Page 12 of When Sinners Fall
I reach for my iron again, making sure she gets a good look at what’s coming for her skin. The sweet smell of smoke and heat drenches the air around us, a blaze of red-hot fire with our mark staying steady at the end like a living hell.
“She’s gonna move again, Shaw.” I can hear the swallow of shame he does from down here; no need to look at him shaking up there to gauge his weak stomach. Another chuckle flows through me. Pansy ass fuck.
My hand puts her foot into position, the iron goes to the base of it, she screams, and the singe of skin sounds loud in the dingy space. The moving starts up again while I’m holding it on her, enough so that I use everything I’ve got to keep her damn foot still without breaking her leg. It’s the pride in me – the love of my own art. No way is a brand of mine looking like shit these days. That only happened for the first few months. I’m an expert at marking what belongs to us now.
I eventually pull the branding iron off her and release her leg, still listening to the wails and tears she keeps throwing around the room. “Come here,” I mutter, looking up at her.
She doesn’t. She pulls her feet up tight and twists her body into Shaw as if he might save her. He won’t. Not because he doesn’t want to. He does. Just like he has done for the other thirteen this morning. But he still won’t because he knows I’ll beat the living shit out of him if he shows one moment that defies me.
Fuck knows how he and Mariana came out as twins. They couldn’t be further from each other if they tried, but I guess we're all different. Abel came first from some pimp in Mother's early days. Then me and Elias and Knox, the only true Cortezes there are, and then the twins outta Richard Harris when she remarried that asshole. Mariana kept Mother's genes going strong, but I guess Shaw took on some of Harris’ traits. He was a clever guy, but weak, and he sure as shit wasn’t going to last in this gene pool of savagery.
Reaching for the cream and tape, I pull a new pad along with them towards me. “This makes the pain less. Up to you if you want it or not. I couldn’t care less if it hurts.” That seems to make her rethink her actions, even makes her stretch her leg down to me nervously. The cream gets smothered on, and the pad and tape get put in place.
My neck rolls out as Shaw takes her from the room and I get on with packing up. Fourteen done this morning. Twenty-eight last night in another set of back rooms. It all looks the same to me. Same spaces. Same type of people. Same whores. The ones out there already doing their job have found their way with being paid for sex. No complaints in reality. They make good money, and in this house, they’re treated well enough. But these new ones are still trying to fight it. No point. They’re in it now with no way out. They run, and we’ll find them. They try going to the law, and we’ll kill them.
Fear – it’s a good business to be in. Always was. Still is. This time it's been for private businesses who’ll give us a cut of the profit they make with our girls. Other times it’s like it was back in London where we steal them from the streets and sell them for profit. It’s just another day at the office in reality, and now I’m ready to get the hell out of Mexico and head back home to something I do seem to care about.
~
“Dante?” I look up at Shaw, trying to dismiss where my thoughts were heading while he’s around. “I don’t get it.”
“You don’t get what?”
He walks around the cabin, pacing it like he’s trying to get his anger out. “Don’t you give a fuck, at all?” I lean back, looking out the window rather than at him because I am not having this conversation again. “Doesn’t it even affect you anymore?”
No. Don't think it ever really did, either.
He comes round in front of me to sit in the chair, all agitation and balls trying to make me see his point of view. “They’re people. The women? They had lives before this. We're just taking them from whatever they knew and turning them into property we own.”
I keep staring at the clouds, shaking my head. “Give it a fucking rest, Shaw. While you’re at it, man the hell up. You’re beginning to grate on my nerves.”
“I’m asking a goddamn question.”
“No. You’re looking for a way out. There isn’t one. I’m done talking about this.”
I pick up my drink and sip at it, not sure how I help a Cortez become more like me so it doesn’t affect his morals. Maybe if he grew up like I did, had his ass handed to him most days, he’d be as emotionless to everything as I am. He didn’t. He got the privilege Abel, Elias,and I had already built, and then watched Knox come out of university with the highest grade degree there was to achieve. He tried to achieve the same when he was old enough. Probably so he could try elevating himself above us all. He failed. Guess Knox’s photographic memory is useful like that.
He gets up and starts pacing again, swilling down drinks to counter his mood. I don’t care anymore. Sooner or later, he’ll get with the programme. He’ll have to. No one wants to be on the wrong side of Abel in pissed mode, let alone both me and Abel together. It’s why he’s coming with me to these jobs now. Abel wants to harden him up, to make him see it as just another day in the office like Elias saw it. It isn’t in reality. We’re too far gone for that.
Too screwed in the head for normal.
Too damn numb.
~
Two hours on a plane, some driving, and we both end up back in San Antonio at Beretta's, a downtown strip club we own. Music's blaring. Guys are leering. Money's getting pushed in panties. Abel’s talking with Knox about something, and Shaw is drinking himself into an early grave in the hope of redemption. He’s trying to hide it, but the half bottle he’s already drunk here, along with the rest he drank on the jet, isn’t helping him act like a Cortez should.
I flick my lighter around, watching him, the girls parading around, and the darkness bedding in outside. I’m not watching it in reality, I’m waiting for it. I’m out of here the second it’s feasible for me to go do what needs doing. Two men need putting in their place tonight. They’re the first two on the list of twenty-two that Knox gave me. Don’t know why. Or care. But these two need to be dead. Some of the others, not so dead.
I leave just before it gets dark enough to go to work and make my way towards the only place I’ve been truly invested in for the last few weeks. It’s the same route I walked before I went to Mexico. Along the River Walk from her offices, over the bridge, down through Southtown and over to the place Wren’s calling home.
It’s about nine thirty by the time I get there, nearly pitch black, and the lights aren’t on. I sit on a bench a way off, checking and scanning the area. It’s not the best it could be for a woman alone at night, but she’s got a better chance of surviving that walk around here than other places. I’d like to say that’s why I followed her back here that first night I made a choice to search her out. It isn’t. I thought about speaking to her – dared myself to regardless of who I am because I wanted to hear that voice talking to me. Couldn’t. So I just followed her and watched the way she moved. Fucking perverse in all honesty. Kinda liked it, though. Especially when she glanced back and quickened her pace.
Fear. Something about that second or two of fear in her eyes made me feel sleazy for once in my life. Never really have before that. I’ve done a lot of crap in my life and not once have I felt like a creep about it. It somehow made me interested in pussy in ways I haven't felt for a long ass time. That isn’t usual for me, other than necessity. And the second I felt that – felt that need to fuck her enter my head – everything changed about who we were to each other years back.
Guess that’s why I carried on following her home.
Same reason I’m here tonight, too.
