Santiago cocked the gun and put a bullet in the chamber. He jammed it into his mouth as he danced in front of the cheval mirror. The red was his favorite, he decided. Adding the matching garter belt made the whole thing positively decadent.

He knew he was losing his mind, but it had nothing to do with cross-dressing. After all, it was normal for a serial killer to keep trophies, right? By dressing up like the women he killed, and by using their belongings to do it, he could experience their murders in a more fulfilling way than just killing them; this way, he was adding their perspective to his own. He even had a collection of wigs that reminded him of their hair color and cut.

He stopped and gazed at his reflection in the mirror as he held the gun in his mouth. His itch to kill was becoming almost overwhelming. If he didn’t find a victim soon, he was going to have to kill the woman looking back at him in the mirror. Maybe the Grim Reaper would be his salvation after all.

Tony stepped out from behind the tree, silent as a shadow in the night. He approached Briggs from behind and put him in a choke hold as he clamped down on the artery in his neck. Briggs dropped like a stone. From there, heaving him into the van was easy enough.

He cuffed Briggs’ hands in front of him, then his ankles, using two sets of cuffs that were connected by a long chain. Normally he wouldn’t cuff a prisoner’s hands in front of them with a device like this, but tonight he made an exception: after all, the man had papers to sign. He finished it off with a gag and climbed back over, sliding into the passenger seat.

He kept his gun on his lap in case the guy woke up and started kicking and screaming like a little bitch. The butt of a gun upside the head would shut his ass up, and Tony knew the gesture would probably make Victor feel a hell of a lot better.

“You know where to go, brother,” Tony said as he buckled up.

“I wish we could just throw his ass off the building but we have some paperwork to do first,” Victor growled, aggravated that he had to wait to waste the scum who’d been in the room with a nearly naked Valentina. The damning images Roxanne captured with her camera were burned onto his brain and he wondered if he’d ever be able to contain the rage that consumed him whenever they crossed his mind.

“It’s all about that television station,” Tony reminded him, picking up on his brother’s energy.

“No. It was all about the television station, now it’s about my woman and the television station.”

“You never have been one to let a transgression go, Victor. I swear, you’re just like Dad.”

“That’s high praise, as far as I’m concerned.”

“Agreed.”

Victor pulled around to the back of one of the cartel’s abandoned warehouses, a nondescript building that they used occasionally for ‘private meetings’. At Victor’s insistence, Valentina was meeting them there.

Briggs was starting to come around, so he was able to stagger/shuffle into the building with some help from Tony. He got the abducted man situated in a chair next to a small, round table that had a folder sitting on top of it.

Victor made a beeline for Valentina, who was tapping her foot impatiently, arms crossed over her chest. She wasted no time confronting him.

“Exactly why are you making me watch this, Victor?” Even for Victor this seemed extreme, but tonight she was going to learn just how deep the darkness in her beast went.

He leaned in and gruffly whispered in her ear. “The same way I had to endure the agony of seeing photographs of you crawling all over this guy half-naked, you’re going to have to witness the result of your actions. You just get to do it in person.”

“I went to do a job, and I got it done. Even your father saw that as a good thing. You need to get over yourself, Victor.”

“I came to do a job and I’m going to get mine done, too,” he said caustically. “In fact, I’m getting a few things done tonight. I’m getting paperwork signed, I’m killing a man, and I’m showing my woman firsthand what happens when I’m crossed. Have a seat, babe. This show’s for you.”

He waved his hand toward a straight-back, wooden chair that was placed on the opposite side of the table from Briggs. With a huff, she lowered herself into the chair and made prickly eye contact with Briggs, whose eyes widened in shock, then closed in dismay, as he connected the dots and realized she was in on it.

In hindsight, Valentina thought that maybe she should have let Victor know about the job before she did it, but she knew he would have forbidden it. There had been too much at stake to risk his interference. Now he was taking the whole thing personally, which only reinforced the fact that, for Victor, this was about so much more than cartel business. This had to do with his masculine pride, so she feared for William Briggs and what Victor was about to do to him.

Even the jealousy of a crazed lover couldn’t stop William from staring at his mystery woman. She was as breathtaking as he recalled, even if his memories of that night were a little fuzzy. She was blessed with the kind of beauty few women possessed. No wonder that Victor guy was so jealous.

William had woken up in the hotel room hours later with a pounding headache and no memory of much of anything after leaving the bar. Well, he did have a vague memory of the woman moving toward him in her underwear, but he’d tried not to think about that afterwards because he needed to be able to look his wife in the eye after he got home.

“You still can’t help but stare at my woman, can you?” Victor hissed as he jerked the gag from the man’s mouth. Seeing him up close with those deadly, black eyes scared Briggs more than having a gun pulled on him. “I’ve got something you want and you’ve got something I want. Here’s how this is going to go: I’m going to get what I want. That’s it. Simple. That television station you’re refusing to sell to us is critical to our future business plans.” Victor nodded in Valentina’s direction. “I’m certain you don’t want to be the reason her dreams don’t come true.”

Victor tossed the manila envelope on the table in front of Briggs. “Open it.”

Briggs reached for the envelope, but his cuffed hands shook so much that he kept dropping it.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Victor snapped. “I’ll do it. Here.” He opened the envelope and shook it upside down so the photos tumbled onto the table. He held one in front of William’s face. “What do you think that van-driving soccer mom wife of yours would think if she found out you were in a hotel room with another woman!?”

Briggs’ face went beet red, then white, as Victor flipped through one photo after another. “See, I think she would find this one particularly troubling,” Victor said as he held up the photo of Valentina straddling Briggs, here head thrown back in carefully orchestrated ecstasy. “But this one…this one might be the worst of them all. I know it’s the one that pisses me off the most, the one that makes me want to cut your fucking balls off.”

Brigg’s eyes widened in horror at the skillful, incriminating camera angle that captured a squinting, frowning William Briggs. Between his prone position and his facial expression, it looked like a pretty convincing orgasm was going on.

Victor knew, after Roxanne had talked him off the emotional ledge, that the scowl was there simply because Briggs had been confused and had been trying to wake up, to no avail.

“Don’t worry, man, most guys have a really stupid-looking ‘cum face’. But yeah, I think your little wifey might be more of a badass than you think, especially if she saw this one. But that’s entirely up to you, Briggs-y,” Victor gloated as he held up a pen.

The man gulped audibly, his mouth opening and closing like a fish in the open air. One last look at the stack of photographs and he closed his eyes, resigned to his fate. He reached for the pen, jumping in fear as the chain clanged against the table. “Okay, I’ll sign the papers,” he whimpered, “just please don’t tell my wife. My family is all I have.”

“Then you’d better get to signing.” What Victor really wanted to do was stab him in the neck with the pen—right in his fucking jugular. He knew that if he didn’t come back with those papers signed, his dad would be stabbing him in the neck. His dad loved his boys more than anything except maybe their mother, but they had always understood that business was business. It wasn’t personal. And he never wanted to test that notion.

A wicked grin crossed Victor’s face when he saw Briggs had pissed his pants. He had smelled it first, actually – the smell of piss and fear was unmistakable. To Victor, it smelled like victory.

“Please don’t hurt my family,” Briggs went on as he signed on all the appropriate pages of the contract, then put the pen down. “You’ve got what you wanted—I signed the papers. The station’s yours now. Just leave them out of this.”

Victor’s head jerked around, his lips pressed into a thin line, when Valentina said, “He could be an asset later on, you know. He has a ton of media connections that reach all the way to Hollywood.”

“Always the opportunist, my love. What am I going to do with you?”

“I pull my own weight. I haven’t ridden anyone’s coattails, I’ve earned everything I’ve achieved. All I’m saying is that he may come in handy later.”

“I’m not killing him because he was stubborn; I’m killing him because of you.” Victor’s teeth were clenched together so tightly that she could see the ticking in his jaw even more prominently than usual.

“He’s harmless.” She flicked her hand carelessly through the air. “He has a family who needs him. The kids are cute. Can’t you let this go?”

At that point Tony laughed out loud, drawing a baleful glare from his brother. Tony of all people knew his brother couldn’t let anything go. He’d hold this grudge to the grave.

Suddenly a thought occurred to Valentina so she took a chance on it working.

“I think we should ask Father.”

“Oh, you’re good. So now you’re calling my father, Father?” He was so on to her.

“Well, he is going to be my father-in-law. You’re the one who insisted I marry you. Why are you shocked I’m calling him Father now?”

Briggs was looking back and forth between the two like his head was on a swivel. “I swear I won’t say anything about you making me sign those papers.” He was grasping at straws for the right to live. Right now, in this moment, he knew he would do anything to go home to his family. He knew now that the will to live trumped morality any day of the week; it had been a powerful, painful lesson he was learning the hard way.

“Shut the fuck up, you son of a bitch! The only thing that’s going to save you is my father. Trust me, if I end up killing you, it will be because of her.” Victor pointed an accusing finger at Valentina.

“I had no idea she was yours.” Victor wasn’t listening because nothing Briggs said mattered to him. He stepped around the corner to call his father. Valentina was nowhere near finished with Briggs, though.

“You really are a sanctimonious son of a bitch,” Valentina said bitterly. “Here I am fighting for your life and you’re willing to throw me under the bus. You’re making this look like it was my fault. You’re the one who had to personify false morality. You went up to that room with me without a second thought. So, what does that say about you? That morality’s only important until your dick’s involved?” She jerked her head back toward the direction Victor had gone. “He’s Colombian cartel and he’s a Ramirez. That means he won’t fuck around on me. He’s waited for me for years. He’s got pussy thrown at him every day and he’s stayed faithful to me. I honestly don’t blame him for being pissed at me, but you know what? I never would have fucked you, not even for my career, or the cartel. I wouldn’t be disloyal to Victor after all he’s done for me. He has more morality than you ever will, you limp-dicked bastard!”

She shook her head, disgusted by the man’s weakness. “You were weak before, but now…the Colombian cartel owns your ass. You’ll suffer more by living, than you ever would have being tossed off the highest downtown building.”

The man’s eyes widened with terror at the thought of being that high off the ground. Victor returned and gagged the man. He didn’t want to hear his weak-ass whining during the quick drive to the tallest building he knew of downtown. He might not be ending the guy tonight, but he could still give the asshole a night he’d never forget.

He looked over at Valentina with admiration. She did love him. For her to say there were lines she wouldn’t cross, no matter what, to keep from betraying him, meant more to him than money or power ever could. It was the first time she had ever shown that kind of steadfastness where he was concerned. Up until now he had thought her career came first, but when all was said and done, she appreciated the sacrifices he’d made for her.

Yes, he’d been selfish in the past, but it had been for all the right reasons—love. Okay, and control. Anything was fair when it came to that. This was the first time she had ever voiced that he was more important than her dreams coming true. If that wasn’t love, then he didn’t know what was. It was love, because it was Valentina saying to the world that she would put him first—she had to put him first.

He wanted to pick her up and take her around the corner and make love to her up against a wall. He wanted to show her how much it meant that she had put him before the two loves of her life: the cartel and her career. He’d heard a saying once that in a relationship one person always loved more deeply than the other; he had figured that was him, but he knew that saying wasn’t true for them, they were both crazy in love—willing to risk all for the benefit of the other. He finally had what he’d sought all his life: a love like the consuming passion his mother and father shared; a love that knew no bounds.

Valentina locked eyes with him and couldn’t help but notice that the look in his eyes was different now. She knew the words she’d spoken were the absolute truth. It was an epiphany for her too: she was crazy in love with Victor Ramirez.