ep4

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I rolled my eyes at his crassness and gave him a slight, dismissive wave. "Go put this all together. And don't disappoint me."

"Funny," he mused. "I'm not sure what it's like to not disappoint you." Then he turned and left the office, shutting the door behind him.

I got up and walked over to the window. The driveway was wet where Carlos must have watered it down, and the body of Laura was gone, the blood all washed away. It was like nothing ugly ever happened. I took in the mountains, the violently green foliage that stretched beyond the property and melded into the cliffs of The Devil's Backbone. Sometimes I wondered if there was someone out there plotting something in the way I was plotting for Salvador. I usually decided there was. You didn't run a cartel without having an army of people out there wanting to kill you. After all, I used to be a solider in that very army. I just never dwelled on it-I moved through each day thinking that I was better off alive, a card that kept the game going.

I also clung to the archaic, and perhaps slightly naïve belief that everything happened for a reason. I hadn't cheated death so many times, I hadn't had my heart ripped out, my soul lost, my family murdered, my future trampled all for nothing. I was put away in an American prison for three months, and thanks to the grace of God and friends in the high places miraculously walked away and back into Mexico where I was able to jump back in to the cartel that had rightfully become mine. All of that, all of those miracles, all of that grace, hadn't happened for no reason.

My destiny was constantly being rewritten and it would continue to be until it was fulfilled. Until I was at the top of the world and I had everything I'd ever wanted at my feet. Until I could crush everything with none of the mercy that was bestowed upon me.

I went over to the wet bar, and with some pleasure, pushed back the curved top of the old-fashioned globe that revealed the bottles of alcohol beneath. The bar used to be Travis's, something he had picked up at an antique store in Mississippi where I had worked for him back in the simple times. I'd always admired it, the vintage elegance, of a time when men were really men and when they got up in the morning they showed up for the world.

I poured myself a glass of old Scotch, opting for that instead of my usual tequila, and went back over to the desk. I sat down and gently brought the photographs of Luisa out of the drawer. I felt a foreign pang of indignity as I looked them over again, as if someone was watching me, judging me, for something I shouldn't have been doing. But I needed to look at her. I needed to study her. I needed to know the exquisite creature I would be bringing into this house. I needed to know the woman I would destroy through and through before I handed her back to Salvador.

I needed to ask her soft, radiant, pixelated face for forgiveness for what I was about to do.

She would soon be sorry she ever married Salvador Reyes.

That's for today see you tomorrow

Byeeee

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