Chapter 33 Mateo #2
“It’s when you have nothing left, that you have to find strength to end your enemy.” She paused the recording to speak, “Or they will end you, make no mistake.”
He opened the door, and a teenage boy entered the room, tattoos already covering his young face as he tried his best to fit into a life that was clearly too much for him, too soon.
“You said you needed a job kid, Necesito sangue.” He spoke in half English, throwing a knife into the space between him and Cecilia. The kid only looked back at him for a split second before deciding.
She didn’t move at all, not at first, and then the kid immediately lunged for the knife on the ground, and she took the opportunity to slam her fist into his face.
Her knee shot out in between his legs violently, causing blood to pour out of his mouth.
I instinctively cupped my own jewels feeling the need to protect them from the brutality.
“Now tell him why he’s going to die today Mija,” Taylor translated Rafael Flores’ words as they came out of him with a look of pride in his face as Cecilia ripped the knife from the kid’s hand and stood over him.
“Because you thought you could kill Celia Flores, asshole,” Taylor translated, looking at me, eyes full of shock.
I turned my gaze back to the recording to see Cecilia, her eyes full of that devouring darkness that ran through her soul as she drug the blade across his throat and sat on his chest the same way Cézar had done to her, just moments ago.
Rafael leaves the room, but Cecilia stays perched on the dead kid’s chest until most of the blood drains from his body.
Cézar kicks off his spot leaning against the wall once again, this time he makes it over to her with a smirk and extends a hand for her to grab.
He pulled her up to stand and kissed her affectionately on the forehead before supporting most of her weight as they walked out of that dungeon together.
I fought the urge to relieve my stomach of its contents as well, as my head tried to wrap around what I had just watched.
“Celia Flores,” I told Taylor, and without needing to give her any additional instructions she began her research again.
“1992, maybe ‘93.” I remembered that she was two years younger than Ronan and myself and waited for her to dig.
“Tons of results, but the good news is, it's easy to filter now that I know I’m looking for a ghost. Just gotta clear any of the ones with social media, photos, essentially any relevant information aside from birth records. Oh, interesting,” she stopped and looked back at me from her chair.
I took it as an invitation to lean in closer.
“This one’s got a death certificate in 2000,” she pointed to the screen and my gut sank with the confirmation I heard on the video with my own two ears.
Cecilia Gomez didn’t exist, she was the ghost of Celia-fucking-Flores, daughter of the head of the Cártel. She had been my prisoner for the last two months, and I had never questioned the stone wall she put up any time we worked to break her, and that was our first mistake.
Stronger hijos de puta have not broken me.
I fought the bubbling of manic laughter stuck in my throat at the thought of our own stupidity.
The truth didn’t hold back with how hard it hit me when I stepped aside to think of all of the hints she had dropped, but we weren’t listening.
What we put her through was child's play compared to the hell her father had been dealing her.
And based on the number of files in that folder, that shit had been going on for years.
How many hours did she spend being tortured in that dungeon?
How many kills had her monster of a father forced upon her before she had a chance to understand the stain that taking a life left on you?
She should have been playing with barbies, but instead, she was slicing the throats of whoever her father deemed deserving.
Of course what we did to her didn’t come close to leaving a mark on her, let alone breaking her. She was born into a world that had stolen her youth and instead prepared her for the very thing we had been trying to do.
I hated the man in the video almost as fiercely as I hated my own old man, and the knowledge that he was already dead only made me angrier and more bitter while I came to terms with the fact that somebody else had stolen the opportunity for me to remove him from this earth.
Ronan obviously already made the connection just looking into the face of her father, that was clear enough to me. But as the world stood still and my mind worked a million miles a second, I realized Santos was right from the beginning.
She was protecting him, both of them. She knew Zerkos was brash and headstrong enough to try to take down the entire Cártel over the videos in these files alone, and that surely, he would lose a million times over.
I didn’t steal the guns. Not really.
I sagged into the chair with defeat as my brain puzzled together every crumb of information she dropped while she had been here.
Of course, she didn’t steal the guns, Zerkos told me that was the job that was supposed to be the start of the brotherhood.
Santos’ cousin Guillermo tipped them off to a Cártel deal that was set up to go wrong, as long as they could make it there in time, before the cops showed up, there was going to be a van full of cash and weapons for the taking.
I slapped my own face hard enough to shock me back into the present moment as Taylor watched me silently.
She didn’t steal the guns, because they were Cártel property, so in a way, they had belonged to her.
But most importantly, she didn’t steal them to sell them or to ruin Ronan’s life.
She saved both their asses by getting rid of Cártel weapons before those idiots redistributed them into the streets.
Ronan was rampaging, and he hadn’t even seen the worst of it yet. I knew there weren’t any words that could explain the severity of what I just watched. The only way for him to understand was to see with his own eyes.