I shook my head and sat down. “I don’t like this. Adding people in, it’s too complicated.”
“I know, patron. But he’s here, now, downstairs, and setting something up that will get you out of here immediately.”
I looked at him sharply. “What? I don’t need help getting out. I paid for this.”
“He’s going to make a statement after, saying you are still in your cell and unharmed. It will let us do everything we need to without anyone thinking you’re loose, that you’re a threat. Este will be caught off-guard.”
“Wait,” I said, my mind struggling to catch up. “Make a statement after? After what?”
“You need your own brand of crazy to fight his crazies,” Diego said, standing up.
Suddenly an alarm went off from somewhere in the building.
“What the fuck is going on?” I asked. Outside the window, red lights flashed, spotlights were searching the hills.
“Prison riot,” Diego said. “They’re all being let out of their cages and whoever is left standing is coming with us.”
“Well, that’s a bit unnecessary,” I said. “Not to mention morbid. A fight to the death, the winners join us? Who are we, savages?”
“You have no idea what’s going on with Este, do you?” he asked and I saw a glimmer of something sorry in his eyes. It made my palms sweat. “After I tell you, you’re going to want to create as much fucking mayhem as possible.”
“It’s Luisa,” I said. “I heard.”
He gave me a terse smile. “It’s not just Luisa. Javier, it’s about your sister. Alana.”
Even with the flashing lights, the god awful siren blaring in my ears, everything in the room seemed to still.
Alana.
I could barely speak. “What about her? She’s dead.”
“I know.” He breathed out deeply. “But it was Esteban who killed her.”
Funny how some words could render you immobile. I could only blink at Diego, trying to comprehend what he was saying.
“Excuse me?” I finally said, my hands balling up into fists again, nails digging into my palm. I absently noted I needed a manicure, as if that was something normal and safe that I could focus on.
“Perhaps you should sit down,” Diego said, carefully laying his hand on my shoulder.
I shrugged him off. “Esteban killed Alana?” I repeated slowly.
“It was printed today in one of the papers,” he said. “I am guessing you didn’t see.”
I shook my head once, my mouth open, fumbling for words, for anything.
Sympathy looked strange on Diego’s rough face. “I’m sorry. He announced to the world that it was he who stole the boat, who kidnapped your sister and then blew it to hell with her on it on the way to Cabo San Lucas. He even went on to say that he’d hired an American sicario to do the job, and when he couldn’t, he killed him too.”
An American assassin. Somewhere in the back of my fading mind I knew he was talking about Derek Conway, a man who used to work for me and then disappeared. Fragments of the last conversation I had with Alana came floating back, like a puzzle rebuilding itself in my head, piece by piece.
The only thing I could say was, “Why?” But even then I knew it was a stupid question. The only answer was because.
Because she was my sister.
One of the last of my family left.
Because he knew personally how much family meant to me, even if my own family didn’t know it themselves.
He killed her to send me into a tailspin.
My beautiful, darling young sister.
Then he moved onto Luisa. Seduced her when she was lost and vulnerable and I was taking out my rage on the rest of the world, purposefully pushing her away, wanting her out of my life, wanting to drown in grief and violence and madness.
He took advantage of every part of me.
Now I was in jail, and he wasn’t going to stop until my cartel was in his hands, until he’d wrung every lost drop of blood from my body.
It takes a monster to know a monster.
He was the worst of us all.
And I was going rip him from limb to limb, tear him from ass to mouth, skin him alive and piss on his broken bones until I lost all traces of whatever humanity I had left.
I was living, breathing wrath and I was never going to stop.
I don’t really remember what happened next. Everything went black, but it could have been my rage or it could have been the prison’s power system failing.
The door to my cell opened and Diego and I walked out, into a land of screams and anguish. I would fit in here just fine.
Hiberto, Emilio and the tall, rangy warden were there, armed to the teeth with guns, knives and batons. If they were nervous or excited, I couldn’t tell.
One of them handed me a machete and “thank you” was the last thing I’d said until the slaughter was over.
I don’t know how many people I’d killed. It didn’t matter. At some point Diego had to stop me from chopping up an inmate into even smaller bits. I had let the hate and anger fuel me until I was some sort of machine.
Naturally, my first stop was the ugly guard who had first teased me when I walked in. I did as I told myself I would. Only, before I slowly ground the machete across his throat and took off his head, I hacked off his hands and feet, then shoved his foot in his mouth. I thought it would be ironic. Maybe it was barbaric.
After that I just went crazy, adding to the mayhem, while the two guards, warden and Diego stood by my side for protection, even taking part. I wasn’t going to walk around here without them. They kept the fuckers out for blood at bay while I was able to let my lucid fire unleash.