Tony circled the metal chair where Santiago sat, slumped over, all four limbs tied down. He grabbed Santiago’s jaw and yanked his face up toward him, then let it drop. Keeping his eyes on Santiago’s slumped form, he turned his head toward King and nodded.
King crossed the room to a small utility closet in the corner, next to a spartanly equipped kitchenette. For a moment, the only sounds in the cavernous space were the shuffling of King’s shoes against the concrete floor as he moved about, opening and closing cabinets, turning water on and off, cracking old-fashioned ice trays open and dumping their contents into a bucket. Then all was quiet, except for the tinkling of the ice in the bucket as King walked it over.
Tony tilted his chin in his direction and in a smooth, deliberate move, King raised the bucket high and poured the icy concoction over Santiago’s head. He straightened in the chair with a jerk, emitting a muffled scream through the duct tape that covered his mouth as he struggled to get his bearings. His eyes widened with shock when he saw where he was, then he closed them in defeat, frantically shaking his head back and forth as if he could somehow deny the truth of his present circumstances.
Tony leaned in, enjoying the futility of Santiago’s frantic attempts to lean away from him.
“I think you know my father and my uncle, and I know you recognize your friend, Manuel, right?” he asked, gesturing to the tall man standing with Ricardo and Antonio Wayne. The man stared unflinchingly at Santiago, then tilting his head to the side and spitting on the floor.
“As you have probably guessed by now, Manuel is here to represent the Sinaloan cartel and to witness tonight’s main event. He’ll report back to Escondido, who waits impatiently for word of your demise. As they say, Karma’s a bitch,” Tony said coolly, ripping the tape from Santiago’s mouth in a brutal, swift move. The ice water had done nothing to ease the sting as the top layer of Santiago’s skin came off with it.
“Fuck you!” Santiago screamed.
Tony shook his head in amusement. “Now, that ain’t never gonna happen. But her?” He nodded in Caden’s direction, then strolled over to her and cupped her cheek and jaw in his hand, even as he continued to address Santiago. “After I kill you, I’m going to take this woman home and fuck her brains out. Then I’ll make tender love to her, worshipping every inch of that body all over again…inside and out.”
“Caden,” Santiago rasped, instinctively brightening at the sight of her, needing her compassion and acceptance like never before. He waited for her to look at him, tried to will her to look at him. But she only had eyes for Tony. In that moment, he knew all was lost.
Tony smiled softly at Caden before returning to stand in front of Santiago, whose flared nostrils and heaving chest only egged him on. “Then again, maybe we’ll just fuck right here. I’d send everyone else home first, of course, but I don’t see any reason why you couldn’t stick around. After all, you’ll be dead. But I think you’d still enjoy the show, right? Because, either way, we’re celebrating tonight. Celebrating the fact that we’ve removed the toxic stench that is you, from this city – hell, from the face of the earth.”
Santiago’s eyes flickered disbelievingly back and forth between Tony and Caden. That son of a bitch, Tony, really did it—he stole my Caden and made her fall in love with him.
Even worse than that horrifying realization was the nearly palpable disgust that was rolling off her in waves. Her contempt hurt even more than the certainty of his impending death.
Tony leaned in and whispered something to King, who nodded and strode out of sight around a corner. He returned, pushing a large metal table on wheels. It wasn’t a table full of the usual instruments of torture that a man like Antonio Wayne Ramirez would typically use. Instead, the table’s surface was covered with a variety of boxes.
Tony preferred psychological torture, and he had assembled everything he would need tonight.
“Let’s see what’s in Box Number One, shall we?” he said glibly, only to pause at Santiago’s frown. “What, don’t you want to play? You like games, right? I know you usually choose your playmates yourself, but I didn’t think you’d mind if I took the liberty to do that for you tonight, since you’re somewhat…indisposed.”
Tony opened a large, nondescript box on the table and reached inside. His biceps flexed with effort as he removed a thick, white boa constrictor. Santiago pulled against his restraints, his neck reddening as he tried to swallow down his rage at the sight of Tony touching his precious snake.
“Fucking put her down,” he snarled, his chest heaving.
“What a beauty she is, too. A white boa. Those are supposed to be really rare, right?” Tony turned the snake in his hands until he was face to face with it, smiling as its tongue flicked out. “Hello, gorgeous,” he cooed softly. “See, Lola here wanted to say goodbye. That’s her name, right?” He directed the question to Manuel, who nodded and crossed his arms over his chest on an impatient exhale.
Santiago said nothing, just glared at Tony as the bastard touched what was his. He was always touching what was his. Motherfucker.
“I understand you have quite the snake collection, Santiago, some of them downright lethal. How fascinating that you aren’t afraid of them.” He turned back to the open box, letting the snake slither back into the container before fastening it closed with great care.
“Ah, but these…” He picked up the glass-encased device King had built and walked over to stand in front of his guest. He slowly raised the box and held it up in front of Santiago’s suddenly ashen face. Santiago clenched his eyes shut and Tony looked to his father for the green light to proceed.
Ricardo dipped his chin and gestured with a slight wave of his hand for him to proceed. “It’s your night, hijo.”
The Ramirez brothers took up positions behind Santiago’s chair. At the sound of their footsteps approaching, Santiago looked over at Caden with eyes full of regret. “Dying would have been easy before my heart learned to beat again. Mine is a black heart full of evil, but it is yours, my Caden.”
“I’m not your Caden. I was never yours. You can take your black heart with you straight to Hell.”
He nodded sadly, resigned to the fate that awaited him. “Cuidar de si mismo, hermosa.”
Ricardo placed his hands around Santiago’s neck as Antonio Wayne clamped a hand around his jaw and placed the palm of his other hand on the top of the Santiago’s head. Extending his fingers down over the forehead, he pressed his fingertips over Santiago’s closed eyelids, then pulled back to force them open and keep them that way. Santiago had no choice but to look at the thing he feared most in all the world.
Caden had felt nothing when Santiago’s eyes found her. He’d whispered her name like a man in love. But she knew he didn’t possess the capacity to love, not after what he’d done to all those innocent women.
She’d been prepared to feel anger, disgust, or even sympathy; she hadn’t expected to feel nothing. Her emotions were as flat as King’s eyes had been only moments before. Maybe she was more like these people than she had thought.
When she looked around the room, she discovered Antonio Wayne’s eyes locked on her. One corner of his lip tilted up, not in a patronizing smirk as had always been the case in the past, but in a wicked half smile that reached all the way up to his wicked black eyes. In a moment of unspoken understanding between them, he saw the darkness that resided in her. He recognized his own kind. That was one of the reasons he was there tonight: to watch her and gauge her reaction, to see if she could handle it.
His eyes narrowed briefly as he regarded her almost clinically. Then he gave a nearly imperceptible nod – which, coming from him, was the equivalent of a benediction in the cartel world. His eyes darkened with sadistic pleasure as he returned his attention to the execution that was in progress.
Caden focused on Tony, the man who had her heart and who, after tonight, she’d be seared to in the deepest way a Colombian cartel man can be: in his very soul. After tonight, she would be part of the family and, yes, would go to her grave with the secrets she would keep.
She willed herself not to flinch when Tony picked up the device holding King’s deadly spiders. But it wasn’t the spiders that concerned her; it was the thought of Tony being bitten. This man mattered to her more than anyone or anything in the world. If anything happened to him tonight, she’d kill Santiago herself.
Santiago’s shrill screams ripped through the air and echoed off the walls. He tried to twist in his chair and shake his head, but Antonio Wayne and Ricardo held him firm. They were determined to see Tony’s vision of death through to its grotesque conclusion. The Ramirez family did not express their love with flowers and champagne, but with the blood and guts that only a warrior understood.
She wondered if she would have the spirit of a warrior one day—the other cartel women sure did. She’d witnessed it firsthand when Juanita and Roxanne came to her cell that day.
Tony opened the device and it separated. Each side had a plexiglass piece that ensured the spiders couldn’t escape. Tony lowered it over Santiago’s head until it came to rest just above his shoulders. King assisted him as he fastened it closed and attached the collar mechanism that created a tight seal around his neck. King had added that enhanced feature to ensure that his beloved spiders didn’t get out.
Tony paused before he lifted the plexiglass panels, meeting Caden’s eyes and savoring the moment. He was doing far more than killing his enemy tonight. In this moment, he was claiming Caden, once and for all.