Page 26 of Death's Deal

Chapter 15

Out of curiosity, somewherearound midday I check the club’s bank account. Sliding the app open on my phone, having it scan my face, and the account pop up, the dollar value appears. “Well, shit,” I mutter quietly as she naps. The mayor actually came through. Our balance, which was once nearing the red, now shows there’s seven million more than before. It is one issue dealt with.

Glancing her way, with her hair strung along the edge of the worn leather seat, and her tiny snores cutting the quiet, I have poured over the pages, searching, making notes of my own and concentrating on the comments regarding Hylo, the Army, Busta’s club, and special dates that stuck out. I have learned far more than I thought I ever would about my mother, the Queen, and my father. Hylo loved black licorices and figs for some reason, and she hated tequila.

Mayhem, to the Queen, was a fuckup. He was an asshole and someone the Queen wished Hylo had never met, but from the way it was written I could tell he loved her. The vitriol the Queen spewed on her pages made it quite clear how she despised him. He could do nothing right, nothing at all. The Queen found him unworthy of her best friend. Personally, I don’t care for him either but... that isn’t why I’m reading this cover to cover.

In the early pages, the Queen and Hylo had grown up together. Growing their business through blood. It listed the changes they implemented after brutally murdering the head of the cartel she had been a member of. Marcus Fuentes. Strung up by meat hooks, gutted, and left to breathe his last breaths naked, he had been lain out at his favorite coffee bar for all to see in the morning. Her account of it in the book was that of horror movie material. She’d made very detailed depictions, surprisingly content with her own handiwork. It is something I found disgusting, even by my own standards.

Hylo helped her along the way. It seemed Hylo was the right hand to the Mexican Diablo. Terrorizing, manipulating, controlling, and handling all the dealings she could from the U.S. side, she and the Queen were notorious. I was impressed. More than impressed, I actually envied and adored their methods. They were epic in their growth, takeovers, and progress.

They were brilliant in their calculated attacks on other groups. Taking out the cartels that trafficked in human flesh, or used children to sell drugs, was not only a necessity in the early days, it seemed they were avenging them like a punisher of evil. They were leaders of the downtrodden. The notes on how it was best to move forward, how to crush those who, in the end, became her competition, and how to sidestep law enforcement, her ingenious methods to interrogate and torture her perceived enemies, it was truly surprising. I’d say it shocked me slightly, but I’d be lying. We’d done worse, and I’d seen worse done at our own club.

In the early entries, I read about their history. As children living in poverty in the slums of Juarez, slaves to the whims of those with dark souls, they learned they could only depend on each other. The two of them confided their hopes for the future and designed what their future would be.

I saw the Queen wasn’t always a stone-cold, fucked-up piece of human flesh, or at least the crazed woman we thought she was.

Yes, I’d heard and seen firsthand from Piper and Codero what she was capable of, but the woman we knew as the Queen was ruthless, power hungry, and without remorse. Taking others into her circle and tainting them was not only a goal but a mission statement to her life.

Working through more of the book, both oddly impressed with her disgusting methods, and kinda thrilled at the methods taken, I’d finally come to one of Piper’s heavily notated pages, it was written in a hand that was not the same as the Queen’s. The slant and scroll was softer and more flourished.

Mi vida, mi sangre. Tu vida, tu sangre. Uno y siempre. Más fuertes juntos.

Reina de Alta Noche.

Rey de Huesos Blanqueados.

Amar para siempre y siempre.

Hylocereus

Claudio

My life, my blood. Your life, your blood. One and always. Stronger together.

Queen of Alta Noche.

King of Huesos Blanqueados.

Love forever and always.

Hylocereus

Claudio

With two bloody fingerprints intersected on the page, showing a pact made, an evil itch crawled across my skin. “Who the hell is Claudio?” And why was Hylo stated as the Queen?

A better question is, when was this? These pages were early on in the Queen’s book, early enough I’d say my mother and the Queen were maybe in their early twenties, late teens.

Looking through it again, trying to locate a date, or something that would give me further clues to the timing of this, I realize within the pages, the writing style changed. The original fifty or so pages are not the same as the rest. It’s different handwriting all together. Is Piper trying to say my mother was the original Queen and this was her book? That the original ideals and the vindictive nature was that of my mother, and not of Claudine Cruz?

Looking more closely, I see the pattern forming. In the beginning it is a harsh and unyielding mindset, in the later section, the writing is that of adoration for the strength it took to be that dangerous and malicious person. Claudine loved my mother. Hylo was held in a place of honor. She was on a pedestal.

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