Chapter One
Hush
Muscles burn—clenching, rippling. My rough hands, bruised, and calloused, feel nothing of the hardened, broken concrete floor. Knuckles scrape the grit, and my jaw grinds tight as I keep pushing. Up, down. Up, down.
I grunt, the only real sound I make these days. Or for the last few years. After all, the dead don’t speak.
I push again, my body moving like an oiled machine as I push up and then back down. My breath scatters concrete dust and grime on the blood-stained floor, but it’s all the routine. It’s my eternity now. In here, in this cage, surrounded by brick and metal bars, I’m a chained beast. In here, I’m a demon barely contained from the outside world. I stand, and sweat drips down my brow, burning my eyes, but I don’t give a shit. I look up through the thin bar at the top of my prison, where I can see one star shining, like a tease of a freedom I’ll never know.
After all, I’m already dead, and right now, I’m in hell.
Believe me, I deserve it.
In my past life, the one that was taken from me in a hail of bullets and blood, I was not a good man. I was a savage, and an outlaw—a monster of a man. I ran with a crew of likeminded men back then, but they, like every aspect of that old life, are long gone and long dead.
There are footsteps, and I go still. The darkness surrounds and cloaks me, and I slow my breathing, my ears attuned to the approaching footsteps. It’s Carlos. After years in his hell, I know them all by the sound of their footsteps or the way they fucking breathe. Carlos isn’t the worst, but he and I both know I’d tear his head off with my bare hands if these bars were to fail.
There’s a pause, but I already know what’s coming. The little bitch thinks it’s funny when he does this. He thinks he wakes me, but I don’t sleep at all anymore. I wait, but I don’t have to wait long, because there it is. With a clang, he raps a policeman’s baton against the bars on my cell door. Of course, he and the rest of them would only pull this shit with me in a cage like this. I’m over seven feet and two-hundred-fifty pounds of muscles and savagery.
“Hey, culero,” he cackles.
I’m silent.
“Hey! Puta!”
I still say nothing in the darkness, and he bangs on the bars again, rattling my cage.
Provoking me.
Waking the demon beast lurking inside of me.
“Hola, cabron!” He cackles again. “Hey, asshole!” His voice gets a little less humor in it when he switches to English.
“Hey, you little bitch,” Carlos spits. “I’m talking to you. Wake up, asshole.”
He wants me to react, but I won’t. They learned long ago what I’m capable of, and I know for all of his cocky bullshit, Carlos is standing behind the line someone’s been smart enough to spray-paint on the floor outside of my cell door. It’s the line where my arm can reach through the bars. Miguel, one of Carlos’s buddies, helped them discover that line with my hand around his neck about a year back. Though in here, I’ll be honest, time has no real meaning.
Time doesn’t matter to the dead.
This place isn’t really Hell, of course, and I’m not actually dead. Just close to it, as this place is as close to Hell as you can find in the land of the living. This hell is an abandoned fort from the Mexican/American War, owned by a man Carlos and his buddies would call the devil. But I’ve met the devil, I know him well. And in this hell, it isn’t Jorge Del Campo.
In here, the devil is me.
Jorge is the head of the Del Campo cartel, which is without question one of the bloodiest, most ruthless drug cartels south of the US border. It doesn’t matter how I crossed him—the money owed, the debt that will never be paid. None of my old life matters anymore. What matters is the day-to-day of this hell. Sleep, maybe, wake, be angry. Eat, perhaps. Pace my cell, shadow box with my demons and ghosts. And then, it’s time to fight. That’s why I’m really here. I’m his beast.
His chained dog.
Jorge has four things he cares about in life: Money is one. Power is second. And the fights are third. In his desert compound out here at the edge of hell, he attracts all types to his brutal, no-holds-barred fights—fights to the death if need be. Guys like Carlos and his buddies come for the cheap seats, but it’s men like Jorge who fly in on private jets for the boxed seats furnished with full bars, cocaine, and girls. In the ring, death is a master, and in that ring, I am death.
“Hey, asshole! Chupame la verga! Hey! Suck my dick!” Carlos coughs up phlegm, and I hear him spit it before I feel it hit the back of my arm. A low growl simmers in my chest, and he cackles.
“Rise and shine, bitch!” The baton clanks on the bars, and I smile.
“El hefe wants you ready. Tonight, you’re the star, si? Tonight, you fight good.” He laughs. “Maybe the boss gives you a pillow if you play nice.”
Nothing Carlos or his ilk says or do ever gets through to me. It never hurts me. But today, there’s more of a reason to ignore him. Today, there’s more of a wall between us. Because last night, something changed. Last night, hell blinked.
There were four of them last night, and they were armed. The crowds jeering, the thrown beer cans and pesos—the smell of blood and sweat and dirt. But the stacked deck is an illusion—a show for the men who want to bet and drink. Four is no match for me, even armed with bats and knives. I’ve taken twice that before.
The first went down too easy. He had tequila on his breath—liquid courage that only got his arm snapped in three places before his neck followed. The second went face-first through the plywood siding.
Don’t feel bad for them. The men I fight are rapists, and murders, and child molesters. Most people who cross Jorge himself are killed or tortured and then killed. It’s only me that he keeps chained like a dog, and it’s because of the fights. The ones I fight against he buys from the local jails.
The third got a hit in, but I had him pinned, one hand around his neck. And that’s when I saw her.
A rose in the desert
A bloom in the burnt, charred remains of a life ripped from me.
A softness in a cruel world of pain and death.
Raven hair, soft, full ruby lips, and the brightest, most piercing blue eyes on any girl in the world. Last night, I saw an angel, and this devil blinked.
That blink is what got me the bat to the back of the head, too. I stumbled, and I fell, and the two left jumped up to take me out. I looked up, and that angel up in the glass boxed seats was gone. And it was that dream being ripped from me that that had me lurching to my feet with a low, savage growl. The two last attackers were snuffed out in seconds. No fanfare, no showy bullshit. Just two flicks of my wrists, and two harsh snaps of necks.
So, no, Carlos hasn’t woken me. I haven’t slept, not with her in my head. For the first time in almost two years, I saw beauty in a place that snuffs beauty out like a match. And now, she’s all I want. Now, for the first time since the old me died, I want to live tomorrow. I want to take another breath.
For her.
“Hey, cabron!” Carlos mutters. He raps the bars again, and again, I grin in the darkness.
Carlos is getting angry, and angry Carlos is sloppy Carlos.
…Sloppy Carlos is standing past the line.
I move in silence in the darkness, and he never sees me coming. My hand shoves through the bars, and he screams, but it’s cut off as my hand closes around his neck. I growl and yank him hard against the bars, and there’s a crunching sound of his nose breaking, and maybe some teeth. Then there’s the sound of more men yelling and running down the hall. Too many to know their footsteps, but I know them all at this point.