lot of money at one point or I was a man who ruined their lives and I was in the middle of them all, wearing an orange jumpsuit. I was now one of them.

  Javier Bernal, captured at last.

  But we didn’t stop in that block. This was more for show, so that the prisoners, that everyone, knew I was here and this was my new home.

  They led me up to the third level to the building and down another long hall with the occasional metal door here and there. I knew inside those doors there was nothing but a bucket in the corner and blanket. There were no windows. No furniture. Nothing.

  That’s where I had been ordered to be placed. That was to be my home for the next fifty years, or until I croaked, whatever came first. A cement cell that would drive any man to madness.

  But instead, I was placed in the cell at the end of the hall. The door looked the same. Thick steel with a tiny sliding window in the middle, operable only from the outside.

  Inside, though, was a whole other situation.

  It was about three times the size of a normal cell. There was a toilet in the corner with a slight partition around it. A large, clean queen bed was in the middle, as was a small table and two chairs, a bookshelf filled with books, an MP3 player with earphones and speaker. There was a large window you could open and though there were bars on it, it had a nice view of a dried up river and the rolling brown hills in the distance. If you squinted past the parking lot of the prison, you could pretend you were in the middle of the country on vacation.

  But this wasn’t a vacation. I didn’t take vacations, even if I was in prison. I had work to do. A lot of it. I had an empire I had to hold on to. It was all I had left.

  “I hope this is comfortable,” Hiberto said as they ushered me in. I stuck my hands in front of me and he quickly undid the handcuffs.

  I looked around and shrugged. “It will do. Do I at least get my suits?”

  He gave me an apologetic smile. “Sorry, patron. You must wear the jumpsuit, just in case someone shows up.”

  Someone that wasn’t on my payroll.

  I nodded, understanding. Orange flattered me anyway.

  They removed the cuffs and headed back to the door. Emilio said over his shoulder, “We’ll be by soon to bring you dinner. What type of wine would you like with it?”

  “No wine,” I told him with a shake of my wrist. “Espresso afterward will do.” I needed to stay sharp.

  After they left, I walked to the window and stared out at the horizon, blue sky melting into the haze of earth. I took in a deep breath through my nose and tried to pretend that everything was okay.

  Everything wasn’t okay, of course. Everything was absolutely horrible. But at least Este and Luisa’s betrayal, though a surprise, didn’t leave me ruined. Not on the outside, what they wanted.

  The thing was, I wasn’t stupid. I never completely trusted Esteban. He was good for some things, lousy for others, but I never in a million years thought he was loyal. After all, I could pick up on that bitterness, that desperation that swam behind his eyes and laced his every words. He wanted everything I had, he was always that way. When you combined that with the fa
ct that I had been screwed by my partners and co-workers before in this business, I knew I always had to keep Este at arm’s length.

  I always knew he would try and fuck me over.

  So, like any good King, I had a back-up plan. You had to prepare for the worst if you wanted to stay at the top. You had to expect it and in some ways, welcome it.

  I knew that if I were ever captured by the federales, I would be put into Puente Grande. That was just the way it was. Of course if I were captured by the Americans that would be different, but I had good lawyers and I always had a chip to bargain with. Plus American prisons weren’t as bad as shitholes like this, where prisoners died every damn day, beaten to death in their cells over nothing and no one batted an eye.

  Knowing my eventual fate, for the last year I’d had my men round up the best men in the prison system. They were all paid an extra salary from me, $75,000 for the guards, $100,000 for the warden and director. There were twenty of them in total that called me their boss and would do whatever they could to not only ensure I had a pleasant stay here and that I would be fully protected, but they would let me escape as well.

  Of course, the government and other officials couldn’t know of this. They blindly thought their workers couldn’t be corrupted but I was oh so good at corruption.

  I owned them now and it was just a matter of time before I would be smuggled out of here, unbeknownst to the world. By the time that anyone of importance would catch on that I wasn’t in prison anymore, I would be long gone. I would be reclaiming my throne.

  That was the main problem now. That while prison couldn’t hold me, I worried I couldn’t hold on to my cartel. It was one thing to be captured. Most kingpins ran their business behind bars. But it was another thing to be captured, set-up by a man who aimed to take everything you had, wife included. He would try and ruin everything I had worked so hard for. All that blood shed over the years and the sacrifices I’d made, just for him to take the reins.