Chapter 36 Santos
SANTOS
Ihad eleven days to solve a problem with no solution.
Cecilia looked like she had been on the receiving end of a brutal beatdown, which was upsettingly tugging at every decent part of me, telling me to hold her and make sure she was okay.
But I wasn’t an honorable man, and this wasn’t a decent job, so it was easy to drown out those voices trying to control my thoughts as I tried to maneuver the situation.
I was the villain now, and I had a hit to fulfill.
Worst of all, was knowing I was a puppet in a much bigger show than I thought I was part of.
Worse than that, was knowing how many innocent people were at risk if I didn’t hurt the only woman whose presence I had ever truly enjoyed.
The only woman who I considered my equal.
There wasn’t a way out of this one. Not for me.
I opened the bedroom door quietly, tilting my chin towards the hallway, wordlessly gesturing her out of Kane’s room.
“We’re taking a walk,” I said, still keeping the cold mask in my voice so she wouldn’t be able to tell how much all of this was killing me.
I walked towards the foyer where the three elevators waited for us, listening to the tapping of her bare feet against the cold marble as she followed me. I kept my gaze away from her, but I could still feel her stare searing through me.
Just a short moment later the elevator opened up to the rooftop patio.
It was still a mess here, but at least the blood and bodies had been cleaned out of the pool.
There were tables, chairs, and sun loungers all splintered away into pieces from the damage of the shoot-out, and not a single bottle survived in the bar.
She walked in front of me, taking in the state of the rooftop, slowly examining every destroyed piece as if she was somehow responsible for it.
She wasn’t, but none of that would matter anyway.
Glass was still piled around the bar top and the stools.
I nudged her to walk further away from it, as if preventing her from cutting her feet was somehow important right now.
Was there a nice way to kill someone?
I begrudgingly pulled the pistol out from my pants and pressed it to her lower back. She didn’t turn around, but she halted, as if she could feel the gun and knew why I led her up here.
“Walk, Morena,” I pushed her forward with the revolver, and she continued to walk across the rooftop until we made our way to the edge, overlooking the city.
“Are you at least going to give me the courtesy of an explanation? Or letting me look my killer in the eyes?” I scoffed at her request, pulling the gun back, but still keeping a tight hold on it as I let her turn to face me.
“You don’t seem surprised,” I pointed out the obvious, I didn’t know what I expected. Maybe a hell of a lot more than whatever was this calm that washed over her.
“I’ve been waiting for death to catch up to me for a long time, Santito,” she hissed the nickname out, only this time it was coated in venom.
“I didn’t expect it to come from you though, that’s for certain.
But I guess that’s neither here nor there now, isn’t it?
” she said in an unattached way as she turned back around and leaned her elbows against the four-foot ledge.
Letting me know exactly just how little she feared me, or her own mortality.
“A lot of people want you dead, Cecilia,” was all I could muster.
I was teetering a fine line. Anguish, guilt, and sorrow overwhelmed every inch of my heart.
But as much as I missed my friend and wanted to take her into my arms and kill the men who hurt her.
I was going to have to hurt her even worse.
“That I know, but does that list include you?” she asked without looking at me, at this point I wasn’t sure if I wanted her to, either.
My facade was starting to crack, and if I didn’t hurry up, there was a good chance I was going to call the whole thing off.
“No. This isn’t any more my choice, than it is yours.”
“What will you tell them?” She turned around, tilting her head to the side curiously.
I wasn’t sure yet. Maybe I’d plant the gun in her hand and leave her up here, like a clear suicide.
It wouldn’t be too unbelievable after all that Ronan put her through, but the pain of that would crush him and I couldn’t let him live believing he was responsible for that.
All I knew was, I only had thirty minutes or so before Taylor figured out I’d looped her feed of the rooftop.
“That’s not your problem to figure out,” I said, putting the gun in my pants pocket as it weighed heavily in my hand from the pain of my responsibility.
She cocked an eyebrow and took a few casual steps toward me.
“Maybe it could be my choice then? Maybe you don’t have to carry that burden. Maybe I can step right off this ledge and all your problems will be gone,” her hands pressed to my chest as she looked up into my eyes, and I was suddenly lost, captured by the all-consuming void of her stare.
Even battered and bruised she was a vision of every dark desire and dream I’d ever conjured up. It was hard to believe there was once a time when I was a young, naive boy who thought I could actually be this girl’s friend.
Friend.
What a joke. That would never be enough, and I knew now my soul would fester and rot if I had to go on with the charade I’d been keeping up for the last fifteen years.
I’d once said she would be the grenade that destroyed us, but Cecilia wasn’t a grenade, she was a nuclear bomb.
Her damage would last long after she was dead and gone from our hold. We would never be the same again.
How could anyone be?
I’d once thought this woman was the closest thing to my salvation I would have ever known. But she would never be mine. And what I thought was my lifeline was just a mirage in the scorching desert, slowly draining me as I walked closer and closer to my own death.
That was the worst part about all of this. The relief I knew I would feel once I pulled that trigger because I wouldn’t have to continue to endure the torment of not getting to have her. I wouldn’t have to suffer through watching my brothers possess what so clearly would never be my own.
I was better off if she was dead.
“Why would you do that?” I looked past her, down into the street, wishing the gun was still in my hand so I could squeeze it to keep my limbs from shaking.
“Because I see you, as plainly as you see me. Your dark, your depravity, the way your soul is stained the same way mine is. People like us, were lost to that darkness, and we know our seats in hell are reserved. I’ve never killed someone I cared about though, and I won’t let you either,” her eyes were locked on mine, clearly seeing the confusion in mine from the words she just uttered.
As if she knew the weight of taking a life.
She held my face in her hands, not allowing me to look away, “I know I deserve this. You saw those videos with your own eyes.”
“What videos?” I couldn’t feign my alarm, breaking out of her hold as I stepped back to examine her face for any hint of a clue. If there were videos that meant my brothers were keeping something from me, which meant my circle of trust was getting smaller by the minute.
“Hmm,” was all she said, looking away like she still wanted to keep secrets even when I was out here promising her certain death. She still couldn’t give me the trust I deserved from her. The trust that I had fought for and earned.
I grabbed her by the throat and pushed her against the concrete ledge, it was the only thing that stood between her and a fall that would guarantee her end. But there was no fear in her eyes, no ounce of hesitation, even though her throat was already purple from someone else's aggression.
“Why did you come here, when you knew he couldn’t forgive you?” I asked her, clenching my teeth together as I waited for her response.
“Because I knew you could,” she said, not looking anywhere but into my eyes.
“Wrong.”
Ronan had already come completely undone from her presence here in the last couple of months, and Mateo was obviously too far under her spell to see clearly.
Not to mention the blowback that was sure to happen once Zerkos realized his best friend fucked his girl.
I myself was running the risk of losing all prospect of sanity and rationale anytime even the mention of her name was spoken around me, I feared if she wasn’t gone soon, we would all be in trouble.
This had to be a sign.
It had to be.
I pulled the gun again and stuck it right under her chin, forcing her head up so she’d have to look me in the eyes again. I could feel her pulse racing under my thumb as I still held on, just tightly enough, around her bruised throat.
“Do it,” she coaxed me with barely a whisper. “I’ve been waiting a long time to be free.”
“We don’t get to be free, Morena,” I pushed her into the wall so hard she had no choice but to sit on the ledge, her back to the dawn breaking.
“All we get is another layer of hell after this one.” She was hundreds of feet from the so-called freedom she desperately craved, but all it would take was a nudge to end her right then and there.
Do it coward. The villainous voice inside me cheered me on.
Instead, she wrapped her legs around me, using her heels to pull me into her, my hands still clutching onto her face tightly as she stared at me with what looked like desire glossing over her eyes.
She licked her bottom lip, some hesitation still glimmering in her eyes letting me know we were teetering a dangerous line.
“Don’t do it,” I warned her through gritted teeth.
“What do I have to lose?” she asked, I wanted to answer everything, but before I could, her lips were on mine, pillowy soft even though they were still a bit cut up from whatever they’d done to her in that trafficking ring.
She urged me even closer, and defeat powered over me.
I gave in and pressed into her body, my hand leaving her chin and grasping the back of her head while I tangled my fingers through her hair.
She moaned a soft rally as my tongue slipped through the part in her lips, and the sound both jarred my cock awake and snapped me back to reality.
I broke away and turned around without looking back, marching straight through the doors, and leaving her there.
If I didn’t kill Cecilia Gomez, she was going to be my ruin.
That much I was sure of. The only problem was, there was now something more urgent pressing into the back of my mind, and I knew my conscience wouldn’t let me kill her until I’d gotten the truth.
There were videos.
Videos of what?
I made my way down to the tech lab, knowing I’d have to answer to Taylor’s wrath from jamming up her rooftop feed, but she would also have the information I needed.