Page 4 of Don't Trust Him

Then you’re going to be found by vice cops in so many gruesome pieces your momma will cry loud enough for God to stop listening.

God will fucking tell her that you should never have betrayed the cartel.

That’s why we carve skulls on those we kill.

We mark you.

We send a message.

The next fucking body will be yours if you betray the cartel.

I’ve never had anything but the cartel. I’m loyal because it’s in my blood.

My name, Grayson Teague, is synonymous with loyalty. I’m an enforcer, fixer, and handler of any and all items the capo, Zario Dantes, of our cartel needs. I am like a son to Zario because he took me from ashes and molded me into his right hand.

So of course I have no reason to be disloyal. It would be like the sun setting on the wrong side of the sky. If the sun stops shining. My blood is cartel. My actions are to serve. I am a human weapon, and yes, baby, you can blow the gunsmoke off me after I do the deed.

My body wears the tattoos of every trial I’ve passed for the cartel. I’m the weapon they always needed, the loyal man that is always there to send the messages.

And I don’t fucking understand how men can be so weak as to betray the cartel. So stupid to think that they can get away with it. But they do.

They always fucking do.

And I am always there to deliver the message. My hand wears the same skull we carve into every body. I carve it anew on my hand after every kill, say my prayers, and remember who I am.

I get to the hotel late that night, but I know my suite will be ready. It is one of my perks for my status, which I acquired because I stay in absolute style when I travel for work, like any businessman.

I arrive and I enter the elevator on the first floor to take me to the 70th floor lobby.

This hotel is always incredibly busy. The lobby is absolutely full of people checking in, checking out, and heading to the lobby bar.

Me?

I get to the VIP lounge of the hotel reserved for high net worth guests and check in. The lounge has cocktails now but I want to see the city, so I leave my bags with the smiling woman at the desk. Izzie, a saucy, beautiful Filipino woman. She’s past her dating prime, but she makes me wonder what it would have a been like to have a mother like her. Older or not, she is gorgeous and when she smiles at me, I shoot a grin right back at her.

An orphan’s an orphan. I know Izzie must be a mother, in the way she knows I’m an orphan. I feel it in her eyes and how she talks to me.

When I look back, I think this is part of why my whole life was going to change. I don’t truly belong to anyone yet. I think my family baptized by blood is my family, but there’s something empty inside me that I can’t name just yet.

I head up to the glass elevator around the lobby corner and I get a seat next to a tall glass panel. I look out over LA atop Spire73, the rooftop bar showing all of the glory of the City of Angels. It’s practically its own country. The flickering lights of cars, of buildings, of the glittering beauties all over the streets and the gold in everyone’s eyes, well if you’re not fucking jaded, you’ll love it.

You know how people say LA is so fucking fake? Perhaps that’s fucking true, and yes I’m rolling my eyes when I say that. Because, look, everyone’s fake to a large extent. We all tell lies. But LA is beautiful and it knows it is beautiful. And what’s so wrong with that?

Not a goddamn thing.

I call my associate, Kristen, and let her know that I’m at the rooftop bar.

“So am I,” she says on the other end of the phone.

She hangs up and quickly approaches my table.

“The dossier?” I ask. There’s no way in that dress—this slinky blue shit that’s deep as the sea at night and glittery— has room for it, and the only thing in her hand is a martini glass holding a pink drink.

“Your phone,” Kristen says with a grin. She taps the face of her smartwatch and a private dossier file pings to my phone.

“Thanks,” I say, scanning through it. “Is everything I need in here?”

“Everything you need is there,” she says with a pleased lilt in her voice. “Now you don’t need to eat a dossier after you read it.”

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