Page 48 of Vicious Savage

“She’s worried about her missing brothers. But I’m worried about her. I can’t stay here, and I won’t leave her behind.”

He looks at me curiously, and immediately I know that he’s wondering what his sister means to me. But he believes it’s not his place to ask. Not when he hasn’t been in her life for the past twenty five years. As far as she knows, he’s a stranger who offered her a protein bar and water when she was imprisoned in a dungeon by her own father.

“You want her to leave Mexico?”

“It’s not that I want her to leave you, Gabriel. It’s what’s best for her under the circumstances.”

He nods slowly, swallowing back the lump that’s formed in his throat. He doesn’t want to lose his sister just when he’s found her.

“This is an open ended invitation, Gabriel. I want to keep Luna safe, and that extends to her family. She needs you in her life, so you should come with us.”

He looks up in surprise then frowns.

“She doesn’t even know that I’m her brother.”

“We have to tell her, Gabriel. She may be more willing to leave if she knows and you’re willing to travel with her. It’s the only way.”

48

LUNA

There’s something I have to do before we leave. And I have to do it on my own.

We pile into the cars and drive the short distance to what was once my family’s vacation home in Tulum. It’s also the house where my mother died. The house where so many memories are dead and buried.

“I’ll come with you,” Attila offers, but I hold up my hand to prevent him getting out of the car. The look on my face must tell him how serious I am because he locks his jaw back and forth but says nothing. Instead, he slides his palms to his thighs and holds them there, something I’ve come to understand he does when he can’t control a situation. Attila knows there’s only so far he can push me before I reach my breaking point.

“You’ve cleared the house?” I ask.

He nods once but says nothing. Like he already knows what I’m planning to do and he’s doing everything to hold his tongue. To hold back from dragging me back to the car and telling me to come to my senses.

Senses have nothing to do with this. This is my house of horrors. Regardless of where my brothers are, this has to be done. I already know that the bodies have been removed. It’s funny how easy it is to buy local law enforcement when the man that’s dead is someone that’s been untouchable to them for years. These men did the Mexican government a favor by ridding them of my father and his ilk. One less piece of trash for them to take out.

I enter the house through the back door. There’s nothing to see here, the house as quiet as a tomb. Blood stains the tiles at various locations, but I avert my eyes wherever I can as I continue to trail through the house. The only blood that counts is that of my mother’s. She’s long gone, but she’s really the only parent that ever mattered. Coyin may have raised me, but his treatment of me tells me he did it not out of obligation, nor duty, nor any other reason a father could have to raise his daughter. He raised me because he saw an opportunity, and he wanted to stick it to my mother. Even from beyond the grave, he wanted to punish her for all eternity by spiting her with the way he unhinged me. It’s funny how at one point I looked up to him, and how definitively I looked down at his body when he lay dead and bleeding and felt nothing. Only emptiness.

I continue to wade through the house until I reach the room I’m looking for. The occupants that once inhabited this room are gone. Coyin changed everything in the room after my mother was gone, including the furniture. He even positioned the new bed differently. He hardly spent any time here after she was gone, and I liked to think it was because my mother’s death haunted him, but I don’t delude myself for long. Nothing could’ve haunted Coyin Castillo, not even the wife he slaughtered in their own bed.

This is the room of so many nightmares. The horror of my childhood, that secret that I held close to my chest as I blossomed into adulthood. That one solid memory from when I was nine years old that Coyin tried so hard to erase, telling me I was crazy and dreamed the whole thing up. I know I didn’t. I know what I saw. And now more that never, I know I wasn’t crazy. Not with everything that came after.

I step into the garage, see the can sitting in the corner where it’s always been. It hasn’t moved from its place in years, although I know it’s full. I lift it, almost tumbling with the weight that causes my body to angle to one side. I unscrew the top, tip out a bit of the liquid, then drag the can through the house, splashing the contents across the ground as I go. When I get back to the bedroom, I lift the can, ignoring the pain that shoots up and down my shoulder, approach the bed and douse it until it’s wet. Until it’s soaked in cleansing liquid. My own brand of vengeance. I do the most damage in this room. Then I haul the can back to the kitchen and spray kerosene all over the bench tops, through the hallway, ensuring that my aim is precise enough to target the mouth of every room. When this monstrosity goes up in flames, I want to make sure there’s no chance of saving a single foot of it. I want it gone. I want to burn my memories. Turn them to ash. Soak my past in the fiery prison of today before I can move on to tomorrow. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? Who knows what the future holds? I, for one, have no idea where my future lies or what it holds for me, but I don’t mean to waste my life chasing the scars of my past. I don’t deserve that. I deserve a life. I deserve my freedom. Free of the demons that haunt me day in, day out.

When the can is empty, I stand in the grand foyer that a few days ago welcomed hundreds of guests into its bosom. To an auction where I was the grand prize. I think how my life would have turned out if the auction had run its course and someone had purchased me. For their own devilish amusement. I wonder about Coyin, my would be father, and the satisfaction he would have gotten from the sale, the way he would have taunted me for the rest of my miserable life had he still been alive.

I take the matchbook out of my back pocket, look down at it sadly; it’s devastating, but sometimes you have to destroy something in order to rebuild it. I light the match, hold it up in front of my eyes, then throw it across the room, watching as the spark licks the liquid and flames jump through the air. It’s so quick, it causes me to catch my breath. I watch as the fire races across every surface, carrying down the hall to the rooms; it’s only small still, but I know pretty soon this entire house of horrors will be engulfed in flames.

“Rest in peace, Mama,” I whisper, as I turn and walk out the front door for the final time.

49

ATTILA

Iwatch as Luna makes her way down the stairs at the front of the house, held back only by Cesar’s insistence that I give her some time alone to resolve what she needs to. She lifts her hands to her hair and folds back her long dark blonde tresses and pins them into a ponytail. She has a look of peace on her face as she takes measured steps towards us. I’m leaning against the car, my arms crossed against my chest, as she approaches.

“Thank you,” she whispers, as she comes to a stop in front of me.

“For what?” I quirk an eyebrow in question.

“For giving me this.”

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