Javier was lost, yes. Grieving, no doubt. But he wasn’t letting go of the business. And if anything, he was becoming more dangerous. Unpredictable. Inhumane. Este had never, ever feared Javier before. He had no reason to. He knew Javier had always looked at him like a lackey, a joke, and that was something he purposely cultivated. Because who would ever suspect Este of really using his brain? He was smart enough for the techie stuff, but no one would expect him to be devious. Or calculating. In fact, Este grew tired of the surfer look a year ago but kept it up because appearances were everything in this place. He fucking hated wearing flip-flops.
But now, Este wasn’t so sure that Javier wouldn’t snap one day and have his own head chopped off, for no real reason at all. What Este had wanted to accomplish by offing Alana — (he had offed her, hadn’t he? He wondered that sometimes at night, the image of the boat exploding in the background again and again. Were the female remains Alana’s? The DNA findings on Alana were faked to bring certainty to Javier, but Este wasn’t quite certain himself.) — was to bring Javier to his knees and make him vulnerable. In a sense, it had worked. But Este had to act fast now before it took a turn for the worse and Javier became harder to manage.
His grace was gone. His elegance was still there, but when Este looked into those golden eyes, he only saw rage, and behind that rage, madness. The old Javier would never have killed a whore without reason, and now he was just doing it out of this newfound bloodlust. The old Javier probably wouldn’t have cheated on his wife (even though the old Javier did have a habit of cheating on other partners, and later, beheading them, so maybe this wasn’t new). And the old Javier would never have been so ambitious as to kidnap a federale as a means to assassinate another cartel leader.
The first step was Luisa. He was almost there. Even though Javier’s behavior surprised him, he wanted him to keep pushing his wife away. He wanted Javier to cheat on her. He wanted Luisa ruined and helpless and looking for love and affection anywhere.
Este wanted Luisa to come to him. He would show her what she was missing, how a real man fucked. He would give her everything that Javier couldn’t. He would do this, in secret, for a long time, until the secret came out. He would then take her for his own, and when he was bored of her one day, kill her. Make sure Javier knew about that, too. Maybe give him a front row seat.
Of course, he would take the cartel as well. The plans were being set in motion for that. He could have kissed Javier for being so ballsy and ambitious.
It was all pretty much perfect.
But if he didn’t act now, he could end up dead.
And death was something Este feared. Death before getting to show the world what a fool Javier Bernal was. Death before getting to show the world it had underestimated Esteban Mendoza.
Esteban left Javier’s office and strode down the hall, down the stairs to the basement. This was where Juanito lived. He actually had it pretty good, at least in Este’s mind he did. He had more money than he knew what to do with, but because he was under Este’s command (and yes, Javier’s, as he had so recently demonstrated), he couldn’t have his own fancy house with fancy cars and fancy hookers. He was told he could have all that later. It was always later. Now, his job was just to do as they said, no matter what it was, and in time he would rise in the ranks.
What Javier didn’t know, though, was that Juanito was loyal to Esteban and not to him. The minute that Juanito joined the cartel, Este had taken him under his wing. At first Este had explained everything as a bit of hazing. He’d had his own little torture session on Juanito — pulling off toenails with a clamp, waterboarding, using a heated hammer to make burns on his back. Things that Javier would never notice. But Juanito sure did. And fear of Este was built into him from the start.
It made him so much more compliant. The rape came later (though Juanito was willing to go through with it, Este liked to think of it as rape — it turned him on even more). More torture here and there. Pretty soon Juanito was willing to do whatever Este asked of him. And one of the first things he had asked was to help orchestrate the murder of Javier’s sister.
If Juanito had any objections to that, he didn’t dare voice them to Este. He went through with it. Took Alana’s phone call for help and instead of patching her through to Javier, told her help was on the way.
Este picked up Alana, and the rest was history.
Now Este wanted Juanito’s help with the next phase of the plan, and he knew he could get it. But just in case Juanito was starting to fear Javier like Este was, he needed to put that fear back into him.
Este opened the door to Juanito’s room without knocking. It was dark, so Este flicked on the lights. Juanito was in bed, sleeping, but sprang awake in a second. No one knew how to sleep through anything in this compound.
“What is it?” he asked, wiping the sleep from his eyes. Juanito was such a young kid. Este forgot at times until he saw that emptiness instead of youth in his eyes. But that loss of innocence was pretty much all his fault and he might as well take pride in it.
“I made a mess in Javier’s office, hey,” Este said. “I need you to take care of it. After you take care of me.”