Page 27 of Vicious Savage

“Aren’t you? Who werethose men?”

His roar fills the cavernous dungeon, and I can swear I feel the ground shift with his anger. An anger I know all too well. My father has never hesitated when it comes to meting out his retribution. And his vengeance has always been cut-throat and swift. He could so very well annihilate me right here and right now in this very cell. I don’t think he’d even blink. He definitely wouldn’t shed a tear for me.

My mind strays to the time he had four men on their knees in our courtyard, their hands bound behind their backs. Four defenseless men, on their knees, about to meet their deaths. He hadn’t even asked anyone else to do the deed. He had stood behind each man and one by one, put a bullet in the back of their heads until each fell forward and left this world. He had made every one of his men watch, including my brothers. Enzo’s jaw had moved back and forth in anger, standing tall with his eyes fixed on a place beyond the bodies. Franco had stood with his eyes lowered to his feet. Danielo’s hand had started to flicker, a nervous habit he’d always had that my father said made him look weak. Coyin Junior, who hated carrying the namesake, looked through his father as though not really seeing him.

And me. I watched on with a mixture of horror and fury as my father looked up at my window, his eyes challenging me to open my mouth and say anything. He had expected me to be there. I held his gaze, the only one able to do so, my place at the table cemented. I may have been born a girl, but I was the lion amongst the four boys.

* * *

If I had knownwhat the name would do to my father, I would have spit it out from the beginning. If only to watch him shrivel into himself with the fear I see in his eyes. It is only fleeting, but I see it nonetheless. And I relish it. Because it gives mesomething.

He doesn’t believe my whole story about how the men had been following me around then came to my rescue the night that he had sent his men to bring me back home. He doesn’t believe it one bit. Because you can’t go from stalking a girl to being her protector, he tells me. It sounds true to my own ears. I still don’t know what the men had wanted from me, although I’d had a suspicion, no matter how minuscule, that they’d been after my father. They want him. And nothing could have been truer than that niggling thought after the reaction he displays when I tell him their names.

“Names, Luna. I want names.”

He’s growing impatient as he watches me pace around the cage after telling my story. I’ve given him everything but identities. When that’s really all he wants to know.

“TJ. Attila.”

“Attila?”

His face blanches and his eyes go wide before he is able to revert his expression to the same stoic one he’s always had. The name Attila has affected him for some reason. He says nothing as he continues to watch me, no doubt wondering if I’m telling the truth. Obviously, there’s something about Attila that’s got him concerned. There must be some sort of history there. But I don’t know what that history is. And I may never know. If I end up dying down here in this dungeon, I may never know what it is that put that fear in my father’s eyes, no matter how temporary.

28

ATTILA

There are cars waiting for us on the small private airstrip when the plane touches down. We haul what little luggage we have and make our way to the waiting vehicles, with Dante, The Jekyll and me piling into one of the middle cars before the convoy takes off.

“I need you to remember this is Mexico,” Dante says, looking out at the landscape as we fly through the countryside. “Don’t let your guard down; expect the unexpected.”

I look over at The Jekyll, sitting quietly in the passenger seat. We’re that close to Castillo. I can’t imagine that he’s ever been as close as he is now to getting the revenge he’s craved for his wife’s murder. The fact that he’s nearing the end of his journey has left him somewhat jarred; I can sense this in the silence that’s enveloped him. For five years, he’s lived and breathed nothing but Coyin Castillo. It’s all he’s known. What will he do once he’s accomplished what he set out to do? If everything goes to plan, this will be one chapter he’ll be closing, but he’ll have to open another.

“Caleph sends his regards,” Dante says, looking up from his phone. I sit next to him, my hands steady on my knees, but say nothing. I can imagine what Caleph must be feeling right now; we’re so close to his enemy yet he’s so far away. He won’t be able to partake in this final leg of our journey. He won’t be able to witness the satisfaction of putting Coyin Castillo down. I know this is what he’s looked forward to since he was fourteen. I know this is all he’s ever wanted. Until there was more. He may have always wanted to dig Coyin’s grave, but there’s one thing he wants more than that. And that’s to live a long and relatively uneventful life with the love of his life, the woman who’s stolen his heart. The one thing more important to him than driving a dagger through Coyin Castillo’s heart is not losing Ariadne. If he left her to take care of this, she’d know. And she’d never forgive him. She did it once before, but she wouldn’t do it again.

I would make sure Coyin Castillo was destroyed once and for all. I would ensure Caleph’s vengeance. As well as The Jekyll’s. He deserves that; if it wasn’t for him, we probably wouldn’t have gotten this far in our search for the man who has stained our lives for so long. I’m nothing if not man enough to admit this.

“You know, I don’t even know your name,” I say, breaking into The Jekyll’s train of thought. He looks back at me, locks his jaw and seems to consider my words.

“TJ, remember?”

He smirks, goading me. I can’t deny we don’t work well as a team. Because we do. He’s the sort of man I would want on my team. The sort of man I know I can trust and depend on. When required, he would get the job done. Better than anyone else.

“Yourrealname,” I whisper. “Not the name I gave you to make you mad.”

My words are a truce of sorts. They also tell him what he probably doesn’t want to hear; if I died here today, at least I’d die knowing his name.

* * *

“Fuckyou,man. Don’t even think about dying on me.”

I laugh at The Jekyll’s warning and sit back in my seat. I watch Dante as he busies himself with something on his phone, then as his lip curls up in a salacious smile and a flush of heat causes the side of his neck to redden.

“Wifey?” I ask him. He looks up in surprise, tucks his smile away, then adopts his poker face.

Dante has a special smile reserved just for his wife, the same way that Caleph softens around Ariadne. Much in the same way that The Jekyll probably adored his wife. These are men that come from the most ruthlessly dangerous underbelly of crime. I know, because I’m one of them. Yet each one of them softens in the presence of a woman. And not just any woman.Thewoman that has captured their hearts.

The Jekyll may have joined the party late, but he’s one of us now. Looking at him, I suddenly understand the magnitude of his pain. I couldn’t imagine Caleph without Ariadne, nor Dante without Kingsley. And I know, without hesitation, that if they ever had to live without their significant other, they’d be carrying around the same pain that The Jekyll is drowning in right now.

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