Page 26 of Blurred Red Lines
I just didn’t expect it to be so soon.
My father walked over to the weakened man with a sadistic smile, removed the cigar from his mouth, and pressed the lit end into the man’s exposed shoulder. His tortured cries forced my eyes downward, the stench of burnt skin filling the room.
Alejandro’s voice echoed against the bare walls. “Pon atención, Valentin!”Pay attention, Valentin.
My head snapped up in time to see the smile curl my father’s mouth, his dark moustache curled heavy at the ends from weeks of moving locations. Usually a very meticulous man about his appearance, his dishevelment gave him a sinister look I had no desire to push into a corner. We locked eyes, and he nodded to the victim, showing off by sliding into broken English.
“This man. He’s committed a crime. Take him out.”
Knowing this was a test, I stared at my father. If I failed, I could be in the chair next. Blood ran deep in cartel lines, but loyalty ran deeper. Steeling my breath, I raised the gun and aimed it at the man’s heart. A clean shot seemed the most humane. I was a killer, but I wasn’t an animal.
The dark side of me wanted him to curse me or spit at me. I wanted anything to provoke me into a rage. Instead, his eyes bore into me with a finality of acceptance. No fight remained inside of him.
At some point, I must have lowered the gun because my father’s voice boomed from across the room. “Valentin!” Our eyes met, and as always, his coal black stare burrowed its way into my head. “This man, he raped his sister.”
Bright white light burst across my vision. I no longer saw a defenseless man resigned to his own death. Rage welled beneath a bubbling surface of hate. I didn’t hesitate.
I blinked and pulled the trigger. One clean shot between the eyes. The back of the man’s head blew across the room, and my father laughed maniacally.
“Valentin,” he said, clapping me on the shoulder. “It is done now. A new life for you, yes?”
It was a new life. One that would turn me from a boy with a shred of decency into a man with nothing but twisted black regret.
The man I killed was an only child. He had no sister.
I ran my fingers across the smooth metal. I supposed somewhere deep inside a sliver of a soul remained, but beatings and threats ripped most of it away years ago. Now, most all I felt was a sense of relief when I killed.
Relief that it was them and not me.
Kill or be killed.
Shoot or die.
At the end of the day, I’d trained myself to wipe their last gasp of breath from my memory and forget their empty eyes over a glass of tequila and a willing woman.
Live by the sword and die by the sword.
Eventually it’d come for me. Because of my solitude, there’d be no innocent family members to suffer my same fate. At least I’d learned that valuable lesson from Alejandro.
Shoving the gun in the back of my pants, I pulled my suit jacket from the back of my chair. My head swam with ways to navigate shit, now that the Muñoz cartel made the first move against a civilian employee of mine. That kind of thing didn’t happen on American soil. That was a practice from home that’d specifically been left there.
As I adjusted my collar, my office door burst open, causing me to rip the gun from my back and aim it at the dark head that emerged.
“Shit! Boss, it’s me!” Emilio stood crouched in the doorway with his hands held high and his chin ducked, as if that would stave off a bullet to his brain.
“Jesus, Emilio, knock! How many times do I have to tell you people to fucking knock?” I shoved the gun back in my waistband. “I could’ve blown your head off.”
Emilio stood frozen in the doorway, with matted hair and bloodstains splattering his shirt and pants. The sight alone would’ve sent most people screaming for their phones to dial the police, but the scene was nothing new in our world.
Nothing new except for the ravaged look of regret on his face.
That look concerned me. Not because I particularly cared, but because regret had no place in our lives. It had to be checked at the door, along with a conscience if a man was to survive.
“Emilio?” I asked with an annoyed tone. I’d had a long day and was in no mood for this.
Emilio ran a shaking hand over his oily, slicked back hair, repeating the move as he mumbled. “I don’t know what happened. We never get it wrong. Never wrong. And so, what if we do? It happens. It’s the way of home, right? You play, your family could pay.”
“Emilio?”
