Page 27 of When Sinners Hate
The door closes, I turn the ignition, and the car rumbles to life, vibrating through my entire body. My foot hits the gas, and I floor the car out of the parking lot. The rush is my first taste of freedom in months. It’s a wave of possibility and relief, all mixed up into a heady cocktail, so much so that I can’t contain the smile that beams across my lips.
Part of me wants to gun the car and never turn back. I’ve manipulated and worked my way into and out of every situation I’ve wanted to in the past, but Abel Cortez is different, and whilst a part of me wants to put him and the rest of my life in the rearview, making that choice will be running away. If I do that now I’ll always be running. I’ll never forgive myself for it. The fourteen-year-old me will never forgive myself.
My fingers grip the leather of the steering wheel, and the simple gold band glints at me in the sunlight. I married into the Cortez family. It might be a fake relationship built on mutual hate but marrying and falling in love isn’t in my plan. My plan is sculpted in revenge, and I can’t rush it. Now, I have another facet to add to the plan.
If I can just hold my nerve a little longer. If I can bury my feelings and wear the dutiful wife mask until the time is right, it'll work. I’ve paid my dues, and it’s time to show everyone why I should have been in the same position as Nicolas was and that I’d never make a mistake like he did.
For a few more miles, I enjoy the strength and space the Challenger offers. And then I turn the car around and head for Terrell Hills.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ABEL
Wandering in halfway through Dante’s idea of hellfire, I look around the old place and watch the flames beginning to lick up the side walls. Bottles of liquor get tossed at surfaces, as he drags the owner of this establishment over to a seat in the middle of the room. The guy – Saul Goldmann – looks about ready to die, but that’s not stopping Dante elongate his death. A few months ago Saul said he wouldn’t piss around with his obligations. He was warned.
He chose to ignore that warning.
His brother – Liam Goldmann – stands on the side wall away from the flames with Shaw holding him. I walk closer and stare into his eyes, watching as he struggles for freedom to reach his brother. He won’t. He’ll watch him burn, and then perhaps he’ll think twice when we let him carry on living. “I know. It hurts,” I murmur. He glares back at me and tries shaking Shaw off again, then looks back at his brother. “But he knew, Liam. Dragon’s breath had already been shown.”
I twist back to look at Dante, smiling as he gets invested in his work and pours gas at Saul’s feet. It takes me back to myyounger years. They were times when I’d use my feelings rather than sense. I was like him then. I took all those sensations and visions I'd grown from, and I poured hatred into everything.
One heavy punch lands on Saul’s face, just enough to knock him partially out. He’ll still feel the burning as he dies, though. And he’ll still scream his way through his death so this fuck hears it.
“To the table,” I tell Shaw. Liam gets hauled backwards and turned until he’s pushed over it, and I pull my blade out. “What shall I take to make sure you understand?” I ask Liam. “Dick?” He looks at me under the pressure of Shaw’s grip against his head, then tries struggling. “But then there’d be nothing to fuck that pretty wife of yours with. I could help with that, though.” That hits home. Women always do. His eyes widen, jaw slackening at the thought of me on her.
I keep staring, making sure he appreciates the thought, because I mean every word of it, and he knows exactly what that means. I’m nearly invested in the thought of her ass, anyway, when Dante laughs behind me, breaking my mood. “Hand then.” Shaw drags it into place, covering his wrist to keep it still. “Are you listening, Liam? Do you hear what's coming for you? Regular payments on the twenty eighth of each month. No straying outside the rules we’ve set for you. Zero fucking drugs. You’re not a cartel we allow space to.”
My blade positions over his thumb, and I hit down on the top of the blade, forcing it to crunch through bone. He bellows out his pain, still trying to shrug Shaw off. Pointless. No one gets around his kind of pressure when he means it. “Don’t fuck around with me again. Next time itwillbe your dick, then head.” I pick it up and slam it down a few times to make the point felt. “Remember what’s happening here and you’ll be fine.”
The smell of burning leather breaches the air, and then the shouting starts in the background. I listen to it and Liam ashe tries to call for mercy, and slowly turn away from the death unfolding to find Knox. My part here is done, and there isn’t any mercy. I don’t have any to give, and I barely remember a time when I did. But in these shouts and pleas, Kayla springs to mind – still crying and bruised. Still saying no.
Two corridors later, I find Knox in the back room used as a counting house for laundered income. I watch as he heaves the last bag of money out of a safe and starts counting. He’s meticulous, as always, regardless of the smoke beginning to engulf the building. He cuts through the notes with the precision of a banker, licking his finger to dampen it with each next pile processed.
He flicks a look towards some folders on the table. “Title deeds to this place and the restaurant on Broadway. I’ll get them to Grasby.” Charles Grasby Junior. Our attorney. A nasty piece of money–bred asshole. I like him. “How long do I have?” he asks.
“Five minutes.” He nods and loads another bundle of money into one of our bags before picking up the next. “How much longer does this lying go on?” His hand hovers on the money for a fraction of a second, and then he carries on counting. “My patience is wearing thin, Knox.”
He frowns and throws another bundle in the bag. “Just let me do this first.”
I do, whilst I listen to the continued screams of suffering coming along the corridors. Not only because he needs to work out how much money we’re still owed, but because any lesson in manners he might need isn’t going to happen in a building that’s about to fall into itself. At least he hasn’t lied about his lying. Which is more than can be said for Liam out there. He lied about Saul hiding things from me, and all that after Dante had already sent a message through these hallways.
Picking at my nails, I clean them out and try not to think about Kayla's face underneath me. It doesn't work. She was fourteen, a virgin – purposely so – and the daughter of one of Mother’s whores. Nothing but property, Mother said, as she brought me in the room and told me she had a treat for me. It was a treat in her eyes because underage virgins were worth a lot of money. My wife was right yesterday – they still are. But regardless of profit, I can’t get the look of fear on Kayla's face out of my head sometimes. I still fucked her as I was expected to, while Mother stood in the room and watched. I rutted like a hormonal adolescent and took what was offered. Under duress, maybe, but I did as I was told. I obeyed.
Sneering, I look back up at Knox, still counting. It was my fifteenth birthday that day. And whilst she wasn't my first, she was the first I held in place. A week later, Kayla was pushed into the main whore house and used by anything that wanted her. I'd broken her in. I'd been given a gift.
At least I never hurt her physically other than tearing a slither of skin in two.
And I did eventually atone for my part in her life after me.
A low sigh drains out of me, as I think back on Alexia’s confession and the look of disgust in her eyes. It didn’t surprise me that much. That’s the kind of man Miguel Ortega is, and no doubt she was an asset he could use at that age – or even now considering this marriage I’m part of. It riled me to hear it out loud, though. It took me straight back to Kayla, and then to watching all the other girls Mother used and degraded for profit at that point. I'm no different from her now in reality, but perhaps, for the first time, I found some respect for my wife. Or at least some sympathy.
I don’t know what to do with either of those feelings. We’re nothing but hatred bound with gold rings. And yet thatfire she brought at me – real fire that ached inside her to get out, to find vengeance – I liked it. More than I want to admit.
Shaw and the sound of dragging feet and shouts eventually stops in the doorway. He looks in at us and nods his way towards the back exit. “It’s time,” he says. “Dante’s on his way.”
I nod and watch him haul Liam away, before picking up some of the bags Knox has spread around his feet. He gets up after the last bundle of money has been counted and loads several bags up on his own shoulders, swinging the last one over his head.
“I’m done.”