“I’ve heard stories about Sicarios becoming serials. The hired kill wasn’t enough anymore, so they escalated,” Mano said. The men all shook their heads in agreement, having heard similar stories.
Antonio filled up the shot glasses, and the men drank them. Whoever was killing fixers had done something he hadn’t anticipated—he’d made some very dangerous enemies.
Antonio fixed his eyes on Tadias, “We never asked you if you knew who killed your parents. We didn’t want to stir-up the pain of the past. It’s time to deal with that pain—confront some issues. I want you to do something for me.”
Tadias laughed, “You’re not going to try and hypnotize me, are you?”
Antonio’s expression was serious. His brother didn’t just use him for torture; he used him for interrogations too. Both brothers had an eidetic memory, better known as a photographic memory.
When Tadias saw the serious expressions on Mano’s and Antonio’s faces, he decided it couldn’t hurt to try whatever it was Antonio had up his sleeve. He damn sure didn’t want to be the fault of Page’s death, if he could help, he would. He’d seen enough death and destruction for a lifetime. Mano was his friend, and it was his duty to have his back.
“Okay,” Tadias agreed, “I’m game if it will help Mano’s woman.”
Antonio settled into his chair, took another shot, and began.
“I want you to start out with how the day began. Forget about the intruders. We’ll work our way up to that.”
“I was excited when I woke up. My father had told me we were going to have visitors—people who were going to pay us for a story about our lives. He’d promised to buy me a horse with some of the money. I’d been asking him for years, and now I was finally going to get it. I’d even named it, Apollo. We didn’t have a lot of money, so this was a huge deal. This was a big day for a boy who didn’t have many exciting things happening in his life.”
Tadias was too ‘in his head’ to see the looks of recognition to his childhood on the other men’s faces. Both men were all too familiar with childhood in Colombia. It was something that stayed with you, regardless of age.
“The men seemed friendly when they came. Everything was going well, and then it just turned on a dime. There was no escalation. It was a swift and calculated attack we never saw coming.”
“El Loco! What are you doing!?” My father’s voice rang out in terror. I ran out the door that was still open when I saw the man in charge holding a gun on my father.” Tadias chuckled, “I almost tripped over a chicken that had gotten through the door we left open. I ran and hid in a field and watched in horror as they shot my parents, burned down the house, and then burned up the crops. Everything we’d worked for was gone. I’ll never forget that day, even though this is the first time I’ve remembered the leader’s name: El Loco.”
Antonio Wayne smacked the table and handed Tadias another shot, “I told you that shit worked.”
“Do you think El Loco is the one killing fixers?”
“He was only in his twenties back then, so he’s not too old to still be in the game. I think it’s a starting point.”
Chapter Nineteen
El Loco rested his head against the headrest of his private plane. He’d done well in his career as an assassin—better known in the Latin world as a Sicario. He’d been trained from a child to be a killer, and he enjoyed his work. His father before him had been a hired assassin, so it was all part of the family gene pool. When you wanted the best, you hired El Loco. Somewhere in his journey, he’d developed a hatred for fixers and a bloodlust for killing. Most journalists were hated by the Colombian cartel. Still, one lone woman had opened doors for her blog that were unprecedented. El Loco believed it was a form of betrayal for the woman to be writing about the Colombian cartel. Some secrets were meant to be taken to the grave, like a ghost of the soul only eternity knew the truths of. These were principles passed from generation to generation. Children could hold a gun in their hand before they could hold a rattler. They were dexterous in their abilities to shoot a gun, and their hands were lethal weapons they guarded at all costs. To break the bones in a Sicario’s hands meant the end of his career and a loss of life for him because the thing he was most passionate about had died—they could no longer kill for a price.
It didn’t bother him; he’d wiped out a whole family on the last job. There was an unspoken code: children were never to be taken out. If the Colombians blamed Page for their deaths, they would put a hit on her. He had to make them see she was the problem that needed to be alleviated. He would kill in the most heinous ways and put the blame on her until she was hated by every Sicario in the cartel. Killing for hire wasn’t enough anymore. He needed to see the pain in a child’s eyes as he put a bullet in their heads. Nobody had mercy on him as a kid, so he wasn’t returning any favors. There was no mercy in the drug game, so why should he care? It was a thin line between hired killer and serial killer; only the darkened soul that couldn’t walk the tightrope knew the difference. He’d crossed a line he would never be able to cross back over. When he looked in the mirror, a hideous monster with no conscience would look back at him. It remained to be seen if the nightmares would be a revelation of truth; it was he who no longer deserved to live. A sudden reawakening of consciousness could result in him sticking the barrel of his gun in his mouth and ending it. As long as that bitch got what was coming to her, then that was all that mattered. Sometimes vengeance blinded those it inhabited, and nothing else mattered.
He thought the woman would return to do a story. Perhaps the death of her hired fixer had scared her. El Loco had taken up the time killing, but she was the object of his attention. Cut off the head of the snake, and it would solve the problem of the public reading her stories. The public didn’t deserve access to the sacred stories. She was flinging out to the world like cannon fodder. He couldn’t allow her freedom of speech to put him in jeopardy any longer. Kavya Page Wordsmith had to die.
Chapter Twenty
Mano and Page were ripping and tearing each other's clothes off as soon as the bedroom door was closed. Hot mouths were exploring every inch of skin available. Tongues were seeking every pleasure point they could come into contact with.
"I need my cock buried in you." His voice was husky with lust, and his breath came out in heavy gasps of need. He'd never been with a woman who brought out the animalistic need to possess. He needed to mark her; show her she belonged to him now. She was the benchmark of the perfect woman for him, and now he would never be satisfied with another. He would make her his, and make it work at all costs.
His cock was in her hard and swift. There was nothing romantic about how he was hate-fucking her. Her body bucked beneath him with every hard thrust. He could feel the walls of her sweet softness clamp around him as he climaxed with her. They were in sync as one, filling each other up with what the other needed.
"Damn, girl," he gasped for breath as he lowered on top of her. "You're fucking amazing."
"I could say the same about you." She hated the reluctance she felt at opening her feelings to him, but it was a necessity to keep her safe.