“You keep a machete under your desk?” Este asked, looking over my shoulder at it, the long bloody blade still in my hands.
I gave him a look. “Why wouldn’t I keep a machete under my desk?” I handed it to him. “Here, put it back and get Juanito to clean this up.” I gestured to the soon to be corpse and the bloody mess of an office. “I’m going to bed.”
Este tried to take it from my hands but I found my grip tightening. “On second thought, I’ll take it with me.” I didn’t want Este to think he could go on about “respect” again, even though I knew he was thinking it with Juanito having to clean up my mess half the time. Everyone had to pay their dues, though.
I took the machete upstairs, my bodyguard Diego following me down the hall as he always did. I barely noticed him until I was about to go into my bedroom.
“Mrs. Bernal is sleeping in one of the guest bedrooms,” he said in his low, baritone voice. He didn’t speak much, one of the reasons I liked him. “The one at the end of the hall.”
“Oh?” The one that used to be her prison cell. “Did she say why?”
“No sir,” Diego said. “She just came up to me to let me know.”
As if it would go unnoticed. “All right,” I said, straightening up a bit, as if this arrangement was the new normal. “Can you make sure we have someone stationed outside her door as well? Artur?”
“Of course,” he said before he strode off to gather Artur from one of the barracks on the property, probably interrupting his sleep. Artur was as equally as trustworthy as Diego but usually worked in the early morning hours. Still, I wouldn’t compromise her safety. The chances of someone getting into the house to get at her, or me, were practically nil, but sometimes you couldn’t trust the people in your house either. I knew better than to underestimate those closest to me. I knew better but I never let on.
I closed the door behind me and got ready for bed. For all the troubles, this was the first time I’d gone to sleep without her. Perhaps she should have done this a long time ago. Perhaps she was tired of having to go to bed and fall asleep first, such a vulnerable stage of life, all alone.
And now, now I was alone. With those thoughts again. Knowing the dreams were waiting. The ones filled with guilt and grief and regret. The ones that made me a little more scared of myself, a little crazier, day by day.
As I fell asleep, I could still smell the blood I had spilled. It worked as well as a sleeping pill.
CHAPTER FOUR
Esteban
Fucking animal, Esteban Mendoza thought to himself as he surveyed Javier’s office. Blood was absolutely everywhere, even on the walls, which meant Juanito would be spending all hours of the night wiping that shit down, not to mention disposing of the body. He had to do the exact same thing the other day, after Javier got carried away with a piece of barbed wire. The pigs he kept out back were getting fatter by the minute.
It wasn’t that Este really felt bad for Juanito, it was more that it would steal his time away from him. After all, Este was having him do all sorts of things that in some ways were far worse. Juanito wasn’t even gay. Not that Este was either, he just liked to get off and it usually didn’t matter who was sucking his dick. It was more about the power. The control. And that need to humiliate someone the way he used to be humiliated himself, back when he was a little punk hanging on the corners of the colonias of Juarez. When he told Juanito to get on his knees and put his cock in his mouth, he felt like a king. The king he always should have been. The patron he’d dreamed about.
He’d bided his time long enough. Put up with Javier long enough. He had to act now, before Javier really went to the dark side. It wasn’t that Javier would slip up. Este had told Luisa that her husband was getting sloppy, but that wasn’t really the case. Ever since Alana’s death, he’d become sharper, like a new knife. He’d become more focused on building his empire and taking the jagged pieces of what was once one federation of narcos and putting them back together again, with him at the helm.