As the sun was setting that night, Marco and I sat down to talk business while the ladies got ready to put on their “bartending show” or whatever the hell they were doing, and then head to the other mansion.

I came down the steps and walked outside to find Marco sitting down at a table with several of his finest servants standing at the ready.

“Hello Corbin,” Marco said. “Have a seat.”

He had made up a place just for me with all the trappings for a several course meal as well as two giant wine glasses. Marco’s was already filled.

The table was long, with enough room for at least 10 people, but it was only going to be Marco and I. There were only two place-settings.

“Luis couldn’t make it, I’m assuming?”

“Luis is held up taking care of some business right now. And as you know, he has entrusted me to do his bidding anyhow.”

“Of course,” I said as I sat down and a servant pushed my seat in.

A server brought the first course for us, a cold gazpacho.

“Enjoy, sir,” the server said.

“Shut the fuck up,” Marco interjected, scowling at the server suddenly. He turned to me. “One of my pet peeves is when the server tells me to fucking enjoy my meal. Why wouldn’t I enjoy it? I fucking picked it.”

I shrugged. “Personally, I don’t really give a shit what a server says to me.”

“Exactly,” the server said, nodding.

Marco turned back to the server. “Did I ask you to talk?”

“No, sir. I just thought that—”

“Now there you go, talking again. Again, I didn’t ask you to talk.” Marco rose up from his seat and grabbed hold of a large metal candlestick from the table.

“Please, Sir.”

“That wasn’t very smart,” Marco said with a scowl. He wound up like a baseball batter, and, spilling wax on the ground and on his own shirt, struck the man in the head.

He screamed as he fell, trying to put his arms up to stop the blows. I’d seen shit like this before. Hell, I’d been Marco before. Maybe I still was Marco. Even though I hadn’t killed since before prison, I knew the violence and the evil lived inside me.

For a moment he paused. “See everybody? This is what happens to people who disobey my instructions.” Marco bellowed.

Marco continued striking down blows on the man’s head until it turned bloody and his body went limp while his other servants looked on in horror. I knew the feeling that was surging through Marco’s veins. There was an extreme power in taking a life—or getting close to it. I wasn’t sure if this man was fully dead yet, but he’d certainly need life support after this beating. “Do not fuck with Marco fucking Reyes,” he yelled, and wiped the man’s blood from his own forehead.

In the end, the drug world was a wilderness. Kill—exert your power—or risk being seen as weak and get taken advantage of. There was no middle ground. Kill or be killed.

And Marco’s over-the-top evil was one of the reasons I was damn happy I was playing for the other side now.

Marco stood; his chest heaving, bloody weapon in his hand. The bloodied body was on the ground below him and didn’t even seem to be breathing any more. I supposed the servant was dead. That’s when I saw her walk by.

Eva and Louisa, escorted by a couple of armed guards, came out of the door and onto the patio, clearly on their way to the show they were putting on.

“Oh Hi ladies,” Marco said to them, smiling.

Eva looked so sweet and innocent, but I saw her fight not to break into tears when she saw the dead man. She suddenly looked worried as fuck.

Marco walked toward them with the candlestick. I got up from my chair and made a beeline for her, arriving a few seconds before Marco.

“Don’t you ladies look gorgeous tonight,” Marco said, looking like an insane man with all the blood on his shirt. “I’m sorry you had to see this. This isn’t a sight for a lady. In fact, Pablo, why the fuck are you taking them through the patio?”

The guard said nothing. He simply whisked Louisa and Eva away, into the house, and through the front door. Smart man. Better to not get into an argument with Marco, because we all knew how those ended.

“What are you all staring at? Get a fucking cleanup crew over here and clean this shit up!” Marco yelled to another servant.

A minute later, the body was carried away, and Marco was wearing a new set of white linen pants and a button down t-shirt that his servants brought out to him. He and I sat back down at the table.

“Pardon the interruption,” Marco said solemnly.

“It’s alright. Glad to see you are dealing with the dumb fucks in your organization appropriately,” I said through gritted teeth.

Marco looked at me with a scowl, but let out a single laugh. And then another. Then he broke out into full-on raucous laughter, and I joined him.

“Yes. Good thing gazpacho is supposed to be served cold!” he said with a chuckle.

I smirked. Seeing the utter power that Marco held over his staff and the fear they had for him, I suddenly envied him. Even when I was a major drug dealer, I’d never risen to such ranks as to have people fearful of me murdering them for no reason.

“So, where were we? I believe we were discussing the terms of your agreement with us,” Marco said as he took his first sip of the red gazpacho. “As I said, we want to take care of you financially for what you’ve done for us. In addition to the ten thousand I gave you yesterday, we have another ten here for you.” He clapped, and a servant brought out another briefcase. Marco snapped it open in front of me to show me it was filled to the brim with bills.

I looked at the cash, and then glanced up at Marco. He took a sip of his wine and gauged my reaction.

“How much product I gotta move for this?”

“I’m giving you a cool thousand for every pound you move. So that’s twenty pounds total.”

I nodded and motioned to the man to take the cash away.

I took a long, slow sip of my wine, letting its tart, full taste linger for a moment as I did some mental math. I could make a hundred thousand cash easy if I played my cards right with Marco. I was his golden gringo, the one who knew how to sell the shit out of his product and get the most money for it.

Now, with the money in front of me, my mind started to wander. What if I took the money and fell off the face of the earth? The feds were getting me out of my sentence, but they weren’t paying me shit. As soon as they got what they wanted—Luis Reyes—I’d be out on my ass on the street again, and banned from doing the only kind of business I knew: dealing coke.

“What kind of wine is this, Marco?” I said as I put the glass back down on the table.

“It’s a Malbec from the high mountains in Mendoza. The only kind I drink.”

“It’s delicious.”

Marco was starting to make a whole lot of sense. Maybe this was my chance to finally fulfill my lifelong dream of becoming a rich man who lived in the Caribbean, away from everything, with not a care in the world.

I wondered what Eva would think of my plan.