Page 2 of Vicious Savage

“You seem very sure of yourself.”

“That’s because I am.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because I’ve met her before."

I swing my head in his direction and stare at his side profile. This is news to me. Unwelcome news. I lower the toothpick I’ve been flicking from one side of my mouth to the other and guide his attention toward me with a grunt, taking a leaf out of his book.

“Where would you have met her, and why am I only finding out about this now?” I ask him.

“Why is it important?”

“She’s the subject of our surveillance, and you’ve met her. Which means she’sseenyou. Isn’t the whole point of this exercise that we don’t draw suspicion to ourselves?”

“It was brief. In the supermarket. I helped her reach a product on the top shelf.”

“And this is how you’ve identified her?” I screech, in disbelief.

He shakes his head like I’ve grown two heads and tells me he followed her from her art class, where he confirmed her identity, to the supermarket.

“Plus, did you forget that I’ve seen a picture of her?” He whips out a picture from his wallet and pushes it my way. It’s a little eerie that he carries her picture in his wallet like a hidden talisman.

I’m still in disbelief as I turn my gaze back to the cafe to compare the photo to the girl. I’ll have to watch him carefully so he doesn’t stuff this up. When I don’t see the girl in the window, my eyes scan the length of the cafe, but she’s nowhere in sight.

“Where is she?”

“Damn it!” he mutters, turning the ignition on.

“What are you doing?”

“She’s gone.”

The Jekyll tells me that the girl has done this before; that she’s quite fond of disappearing into thin air. He informs me that she’s quite masterful at being a ghost, just like her father.

2

THE JEKYLL

Ithought nothing could ever hurt me as much as losing Sisely. Thought that was the worst possible thing that could ever happen to me. I was wrong. The worst thing that could ever happen to me was that vengeance would elude me. Because the scent of it resides in my blood. It flows through my veins, tracking through my body like a bitter poison. I’m thirsty, and I’ll do anything to achieve it.

But I’ve been going at it so long, sometimes I forget why I’m here. I lose sight of the bigger picture. It’s been so long, most people don’t even remember my real name anymore.

I’m no longer Cesar Cavalho, the successful builder with a bright future. I’m no longer the man they all knew. They know me now as The Jekyll. The dark side of a good man who went horribly wrong somewhere.

And those that know of The Jekyll fear even my shadow. For I lurk in the darkness, in the valley of death. Fire and destruction. And come out into the light only when I need to.

That thing with Ariadne Moore was a mistake. Well, no, it wasn’t. Because in taking her, I foiled the cartel’s plan to kill Caleph Rojas and collect a bounty on Ariadne Moore before she was killed or sold into a sex trafficking ring. That’s literally the only reason that Rojas let me live… because I had stepped on a landmine which detonated under the Mexicans rather than his life.

I wonder if all that’s behind us now. He was lukewarm when I landed on his boat. But he didn’t kill me, so there’s that. Even though his eyes maybe said he wanted to. I saw the way he was looking at his wife. Sort of the same way I had looked at Sisely when she was alive. She’s dead and gone, but she’s still anchored to my heart in a way I can’t explain. Yeah, I don’t blame Rojas for going all psycho and shit on me for touching his wife; I probably would’ve done the same thing.

Iamdoing the same thing. I’m trying to track down Sisely’s murderer. All I know is it was the Castillo cartel, and they’ve been slippery as fuck to catch. By some stroke of fate, it turned out that Caleph Rojas and I had a common enemy. Which is what brought us into each other’s world in the first place. Because I was tracking the cartel responsible for Sisely’s death; the same cartel that had been planning to steal Ariadne away from him and hand her over to the politicians who wanted her to burn at the stake. Their leader, Coyin Castillo, was also the man responsible for the death of Caleph’s parents. So now, he has more invested in the Mexicans than ever.

I’ve done my homework. I’ve been to Mexico, to Arizona and to California. Looking in every corner and under every rock until I was able to piece together the main players of the cartel. Coyin may be the leader who lurked in the dark and never showed himself due to how popular he was with every law enforcement agency in the world, but he also had a brother — Miguel — who worked alongside him and had been identified as the trigger man in Sisely’s death. They are two brothers with a similar thirst for evil. And the world would be better off without them.

It’s taken me five long years to track the Castillo brothers, or to track a thread to their whereabouts. Five long years of wreaking havoc on their infrastructure from the shadows as I tear them down bit by bit. Physically, I’ve been able to quietly and quickly make a few of their men disappear — putting the fear of the unknown in them. Grown men don’t simply disappear; they know there’s an unseen, unheard beast lurking on the fringes cutting them down one by one. The fear alone has them pissing their pants. Financially, I’ve annihilated them. As seen in the case of Ariadne Moore, I’ve foiled several attempts where they’ve tried to make some quick money to keep them afloat in their crumbling empire. I’ve stolen one of their shipments, then burnt it to the ground. Another time I set the feds onto them and that shipment, along with three men, was confiscated. And who knew all I had to do was lurk in the shadows and listen to chatter?

I run a hand over my bald head and let it rest at the base of my neck. There’s a reason I keep my head bald. And I’ve sworn not to grow my hair back until I’ve avenged Sisely’s death. A death that was in vain. No, not targeted. Wrong place, wrong time. My mind flits back to the day five years ago that I lost her. To the footage of what happened. I don’t know what was worse — losing her or watching it happen on the camera feed… feeling like if I could just press pause of the reel and rewind the tape, I could simply undo everything. The senselessness. The why. The utter stupidity of a gangster shooting an innocent bystander because she could identify him when the cameras could do just as good a job.

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