Total pages in book: 180
Estimated words: 170747 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 854(@200wpm)___ 683(@250wpm)___ 569(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 170747 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 854(@200wpm)___ 683(@250wpm)___ 569(@300wpm)
“This will help us all. Just have him ring Nero. Please. For my son.” And then she hangs up. Of course, she would mention her child. It’s the one thing that can cut through my rage and pain because he is just an innocent. He knows nothing of the cruelty this world can offer, and I would do everything in my power to shelter my nephew from it.
When I step into the kitchen Rafael and Samuel are absent, which is normal these days. Lucas offers me a wide smile from the breakfast bar as he chews on a mouthful of eggs. Carlos sits beside him and jerks his chin at me before turning his attention back to his newspaper. As I walk past him, I catch sight of the open page. There’s an image of several bodies hanging from a bridge by their feet, blood streaming down their arms from the carved message on their stomachs. All of them say the same thing: War.
I start to skim the article about the Sinaloa cartel members and a suspected war brewing between the Juarez and Sinaloa cartel but Carlos closes the paper.
“So now you’re going to stop me reading the paper?”
He folds his arms in front of him on the table. “You don’t need to see this shit.”
I laugh. “Are you serious?”
“Deadly.”
“You know that I’m with Rafael, right?”
He says nothing.
“Carlos, I’m no stranger to the most barbaric practices of the cartels.” I snatch the paper, and he glares at me.
“The cartels are not Rafael.”
“It’s one and the same. He’s the boss. He is the cartel.”
“He is, but not to you.” He gets up, taking his mug to the sink before standing toe-to-toe with me. There was a time when Carlos terrified me, but not now. “You might not like what you see when you look too closely.” He nods toward the paper in my hand and leaves the room.
I drop into his vacated chair with a huff and open the paper back to the page I was reading.
“He’s right, you know?” Lucas says.
I roll my eyes. “You too?”
“I used to see my brother a certain way. I knew he was in the cartel, but I guess I never really understood the full extent of that. And then I started working with him… I love him. He’s my brother. But I don’t see him the way I used to. The things he does…sometimes it’s hard not to be disgusted.” He shrugs.
“Lucas, you can’t judge when you’re in the cartel.”
“Yeah, but I’ve always said I could never torture and kill people.”
“What kind of bodyguard are you if you wouldn’t kill someone for me?” I tease.
“That’s different. I couldn’t just chain someone up and torture them.” He shakes his head, and my mind drifts to a basement, to a chained man, and me…with a gun in my hand and Rafael at my back.
“If someone wrongs you badly enough you can,” I say quietly.
“And what if they haven’t wronged you?”
“In this world, everyone is a bad guy, Lucas. They’ve all got something to atone for.”
“Even Rafael?”
I inhale a deep breath and reluctantly meet his gaze. “Yes.” Especially Rafael. But in my mind, he already atoned for anything he’d done when he saved me.
“Even me?”
“No, of course not.”
He taps his finger over the side of his coffee mug. “It’s not our place to be judge, jury, and executioner.”
I look at him, really look. His dark hair falls over his forehead, and chocolate eyes lock with mine, full of a kind of innocence I can barely remember ever possessing. I always thought that Lucas and I were similar; lambs living in the den of wolves, but the truth is, I’m far closer to being like Rafe and Carlos than I would ever dare to admit. Rafael once said that I was the angriest person he’d ever met. Maybe that’s true because when I think of that chained man in that basement, all I feel is anger. All I want to do is go back and shoot him again. When I think of his lifeless body with that neat little bullet hole between his eyes, I feel nothing.
I look down at the paper, at the images plastered across the page. Maybe I should be disgusted, but I’m not. When you’ve watched awful men rape and kill innocent girls, seeing them kill each other is of little consequence.
I know this was Rafael, and if I didn’t before, then Carlos’ behavior would have confirmed it. “It’s business, Lucas.” He watches me for a second as though he’s not really sure who I am. “Trust me, there are worse travesties in this world than cartel members being strung up.”
He drops his gaze to the table quickly. “Of course. You’re right.”
I don’t have the time or inclination for any kind of pity. “Where’s Rafael?”