Page 5 of Cruel Devil

It’s a fucking hurricane that’s swept through my life, destroying everything in its path.

And I’m left standing here in the wreckage, wondering just how fucking long it’s going to take me to rebuild.

Chapter 3

Savage

Staring down the trembling barrel of a stranger's Beretta, I know I'm exactly where I'm meant to be.

But I'm not fucking happy about it.

I didn't choose the cartel life. I was born into it, just like my father had been, and his father before him. Just like Vito, and Sergio, and countless other cartel men and women. Does that mean I wouldn't have chosen it? Power, money, danger. It's every adrenaline junkie's dream.

I can't remember a time I didn't crave this way of life.

Even when my mother was brutally murdered, and my father wrote it off as the price he had to pay for becoming Capo…I didn't want him to quit the cartel. I wanted to find the sons-of-bitches responsible and end their miserable lives. Even years later, when I lost someone else to the never ending cartel war, I didn't walk away.

I sought revenge.

Like a volcano, first came the deadly ash cloud that eviscerated almost a hundred men from Domingo and Bogota. Then came the lava that tore down everything in its path. If my father hadn't reigned me in and sent me away on a sabbatical, more would have died at my hands. My fury was incandescent…but I had to suffocate it. Trap it.

Now it lies deep inside me. Molten magma that swirls and boils, waiting for the tiniest crack to appear.

Where the fuck else could someone like me feel welcome? Who else would accept my psychopathic tendencies, my insatiable hunger for brutal revenge, the bloodlust that's become an integral part of my being?

I don't wish I'd chosen any different. Any of a hundred decisions could have led me to this same outcome.

It always comes down to this.

A moment in time where someone is either going to live, or someone is going to die.

But instead of standing here proud and ready to breathe my last breath…I'm livid that this stranger will decide whether I ever see my wife, Nyx, again.

I only met her a short time ago, but I've been consumed with her ever since. I've never met anyone like her. Someone who grabs life by the balls, and then squeezes. And I know exactly how hard, because she's done it to me before.

Despite the wall I'd built around my heart, in case anyone decided to use my loved ones against me again, I fell for Nyx Gray…and I fell hard.

She bulldozed through my defenses with sheer stubbornness. But I wouldn't have broken my vow against love if it hadn't been for her fierce loyalty. Fuck, I had to marry her. It was that or anoint her an honorary cartel-member. But the latter wouldn't have kept her safe from the bloodhounds on her scent.

If duty hadn't dragged me away from her, I'd still be at her side. Fuck it, we'd still be consummating our marriage like a pair of feral were-rabbits. And as soon as I take care of this woman and her shaking pistol, I'm going to make Nyx ride my cock until we both collapse from exhaustion.

"Who the fuck are you?" I snap.

My cousin, Vito, gives me a worried side glance when he hears the barely restrained fury in my voice.

We're standing in front of some sick fuck's nightmare rendition of The Last Supper, carefully staged from the maggot-infested bodies of Doctor Felipe Gomez and his young family. A man I trusted like my own blood. I have no doubt that it was his loyalty that cost him so dearly.

The woman sneers at me. "Please, as if I'd be that stupid." She points with her chin down the hall, deeper into Doc's house. "Into the bathroom. Move!"

Vito flinches, and I don't blame her. It’s obvious she’s buzzing with adrenaline, terrified out of her mind. But she knows how to pull a trigger, and unless God decides to smile down on us today, I’m pretty sure her gun is loaded.

She's still holding Vito’s phone in her hand, and we both jerk when it beeps with a new message. Somehow, she has enough restraint not to pull the trigger on impulse.

"Now," she growls, shoving the phone into her pocket.

Vito goes first, throwing me an unreadable look over his shoulder as he steps into the bathroom. It's smaller than the dog parlor I locked Nyx in, and the thought puts a cramp in my chest.

Where the hell was all Doc's money going? Why would he live like this when he could easily afford a much larger house in a better neighborhood? Did he have a debt I wasn't aware of?

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