5 Chapter 4 (1/2)

Mariana

When I awoke, red, crus.h.i.+ng pain greeted me. I squeezed my eyes shut again, desperate to get back to that place where the darkness sat in my limbs, cool and comforting. But there was no peace to be found.

I was moving. Rattling around in the back seat of what looked to be an expensive car, travelling at some speed down a b.u.mpy road. My hands were bound in front of me with thick rope that looked like it belonged on a boat or wharf, not on a girl's wrists.

I could tell the car was expensive even before I opened my eyes. The smell of artificial air freshener invaded my nose as I felt soft, supple leather at my back and underneath my thighs.

People like me didn't travel in cars with leather seats, unless they were cracked and rough, the kind of frayed, hard leather that dug into your skin and made you wish you could afford to buy a car-seat cover to save your back and a.s.s.

I sat up, just in time to glimpse a large apartment block the locals referred to as La Casucha Hacienda pa.s.sing by the window. The Slum Estate spanned several blocks of crumbling high-rise apartments joined by courtyards, and littered with used syringes, broken gla.s.s, and local thugs who liked to hurl abuse at anyone who dared walk past. It was a place most didn't venture near, but when your family was a part of the cartel, you ended up knowing half the people who lived in La Cas on a first-name basis. My heart rose and then crashed as I recognised the familiar route.

They were taking me home.

I'd been upright maybe three seconds before a hand closed around my loose ponytail and dragged me down, the side of my face coming to rest in a man's lap. What felt like expensive material brushed my face and I smelled tobacco and peppermint among the designer fabric. Whatever thick weave these pants were made of didn't feel like the scratchy, cheap suits my father wore. And my father didn't even use aftershave — he probably just slapped straight tequila on his cheeks after he shaved.

Terrified, and not expecting the sudden movement, I fought as hard as I could — which wasn't very hard with the way I was positioned and my hands useless in front of me. Still, I gave it my best, turning my head and sinking my teeth into the leg of whoever was holding my head painfully close to their crotch. I gagged on the taste of dry cotton as fingernails dug into the back of my neck.

'f.u.c.k!' the man roared, wrenching me back from his leg. A hand pushed my face forcefully away, so that I landed on the other side of the back seat, the back of my head slamming into the window.

I brought the back of my hand up to my face and tried to wipe some of the cotton lint out of my mouth. As I did, I glanced over at the man who would become my d.a.m.nation.

I knew straight away who I was with, and the reality of my hopelessness began to sink in to my gut, hot and p.r.i.c.kling. Emilio Ross, infamous kingpin of South America's most powerful drug cartel, the Il Sangue Cartel, and my father's long-time employer. With his dark eyes and pointed European nose, he reminded me of a wolf. And I was the G.o.dd.a.m.n lamb. Well, this lamb was going to put up a fight, even if it killed me.

'Guess I won't be putting my d.i.c.k in your mouth without a gun to your head,' he observed in English, goading me. He was probably in his late fifties, and my stomach turned at the thought of anything of his anywhere near my mouth. His eyes were dark brown with tiny flecks of amber in them, amber that reminded me of fire. a.s.shole.

'Sounds like fun,' I responded in Spanish, sarcasm so thick it almost dripped from my lips. 'I wonder if you can pull the trigger before I bite your d.i.c.k off?'

My mama always said it would be my mouth that got me into trouble. And my mama was always right.

The fire-eyed man laughed.

'It's been a long time, Mariana,' Emilio Ross said casually, his voice deep and loud. 'I haven't seen you since you were a small girl.'

I still remembered the last time we'd spoken. I couldn't have been more than eight, and he was visiting my father. I had scurried away to my room after being forced by my father to say h.e.l.lo. The fact that Emilio remembered the fleeting visit troubled me greatly.

'Not long enough, obviously,' I said to him, still speaking in Spanish.

He drew his brows together, smiling. I amused him. 'Do you speak English, puta?'

'I speak f.u.c.k You,' I replied, in perfect English.

He chuckled. 'You're not like your father,' he said, his gaze moving from my eyes lower, lingering on my lips and b.r.e.a.s.t.s before flicking back to my face. A smirk grew on his mouth like a jagged crack in his face.

'No,' I replied flatly, still in English. 'I'm not.' After a year at an American boarding school and two more in a stateside university, English came to me just as quickly as my native Spanish tongue.

'You must know that your father owes me a lot of money, puta?' There he was, calling me a b.i.t.c.h again. I suspected it was because he only knew a few Spanish swear words.

'Oh, yeah?' My nerves started to rattle and fray, and my mind along with them. Papa and his stupid, selfish gambling.

I was pretty smart, good with numbers, and I'd been doing some creative accounting with my father's finances for years, but there was no denying that he owed a lot of people a lot of money.

My father's casual att.i.tude towards the entire situation made my blood boil. It was fine to risk your life when you were single and unenc.u.mbered, but he had a wife and three children to think about. It didn't seem to mean anything to him, though. He kept gambling and taking money from loan sharks until there was nothing left to lose. When he stopped being able to pay the bookmakers back, things had gotten really ugly.

They had started on his fingers. Three months ago, he lost an index finger, and two months ago, a middle finger. It was only a matter of time before they collected the rest. That's when my brother, Pablo, had been shot in the thigh. Then my younger sister had been followed home by men we knew, men who had grown tired of issuing threats and decided to collect their outstanding debts in the form of my sister's frightened pleadings. They didn't **** her, but the threat was clear — they could, and they would, if my father didn't front up the cash he owed. That was three weeks ago, and after my mother called me in hysterics I had left the relative safety of my stateside university to come home. To try to help my father claw back some control before we were all killed and hung off a freeway overpa.s.s as a reminder never to cross the cartel. Since I'd come home I'd been trying desperately to funnel some funds through accounts I had purposely hidden from my father for this eventuality, and pay off the most bloodthirsty of the people he owed.

Evidently, I was too late. Emilio Ross could tear us all apart if he wanted to.

I slumped in my seat, all the fight fleeing my body. I stared straight ahead at the back of the black leather seat in front of me, and set my jaw squarely.

'You're surprised?' Emilio asked.

I shook my head from side to side; I was not surprised. I battled to keep the anger from my face, the disgust, but failed. Rage burned in my blood, but not for the man who sat beside me. No, the rage inside me was reserved exclusively for my father. The man who was meant to protect me, the man who had promised to keep me safe when I was a little girl. The man who drank more than he should and laid his fists into me, into all of us, when it got too much. They say every little girl wants to marry her father, but I wanted mine to vanish.

He was an idiot. A selfish f.u.c.king fool. And now I was going to pay for his sins.

'Are you going to kill me?' I asked calmly, as if we were talking about who had won the soccer game on the weekend.

He replied just as casually.

'Yes, of course.' He frowned. 'It's nothing personal against you, cholita.' Tough girl, he had called me. I bit my lip and nodded, the sadness in my chest locked tightly away. I refused to show weakness in front of anyone, least of all the man who was probably about to end my existence.

Esteban. His face floated into my mind and I clamped down the thought. Flecks of his blood still clung to my bare knees. It didn't matter now; none of it mattered.

'How much does he owe you?' I blurted out. 'Are you sure he can't work the debt off?'

Emilio's eyebrows rose, and I heard the driver cough awkwardly up front. I wondered what kind of punishment I'd earned for daring to question the notorious drug lord.

'Tell me,' Emilio asked slowly. Taunting me. 'What he can do for me that will be worth five hundred thousand dollars.'

Oh.

I returned my attention to the back of the headrest in front of me.

'It's a lot of pesos, cholita,' Emilio said, reaching his hand over to squeeze mine. His sympathy was a ruse, nothing more than a macabre gesture to invoke desperation.

'No s.h.i.+t,' I muttered, the feel of his oily palm on my hand was nauseating. 'It's a lot of pesos.'

I looked down at my bound hands, startled as they shook violently. It wasn't fear; a lifetime of being a drug trafficker's daughter had numbed me to many terrors, real and imagined.