Page 20 of Vicious Savage

“How?”

“The girl. We put a tracker on her.”

“Probably signing her death warrant,” Caleph mutters. He’s not impressed. He doesn’t know the girl, wants Coyin Castillo’s head on a stake, but he would never take his anger out on the female offspring of his enemy. He may be many things, but Caleph Rojas would never cross that line. Ever.

20

LUNA

“Puta,” my father spits. He sits on the other end of the backseat, but he might as well be sitting right by my side for all the fire flaring from him and burning into my soul. He always was a callous man. “Who were those men, hmmm?” He hums. “You have an army now,perra?” His evil eyes slice right through me, as though they alone could bury me with their power.

An arm shoots out until he has his hand buried in my hair, the strands fisted in his fingers as he yanks. My head snaps to the side awkwardly, a sharp pain radiating down the column of my neck. I slant my eyes at him defiantly, which only makes him pull harder. All I see is a monster. Nothing he does to me now could be any worse than what he’s already done. Things so despicable, I would only gladly be the one to put that bullet in his head.

“Answer me!” he roars.

What can I tell him when I don’t even know who those men were? Sure, they gave their names, but how do I even know they were telling the truth? And even so, why would I ever tell him what he wanted to know? I definitely wasn’t in the habit of helping him in any way. I wouldn’t start now.

Instead of answering him, I spit in his face, which causes him to rear back and slap me. But it’s not enough, because my father’s arm stretches out again until he has his hand wound around my throat and he’s squeezing the life out of me. I feel my eyes bulge as he squeezes and I struggle to breathe. He can’t have come all the way out to get me himself just to strangle me.

The driver, his eyes obviously on our unfolding battle, swerves across the road, then screeches to a stop, sending us back and forth on the backset. My father’s fingers unfurl from around my neck, his angry face all I can see. I try my hardest to avoid touching him as I take in deep breaths. I bury myself in the door as he curses the driver and gets his gun out. My breath catches in surprise as I watch the driver’s eyes in the rearview mirror. There is only hardness there as my father points the gun into the back of his head.

I press my eyes shut as memories come flooding back and I resort to my self-preservation, shutting everything out. The gun clicks, echoing a calamity in the chamber as silence follows before I squeeze my eyes harder, forcing them to stay closed. I can’t hear myself above the roar of my own voice as I scream. I let out a howl so loud and so savage that the SUV shakes with the strength of my pain. I’m near hysterical with all my screaming as I bend my head to my knees and cover myself with my hands, drowning out the world. I don’t ever want to open my eyes again. I want to stay this way forever, trapped in my cocoon, from which there’s no escape.

I curl up in a ball against the door, my head safely held between my arms, as the car starts to move again. I try to breathe, small shallow breaths to keep going. This is all I can manage until we get to where we’re going. Knowing that my father is a monster. He’s a tyrant I won’t ever be able to escape. And he probably already has a bullet with my name inscribed on it.

* * *

When we arriveat the tarmac, I see that the driver is still alive and kicking. My father’s gun must have been empty. Either that or he was playing Russian Roulette again. All the times I’d wished that the gun in his hand would go off and he’d shoot himself never came to fruition. It was too great an ask. Because he is still here, and he is still making everyone around him miserable.

“Out!” he hisses, as the car comes to a stop where the plane waits.

We’re probably headed back to Mexico. Not that I expected him to confirm that one way of the other. There’s no way my father would ever tell me where we’re going. He’d never make anything easy for me. And he sure as hell would never do anything that wasn’t in his own best interest. Selfish bastard.

My mind wanders back to Nadia. A deep, raging red fury coats my eyes as her image floats before my eyes. The disgusting things they did to her. The torture they subjected her to. I hated leaving her there in the condition she was in, not being able to do anything for her and not knowing whether or not she would make it. I only hope that Attila and TJ are okay and that their humanity stretched to my friend and helping her get the medical attention she needed. Maybe not; their humanity may only extend so far, but I could hope. Especially after everything they did for me.

I stand looking up at the plane. This is the last barrier between me and freedom. Once I get on it, there’ll be no coming back for me. My fate will lie in the hands of another, and surely I’ll be destined for a life of horror. If I even make it out alive.

I can’t believe that he’s still been looking for me all this time. I’ve been gone three years, and yet he was still searching for me. To what end? It can’t be anything good. Nestor may not have waited around for me like he and my father had agreed, but I’m sure my father hasn’t wasted any time in finding another use for me. Things could’ve gotten much, much worse in the time I’d been away; I just didn’t know how much worse they could have possibly gotten. And I’m not one to delude myself into believing that he’s missed me. His only daughter. I know I always reminded him ofher. And I know all he ever wanted to do was forget.

“Move,” my father orders, pushing me toward the plane. His fingers are short and stubby, but they may as well be sharp points as they dig into my flesh, prodding me along. I’ve hated him for the longest time. And now I just loathe him. Even that emotion, I realize, is too much for him. It expends too much energy for me to feelanythingfor him.

21

THE JEKYLL

Nadia falls into a coma. It’s probably a good thing; the trauma she’s suffered at the hands of Coyin Castillo and his men is the type of trauma that not many people can recover from. Her only hope for survival is her willpower and the coma that will keep her brain intact as it heals itself.

“I can’t fucking believe this!” I mutter, as we leave the clinic. She’ll be out for hours, perhaps days, and there’s nothing more we can do but wait. And I refuse to stand idly by while Coyin Castillo gets further and further away. There’s nothing more we can do for Nadia, but there’s a whole lot that needs to be done for us to find Luna and take out Castillo. For once and for all.

We head to a local motel and check in, then take turns to shower, change, and finally regroup.

“Dante Accardi is sending soldiers,” Attila says a short while later, looking up from his phone. “We need to meet them at a private airstrip in a couple of hours.”

“Can they be trusted?” I ask him.

He looks up at me like I’ve grown two heads and reminds me that no one questions Dante Accardi’s resources. Dante Accardi, I’m told, is one of those rare species that has everything. He’s that man that didn’t ask for anything but got it all. And he took that and turned it into an empire. Then he married another empire, and now he lives in a kingdom. Literally.

The only remaining son of Don Durian Accardi, he ascended his throne after the death of his older brother and his father’s ailing health. Apparently, dragged away from the priesthood. The saint became a sinner, and the moniker always stuck. Somewhere in the midst of his taking over Seattle, he met and married the only heir to the Murray dynasty, which made the Accardis unstoppable. If they had been a force to be reckoned with before, now they were a powerful, untouchable powerhouse.

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