Page 13 of Vicious Savage

“Three years, since the night of my engagement when I turned 22,” I tell him. “So it’s not just my father I’m running from — it’s also Nestor.”

“You actually got engaged?”

“Again, not by choice. We were attending a dinner at one of my father’s colleague’s homes. It turned out to be my engagement party — he didn’t see the need to warn me.”

I shrug. Attila is shocked into silence. TJ whistles again and now he closes the pizza box and pushes it away, his stomach turning, I’m sure.

“What does your father hope to gain by bringing you back home?”

“You’ve obviously not grown up around girls, especially ones who belong to this life,” I answer TJ. “Cartel princesses don’t run away. In my father’s eyes, I’ve committed the ultimate sin. Yet, he won’t kill me for my indiscretion, no. He’ll use me to his advantage, sell his asset to the highest bidder. If not Nestor, he can marry me off to some other hapless fool who can benefit him.”

13

ATTILA

Ihave heard stories of marriages of convenience amongst our kind. Cartels, mafia, syndicates; we’re not all that different, after all. But I had thought that such practice had been discarded, a thing of the past. That it was still happening today that a woman or a man would have to marry at the whim of their parents was unbelievable.

Not that I didn’t believe her. The sincerity in her words and the consistency of her story told me she was telling the truth. About everything. I can’t say my heart broke for her, because I don’t feel anything. For anybody. But itdidpiss me off that her father was trying to palm her off against her will. She should have a choice.

Her story does, however, raise a problem for us. There is no way we can use her to lure out Castillo. We’d be doing the same exact thing he was doing to her by selling her off to the highest bidder. We’d be using her as bait, and we’d have to sacrifice her for that, which wasn’t an altogether appealing idea after everything she’d told us. She really was of no use to us now. Which is what The Jekyll and I argue about after she stands, stretches her legs, and tells us she’s going to shower.

“You can’t just dispose of her like that,” he hisses, when he hears the water running.

“She’s a liability to us now.”

“They will kill her,” he reminds me. “She will keep defying them until they kill her. Or worse yet, she’ll end up married to that sadistic Gamboa and he’ll end up torturing her to death.”

The thought irks me. I don’t care — I never have. About anyone. Except maybe Caleph, the only one that ever understood me and accepted me with all my flaws. And I can’t start caring now; it’s not who I am. It’s not the way I’m built. I’m just not made to care.

“The girl can do whatever she wants and go wherever she wants; I’m not saddling myself with this problem.”

The Jekyll has steam coming out of his head as he watches me, his face red and splotchy with the makings of an impending explosion.

“We can’t lose sight of our initial target,” I remind him.

“This is unethical,” he snaps back at me. “You can’t be that much of a monster that you would send her back to her destruction.”

“Cut her loose, TJ.”

* * *

After her shower,Luna doesn’t come out of her room. The door remains closed and I don’t hear any movement from within. The Jekyll has gone out to get some clothes for her, something we hadn’t considered in our haste to leave Phoenix.

I knock on the door softly, then again, until the door swings open and she is standing there in the doorway, her eyes swollen as though she’s been crying. I notice it, but it doesn’t affect me in the way that I think it should.

“What’s wrong?”

She shakes her head and steps away from the door. She’s wearing the white cotton robe supplied by the motel, and I doubt anything else underneath because she came with only the clothes on her back. The robe reaches to her knees, giving me a flash of long legs that seem to go on forever until they end at her small bare feet.

“Why are you crying?” I ask, coming into the room. I’m not built to care, but I’m curious. I can’t always read human emotions the way others do, and I don’t always care what one is thinking or feeling, but now I find myself interested to know. Luna Castillo has become a fascination for me.

“Why do you care?” she snaps back.

“Who says I do? I’m just asking because I’m curious.”

“You’re an asshole, you know that?”

She steps closer and pushes a long finger into the middle of my chest, pushing me away. She does it with such force that I almost lose my balance, and I look at her in surprise, wondering what’s gotten her so angry.

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