Now that he had me. Now that he would kill me in front of Javier.
“Javier, Javier, Javier,” Salvador said, his voice raspy. “Finally we meet in person. You know, you’re a lot smaller than I thought you’d be, even with you way up there.”
His chokehold around me tightened and I tried to pry him off with one good hand, giving me a few more inches of breathing room, but the strength just wasn’t there. I was slowly losing air.
“Let her go,” Javier commanded, his voice steady despite everything. “Do what you want with me, but let her go. You’ve already hurt her enough.”
“Really? I don’t think I have,” Salvador mused. “Tell me, Javier, when you were fucking her, did she scream for mercy like she does with me? Did you make her bleed too? You must have. Nice carving job, by the way. For an amateur.”
Javier swallowed. I could see how hard he was breathing, how difficult it was for him not to whip out his gun and try and shoot Salvador, promise to the DEA or not. But he couldn’t, not when I was a hostage once more.
“Let him kill me.” I managed to get the words out to Javier. “Let him kill me, just make sure you kill him. Make him suffer.”
“Shut up!” Salvador roared in my ear. “I will kill you, but then he’s next. He doesn’t even have his gun out. Fucking pussy.”
The gunfire in the background had started to die down. The helicopter that we had seen in the distance was now long gone. I wondered what side was winning now. I wondered if they’d come and find us only after it was too late. I could only hope that if Javier and I were dead, the DEA would ensure that Salvador suffered, that he would never get out of jail alive, that our deaths wouldn’t be for nothing.
“So what do you want, Salvador?” Javier asked, raising his hands. “Why are you doing this? Just shoot her now if that’s what you want.”
“You’re as fucking crazy as she is,” Salvador said, sneering. “Don’t the two of you have any respect for death? You of all people, Javier, should know the importance of making a show of it. Of making it last. The true torture doesn’t come during death—it comes in the moments before. When you know it’s about to happen, but you don’t quite know when. Just like now.”
Javier’s chest heaved. I could see his wicked brain working on overdrive, trying to come up with a way to at least save me if not himself. I could also see he had no options to go on. For all the fury he was carrying, I caught the sorrow on his brow. I saw the soft way he was coming to terms with the end.
But that didn’t mean I had nothing. Even if it meant us getting shot, I at least had to try for the both of us. I welcomed the end more than he did. I had nothing to lose.
I held Javier’s eyes with mine and then slid my gaze over to the partly-healed gash on Salvador’s forearm where I had driven in the piece of glass last week. I couldn’t reach around with my own arms and touch it, but that didn’t mean I was powerless.
When I saw the nearly invisible hint of recognition in Javier’s eyes, I knew it was time. I drew upon my reserves of anger, of injustice, of pure unadulterated rage that I had coiling deep inside me. I let those feelings, those hot, swirling, pulsing emotions wrap me up into an uncontrollable tornado that had nowhere else to go. Then I gave it permission to fuel me, to become my strength.
I screamed, a raw, brutal sound that ripped out of my gut and my throat, and used all my power to twist Salvador’s forearm toward me. I bit straight into his wound, tasting the blood, loving the blood, relishing the feeling of my teeth plunging in deeper and deeper, tearing through muscle and nerve and causing so much pain.
The next thing I knew Salvador was screaming, caught off-guard by my violence, and Javier took that moment to whip out his gun and shoot.
He aimed for Salvador’s shoulder. He got it.
Salvador spun back, out of my teeth and grasp, but not before he took his own gun and fired it at Javier as he fell.
I thought Salvador’s aim would be off.
But it wasn’t.
He shot Javier right in the head.
I screamed as Javier stumbled slightly then pitched forward off the roof and facedown onto the balcony, the glass bouncing around us from his impact.
With what strength I had, I kicked Salvador’s gun off the balcony, then scampered over to Javier, crying, screaming, feeling like my own heart was bleeding, my breath pulled from me. The pain in my chest was so incredibly great, I wasn’t sure how I was going to survive it. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to.
I fell to my knees beside Javier, afraid to touch, afraid to roll him over. I wouldn’t be able to handle what I so deeply feared to see.
But before I could reach out and touch him, he started to stir.
Alive.
“Javier!” I sobbed, my hands going for his head. I brushed away his hair and saw the wound, a long trail of blood on his temple. His eye opened and fixed on me.
“Fuck,” he groaned. “Did he get me?”
I burst into the biggest smile and nearly laughed at the intense amount of relief flowing through me. “Get you? I think you were just shot in the head!”
He reached up and gingerly touched the wound. “Oh.” He smiled weakly. “It just grazed me. How is my hair?”
I wasn’t sure whether to punch him or kiss him.
But before I could do either, I was suddenly picked up by my shoulders from behind and thrown to the side. My head smacked against the floor, making everything spin and swirl nauseatingly, blackness teasing my vision and keeping me down.
I stared helplessly as Salvador launched himself on top of Javier, trying to choke him. Even with his one arm useless, he was a big man, stronger than Javier, and he was able to squeeze his throat tight with just his one hand.
“Look at you,” Salvador sneered at him, saliva dripping down into Javier’s face. Javier gasped for breath, his skin turning white. “A traitor to Mexico. You brought in the Americans just to take this whore back. You’re a pussy. You’re soft over a woman. A girl. You’ll be known as the drug lord who became oh so good for no good reason.”
“I am not good!” Javier managed to roar, the fight coming back in his face. With all he had left, he managed to kick up under Salvador and get his knife free from his boot. He raised the knife above his head, and just as Salvador looked up in surprise, Javier swiftly drove the knife between Salvador’s eyes, plunging it all the way in to the handle. “I am just not as bad as you,” he spat out.
Salvador froze up, the knife stuck into his brain. It instantly killed him, and Javier quickly rolled out from under his crushing body. He rapidly crawled over to me and felt along the side of my head. “Are you okay?” he asked, his voice cracking.
I swallowed and tried to talk but couldn’t. I burst into tears instead.
“Shhhh, Luisa,” Javier said soothingly. “I’m alive, you’re alive. The fucker is dead. We’re okay.” He sat down beside me and pulled me into his lap, cradling me while I let everything loose. Anger, pain, shock, sorrow. He let me cry for as long as I needed. And when my tears started to dry, he said something that made me cry more, only from happiness.
“You should know that I have your parents,” he whispered into the top of my head. “They’re safe with my sister in Puerto Vallarta.”
Even though Javier had never told me he loved me, I still had never known such love. I couldn’t thank him enough, couldn’t get over how absolutely selfless he had been, and all for me.
We sat like that together, me gathering strength in his arms, until a few DEA agents burst onto the balcony with their guns blazing. One of them I didn’t even know was a woman until she took off her helmet and shook out her hair. She stared down at Salvador’s body in dismay.
“Honestly, it was self-defense,” Javier protested at her disapproving glare before she could say anything.
“But I bet you still enjoyed every moment of it,” she said.
He smiled. “Of course I did.”
And I did too.
I could tell Javier was
nervous though, about what the DEA might do with him since Salvador was dead and he’d broken the one condition. But by the time the medics arrived by helicopter and had treated his head wound and splintered up my broken fingers and applied antibiotic creams to my body, we were told we’d be free to go anyway.
“He may not be alive,” the woman, whom I learned was Lillian Berrellez, said, “but at least we were able to dismantle the Sinaloa Cartel. That’s not too shabby.”
No, it certainly wasn’t. Even though there was a cartel that was ready to take its place: Javier’s.
The DEA knew that, too. But for now, we were shaking hands and agreeing to walk away from each other.
I knew Berrellez would be back though. And if I was still by Javier’s side at that time, I’d be making sure she didn’t get far.
In this business, you didn’t build empires by being good. And though I’d never truly be able to forget the person I was and could never fully eradicate my morals, I was looking forward to being bad.
I was looking forward to getting dirty.
Very, very dirty.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Javier
It was the next day when Berrellez finally dropped us off in Mazatlán. Luisa and I were tired, wounded, and sore, but we were together and the DEA was letting us go free. For now, at least. But that was enough for us. We had each other and we were going home, back to my compound where I would surely scare the shit out of Esteban with my untimely return from the dead.
But even though that was the plan, that wasn’t the only plan I’d made. Truth be told, I wasn’t sure what the next step was. I felt as if I were being pulled by different hands, and though I knew which one felt right, I no longer knew what was right. Perhaps I had never known the difference. Perhaps there was no right or wrong anymore, not in this life.
Once Berrellez left, I took Luisa by her good hand and led her out onto the beach. Like usual on the coast, it was a blindingly beautiful day, the heat stunted by the cool Pacific. We weaved our way through thatched umbrellas, fat tourists on towels, and vendors hawking their cheap shit, until I found a more secluded place away from the hustle and bustle of bloated indulgence.
We sat down in the warm sand and I made a mental promise to myself to try and escape to the beach more often. It was nice to leave the controlled comforts of home and step into the chaos. I really had been making too many of my men do the work when I should have been doing it myself. Even though it was risky, it was a lot more fun to get my hands dirty.
“I was thinking that this weekend we could make the trip down to Puerto Vallarta,” I told her. “To see Alana and your parents.”
She beamed at me, her cheeks looking so cute I wanted to fucking bite them. “Oh, that would be wonderful.”
“I even have a special present for you there,” I said.
“Ooooh,” she cooed, clapping excitedly. “What is it?”
“It’s a surprise.” Boy, was it ever. There weren’t many men who’d deliver your lecherous ex-boss’s head to you. Then again, there weren’t many men like me.
While she sipped a Corona that I bought from a ten-year-old kid with a cooler, I pulled out two passports from my inner pocket and threw them down on the sand.
She eyed them with curiosity. “Where did you get Canadian passports?”
“They’re ours,” I told her.
She planted her beer in the sand and picked up the nearest passport, flipping it open. There was a picture of a woman that looked almost like her, just a few years older and with different hair, both things that could be easily faked. “Christine Estevez?” she said, reading it. “Who is this?”
I shrugged. “Who knows? It’s legit though. I didn’t have a photo of you so I had to obtain an actual passport through one of my channels.” I flipped open the other passport and pointed at my unsmiling picture, not so different from the actual mug shot I had upon my arrest in the States. “Mine, however, is completely forged. You can’t buy anything better though. It will pass all the tests again and again, so as long as you can remember who you are. I have birth certificates and driver’s licenses, too.”
“Javier Garcia,” she read off of mine. “I think I like Javier Bernal better.”
“Of course,” I said, straightening my collar. “He is the best.”
She bit her lip, thinking. “So why do we have these? Are we going to Canada? I think I have an uncle there, maybe we could go visit him.”
“Darling,” I said to her, pulling her to me. I ran my thumb over her lips then ran it over mine, tasting the beer. “We can go anywhere you want to go. And for as long as you want. We don’t ever have to return.”
She frowned, shaking her head. “I don’t understand. What are you talking about?”
I took in a deep breath, my heart beating hard against my ribs. I’d rehearsed this a few times in my head already. For something this serious, this life-changing, I couldn’t chance saying the wrong thing. “I risked everything to get you, Luisa. There’s no way I can risk losing you again. You say the word, and we can run. Tell me to do it and I’ll do it. I’ll give all of this up. We can be free out there, out of danger. We can leave all of this behind.”
“We can’t run away, Javier,” she said slowly.
“Yes, we can. We can do anything we want to do.”
She smiled patiently and gently kissed my lips. “No, my love, we can’t,” she said, cupping my face in her hands. “You can never run away from yourself, you’ll just go in a circle. There is no escape from this life because this is your life and you are what you are. And there is nothing wrong with that.”
Her words sunk into me like the sweetest blade. Even so. “I can’t lose you,” I told her, feeling the truth in my bones.
“You won’t lose me. I’ll gladly live this life with you. I feel that it’s what I was meant to do. To be your queen and rule by your side.”
I rubbed my lips together, trying not to smile at her beautiful phrase. “It’s an ugly life.”
She shrugged. “I know. And it’s all I’ve ever known. But at least now I’ll have enough power to mask the ugliness.”
I grinned. My heart could have burst. “You’ll have all the power. You’ll have everything.”
“And yet all I want is you.”
“You have me, my black heart and my dirty soul.”
I grabbed her and kissed her forcefully, unable to hold anything back. She’d never tasted better. The smell of sun on her skin, the cool ocean spray, the idea of her ruling by my side, with all her good and all her bad—all of it made my heart spin and my dick throb mercilessly.
“I don’t think I’ve ever wanted you more.” I groaned into her mouth, falling back into the sand and bringing her down with me. I pulled her on top of me, gripping her legs so she was straddling my waist. My tongue eagerly plunged into her mouth again and again, stirring the flames that I wasn’t able to hold back. I’d dreamt about this for days and days.
“We can always get a hotel room,” she said against my mouth, and from the way her breath hitched, I knew she was just as turned on as I was. I could still get her hot in seconds flat.
“Fuck that,” I said. I reached between her legs and under her skirt. I pushed her underwear aside and grinned at how wet she was. “My queen, we aren’t going anywhere.”
She moaned, her eyes fluttering. “But there are people on the beach. We’ll get arrested.”
“Is that so?” I asked, knowing I’d never be arrested in Mexico for anything.
“People will see.”
“Tourists will see,” I told her, licking her ear. “And let them see. Let them go back home and think that Mexico is a fun place.” I bit her neck hard, relishing the feeling of her skin between my teeth. She shivered, loving it.
“I don’t know,” she said breathlessly, her back arching. I thrust my fingers into her with one hand while unzipping my fly with the other. It was a losing battle on her behalf.
“Look,” I said, stifling a g
roan, “are you a Mexi-can or a Mexi-can’t?”
She laughed, throaty and hot. “Quoting movies now? You’re bad.”
“You love that I’m bad.”
She smiled serenely at me. “You know I do.” Then her mouth twisted into an “o” as I took my swollen dick out and eased it into her. She was so exquisitely tight, so silky, so perfect. It didn’t matter if we were fucking in public and in the broad daylight on the beaches of Mazatlán, or in the confines of my bed, she was everything I needed, everything I wanted.
“Take me home, my queen,” I whispered to her. Finally she relaxed, sitting back, and I plunged deep inside of her. We both cried out from the pleasure and pain. It was impossible not to.
I gripped her hips and moved her back and forth in slow, subtle swivels. We were barely moving but that didn’t mean I wasn’t feeling everything, everywhere.
It wasn’t long until the yearning I had felt for her, the fear of losing her, the intense sun behind her back, the blue sky and the passing people murmuring their disapproval and admiration, built up to a thunderous climax. I came hard into her, making sure her clit was well fed at the same time. While she clenched around me, squeezing me dry, she called me her king.
I don’t think the words had ever sounded so right.
After our escapades on the beach, I went and got a rental car that I would never be returning, and we headed off on the highway that lead to Durango. It would have been a shorter trip home but my sexual appetite had been reawakened by all the violence, adrenaline, and the fact that we had almost lost each other. We pulled over twice: once because I craved the taste of her pussy so bad that we ended up going down on each other in the back of the car, the good ol’ sixty-nine. The other time, I wanted to be back inside her warmth so she climbed on top of me while I was driving and started riding me that way. I only went about ten feet before I nearly crashed the car. Seemed I was good at most things but fucking and driving at the same time wasn’t one of them.
Eventually we made it back home to the compound around sunset. The guards at the gate seemed shocked at my return, but they were smart enough to look happy about it. When it came down to it, there were worse bosses than me.