Chapter 30
DEAN
The night was too quiet, and without Yasmine and the kids, the last few days had made this place unbearable. Even the desert outside seemed to hold its breath for their return.
Click.
Dean bolted upright, instincts snapping him to attention before his mind caught up.
The air had changed. It felt charged, wrong.
Another faint metallic click whispered across the room, small but loud enough to cut through the dark.
He jumped from the bed and grabbed the gun from his nightstand just as the door exploded inward.
Dean covered his head as bits of debris went flying. The first shout came. “Ahora!” As a horde of men poured in like a tidal wave of black suits and guns.
Dean moved, his reflexes firing on all cylinders.
He fired once, twice, one man dropped, another screamed and fell against the wall.
He couldn’t see well with the hallway light backlighting the men.
He wished that he’d left all the room lights on.
Dean grabbed the nightstand and threw it at the guy charging toward him.
Then drove the barrel of his gun into a fourth man’s throat as the guy jumped over the bed.
He had to get out of this corner. Dean leaped up onto the bed and then over two more men who were running in to grab him.
He jabbed them in the back with his elbows, sending them sprawling on the floor.
With a quick pivot, he caught another across the jaw with the butt of the gun.
Blood sprayed, hot and wet, across his forearm.
But the flood didn’t stop. More men piled in.
He got two more shots off and watched the men fall, as the rest swarmed him, boots and fists, the air alive with the crack of gunfire and the crash of bodies.
Dean caught a wrist, twisted until the bone popped with a holler, and stole the man’s knife.
The flash of silver caught a throat, then another.
He didn’t count the kills, just the seconds he was still standing.
A rifle slammed into his ribs, and another man grabbed his hair, yanking him back. Dean drove the knife into the attacker’s thigh and went down under a crush of weight. Boots stomped, hands pressed, the chaos dimming into a rhythm of violence.
He’d fought in war zones quieter than this.
“No lo mates!” someone yelled over the frenzy. “Senor Carlos wants him alive!”
The world tilted. He reached for his gun, but someone kicked it away, and another ripped the knife from his hand.
His shoulders screamed as his arms were yanked back and zip-ties bit into his wrists.
He knew he was sweating and bleeding, but he couldn’t assess how badly he was wounded as the hot streaks blended along his body.
He laughed under his breath. “Took way too many of you, but congratulations.”
The crowd parted, and it felt like the silence folded in. Carlos stepped into the room. Bare chest gleaming, robe open, and black slippers on his feet. Dean didn’t know what was more humiliating, to be taken at all or for his father to show up looking like this.
A smirk carved into his father’s features as Dean was yanked up onto his knees. He looked like the kind of man who mistook the sound of his own voice for greatness.
“My son the traitor,” he said softly. “You think I wouldn’t find out? That you could hide what you did?”
Dean dragged his gaze up to meet the eyes of the man he had despised since he was a young boy. “Depends on what part you’re referring to.”
Carlos’s head tilted, eyes narrowing at Dean’s wording.
“Let’s start with the family you smuggled off my estate.
” He leaned closer, breath reeking of alcohol.
“And tell me…where is Isabella? Where is my lost little prize? I know she was here earlier, because I saw her in the garden, but now…poof. Gone.”
Dean’s lips twitched. “You mean you went to her room and she wasn’t there?”
Carlos’s eyes darkened as Dean’s smile of satisfaction registered in the old man’s brain. “She’s gone? I hadn’t seen that coming,” Dean softly laughed. “But…I’m glad.”
Carlos backhanded him. Blood hit the floor, like a smattering of rain. “I’m not playing this game, hijo. Where is Isabella?”
“Even if I knew where she was,” Dean rasped, “I’d never tell you. I’d rather die than tell you anything.”
Carlos’s voice rose, breaking into fury. “You forget whose blood you carry. I made you. I built you from dirt, and this is how you repay me? You think you can steal from me, defy me, and live?”
Dean coughed, grinning through blood. “Guess we’re about to find out. You call this an empire?” Dean laughed, his head falling back, loving how all the guards looked at one another like he’d lost his mind. He sobered and snarled at his father.
“This place is nothing more than a mausoleum you’ve rented out to scared men.
You buy obedience with blood-money and call it loyalty, but what you own are beggars with rifles, not true loyalty.
I’ve already taken your throne apart one truth at a time, you just don’t know it yet.
I’ve pulled the wages from your pockets and shown every man you bought their silence for nothing more than your own greed.
When your name is only worth the dirt on your shoes, you’ll learn the one thing you never could buy…
genuine loyalty…just not to you. And then you’ll finally understand.
It is the kind of awakening that comes from knowing everything you built is a lie.
Enjoy the sound of it collapsing. Estás acabado, viejo…
because I’m the one who’s already destroyed the foundation, and all I have to do is pull the pin to watch it fall. ”
“What have you done?”
“Fuck you.” Dean spat on Carlos’s slipper.
The punch came hard enough to crack a rib, and Dean winced away from the sharp pain.
Another followed, the sound of it filling the room.
Carlos followed it up with a punch to Dean’s jaw.
The guards didn’t move to stop him. Carlos’s madness filled the room like static.
And yet Dean didn’t care. He welcomed it… he’d pushed his father over the edge.
“I should’ve killed you when I slit your bitch of a mother’s throat,” he shouted, pacing. “I fed you, trained you, let you have my name, and took you back in even after you dishonored me by leaving. And you repay me with betrayal!”
Dean spat red onto the floor. “You didn’t give me a name. You gave me a curse. Ramírez is nothing but a stain. One I’ve tried to scrub away, but you just refuse to let me go.”
Carlos lunged, grabbing him by the hair, and jerked him to his feet. “You think I won’t break you,” he hissed. “You think I haven’t broken better men than you?”
Dean’s smile was small, brutal. “You underestimate me again, father.”
For a heartbeat, neither moved.
Then Carlos’s fist smashed into his face again, the sound echoing like a hammer against glass. Dean’s vision swam, but the laughter that bubbled up was dangerous. As feral as the night’s wind outside.
“You can’t cage a demon, old man,” Dean said slowly. “And mark my word…one is coming for you.”
Carlos froze, eyes gleaming with something between rage and fear.
Then he jerked his chin at the men. “Take him. Let him think about what defiance costs in solitary confinement. I’ll deal with him tomorrow.
” The guards started to march him to the door when Carlos yelled again. “And find Isabella. Now!”
They dragged Dean through the corridor barefoot, bleeding, and leaving a crimson trail across the white tile.
He didn’t fight. There was no point right now.
But he did take note of every man’s face that was part of his father’s attack on him.
The mansion pulsed around him, like it was alive and ready for what was to come.
Somewhere, far off, he could hear the distant thud of music, a sick contrast to the quiet rage inside him.
The door to solitary opened with a scream of metal. They threw him in, the impact knocking the wind from his chest. Cold air wrapped around him like an unwelcome friend. Concrete walls, floor slick with old blood, filth, and the kind of dampness that seeped into your bones.
The door slammed, and in the silence, Dean assessed his injuries. Without light, he couldn’t tell how bad they really were and hoped nothing was life-threatening.
He lay still for a long time, tasting the metallic taste of his own blood, waiting for the world to stop spinning. Then slowly, he pushed up onto his knees. Every muscle screamed, but he stayed upright.
“You’ll die by my hand, old man,” he whispered. “The knife is already at your throat.”
The darkness didn’t mourn for men like him. In the dark, Dean Ramírez counted his bruises like prayer beads, making a vow that would not be undone.
When dawn came, he wouldn’t rise as his father’s son. He’d rise as the storm that would end him. Tomorrow, Keene would arrive, and whether he lived or died, it didn’t matter. Only their destruction.
Dean settled on the metal bed. The darkness pressed in from the concrete itself, a cold weight that promised death.