Page 60 of Shameless in Vegas

A sardonic chuckle rumbles out of him, and then his hand flies forward, grabbing my hair at the base of my skull and jerking me forward. He wedges the brass knuckles so hard against my throat that it feels like I’m breathing through a cocktail straw.

“The only person who should be scared is you,puta,” he grinds out, his rank breath clouding around my face. “Because Xavier’s not gonna forget how much you blew him off at the beginning of this assignment. He thinks you’re getting a little too fucking spoiled, and it’s making you lazy. He thinks you need a reminder of what’s waiting for you if you fuck up or get sloppy.”

He jerks my neck again, yanking me into a headlock and forcing me to bend at the waist. Trapping me in place, he holds his phone in front of my face and presses play on a video of myself in a situation I’ve been in so many times that it will haunt my dreams until the day I draw my last breath.

A dark room adorned with plush furnishings and only a stack of books on war and cruelty as my company. My only clothing was a collar around my neck. A long chain attached to a wall. A door bolted from the outside. A gilded cage, if you will. Deep in the heart of middle-of-nowhere Mexico. Me, a luxurious possession of Los Dolorosos, with one purpose. All day, every day, one purpose. The men would come in and out of the heavy door to relieve stress, to relieve frustration, to relieve a pesky hard-on, to simply entertain themselves.

Whatever they wanted, I submitted.

In this video, a large man with a gut that is so distended that he had to order me to hoist it up while he forced his laughable little dick into my mouth. That sweaty, hairy gut that slapped heavily on top of my ass while he drove his tiny baby cock into me and moaned,“Ay papi,” the whole time. He was old enough to be my grandfather.

When he was finished, the mortification for his secret, suppressed sexual preference manifested itself in the form of the tools of torture affixed to the stone walls. His choice was a chain similar to the one binding me to the wall. It whistled as it flew through the air, but was silent as I went temporarily deaf and blind from its bludgeoning contact with my back, and stomach, and arms, and legs. When my entire body was numb, yet throbbing, he wrapped the chain around my neck and dragged me across the stone floor back to the luxurious bed, and threw me against the headboard. I went limp and unconscious.

The video cuts to black, and I come into view again. It had to be only a matter of minutes after the first man left because the blood streaking my body was still glistening in the low light, and I was still unconscious. Another man came in. He was younger; probably only old enough to be my father—if I ever had a father. He dragged me off the bed, throwing my limp form into a heap on the floor. He disappeared out of view for a moment, and then returned with a bucket. He tossed the water onto me, jarring me back to consciousness, and then picked me up by my elbows and threw me against the edge of the bed. He went through the same motions as the previous man. The same motions they all did.

All day, every day. For years.

From childhood until age twenty-two.

It was how they broke me. Once broken, my training began with my first killing. A boy my own age that they convinced me had raped and murdered my mother. Over the years as I was molded into the perfect killing machine, it occurred to me that the boy had been set up, and they were responsible. It didn’t change anything. I remained under their thumb, but I channeled my rage to every killing I would be assigned when I was eventually released into the wild to begin hunting the men who would be my husbands.

The threat of The Room always loomed large and foreboding over my head.

If my work wasn’t satisfactory, back to The Room I went.

And Mauricio is here to remind me of that.

He squeezes my neck so hard that my vision goes black at the edges. “You ready to go back in the room,puta? Seems like a lot of fun.” He tosses the phone onto the plush, tufted, white leather bench in the corner of the fitting room, and then gathers the fabric of my skirt enough to shove his hand into my panties and shove his fingers inside me. “Maybe I’ll come visit you in there. I’d love to bury my cock deep into thatculo.”

Poor Mauricio is such a pathetic underling that he doesn’t realize I’ve been trained to escape from his sad little excuse for a chokehold, and I slip out of his arm too quick for him to stop me. He grapples to restrain me again, and I throw the heel of my palm forward, slamming it against his throat and causing him to pitch forward at the waist, hacking and coughing. It only takes him a second to recover, and then he grabs my neck, throwing me to the floor, where I bear the brunt of countless kicks and blows to my stomach and ribs. Wedging his knee against the back of my neck he slams his brass-adorned fist against my spine, and amidst the flashes of white, I wonder if I’m going to be able to walk out of this fitting room.

When he’s finished, Mauricio grabs my hair and jerks me to my feet. I stand, and I guess I can still walk after all, and he shoves me against the wall.

“Now,” he growls, pointing his finger at my face, “Don Xavier says it’s time to finish the job. He’s got his computer nerds tracing the shit you gave him, and they’re finally putting together the little glitch or whatever the fuck it is that’ll drain Ernesto’s cash into our accounts, so that means you need to get rid of Junior. You’re gonna do it on the first night you guys are in that fancy-ass condo, and then you’re gonna call us to deal with the mess when you’re done. Is that crystal fucking clear, bitch?”

My gaze is deadpan and so is my voice. “Yeah.”

“Good.” And with that, he spits in my face, and silently slips out of the fitting room.

I wipe my arm across my face and allow myself to collapse onto the bench for a moment, doubling over in pain as I will my pulse to calm down. The unexpected altercation has resulted in me being in this fucking changing room way too long, and I need to pull myself together.

Standing up, I turn in front of the mirror, inspecting the dress for damage and finding nothing noticeable. Only a little stretched and wrinkled; in far better shape than me. Then I reach behind me, cringing at the breathtaking soreness of my torso, to unzip it. I step out of it and neatly reattach it to the hanger, and inspect my exposed body.

The bruising is already starting. So is the swelling. There’s not enough makeup in the world to hide this from Joaquin. I’ll have to rack my brain for some kind of way to fucking injure myself again as an excuse. But even all of that is the least of my problems right now.

Right now, I have to start preparing to execute my plan.

Joaquin and I are scheduled to move into the condo in two days. That means I have to figure out how to stall the move or even get him to cancel it altogether, because Xavier’s bootlickers are expecting to be summoned, and if they have to wait too long, they might just show up unannounced. The arsenal Joaquin used to kill Ignacio and the others belongs to Ernesto, and it certainly isn’t going with us. He’ll be there unarmed and vulnerable, and I will not tolerate that. He’s not the one in this twisted web of violence and criminality that deserves to die, so I will have to see to it that he’s not anywhere they can find him.

And it seems there’s only one solution to that.

The truth.

He’s going to know everything, and I’m going to be the one to tell him. Then he can tell his father, and they can do their due diligence, but while they do that, I will go after the man who’s earned his fucking bloodletting.

In the meantime, I need to get back to the carefree fun at the cushy chairs and mirrors with all those adorably oblivious women.

After dressing, I assess my appearance one last time, making sure there are no marks on my face. There aren’t. But there are a few on my arms. And fortunately, boujee-ass, rich lady, bridal boutiques keep the AC on arctic fucking blast, so I can just put on my jacket, then offer them a hair flip, and a smile, and the words,I’m just super-duper cold, you guys!

---