Chapter 42 Santos
SANTOS
Eight
GUILLERMO
Ihad just over a week to deliver Cecilia’s head on a platter and absolutely no bright ideas to work around the task I’d been given.
The longer it took for me to do what needed to be done, the more I contemplated my own ending.
It would be easier that way. At least I wouldn’t be around to watch Guillermo bring down everything and everyone I’ve ever cared about.
Fucking coward.
The intrusive thoughts screamed at me.
Everything made sense the moment I watched those videos, and all the pieces came together.
Guillermo didn’t give a shit about Cecilia, he was following orders from a much higher chain of command and for all he knew, Ronan was still heartbroken and would have relished the thought of putting her under.
My cousin probably thought that he was killing two birds with one stone and earning a favor from Zerkos while doing it. Now we owed the Cártel a death, and Los Muertos would come collecting it in the next week if I didn’t have her head.
At the end of the day, Los Muertos was just an extension of the Cártel.
An Americanized base my primo created for the purpose of selling out to the bigger bad.
He assured the Cártel they’d have no need to step foot on U.S soil as long as they kept them stocked with weapons, drugs, and cash.
Guillermo would make sure business was always handled.
Which left me with handling the business now or incurring the wrath of the entire Cártel and bringing it down on the Brotherhood’s steps.
Was I supposed to kill the one person who’d ever really mattered to me?
The same person who was now the cause of all of my suffering?
Was I supposed to sacrifice all of the lives in this building so that she could live?
I could. But she still wouldn’t be mine.
It felt like a sickness, the way my thoughts, no matter where they were, always circled back to her. Like an infected limb, I had no option but to ignore it until the time would come when I’d be forced to amputate it or die.
Would I die for her?
A hundred times over you fucking idiot.
I was sitting on my bed, trying to wrap my head around how I was going to go through what needed to be done when I heard a noise and turned my head over to my open door. At the same time, I saw her leaving Kane’s room in nothing but his t-shirt as she pranced away.
What the fuck is happening here?
I groaned in frustration, unsure why it seemed like the only person who couldn’t be happy was me.
Well. I did deserve it.
There was nothing I’d done in this life that ever-merited accolades.
And that’s what Cecilia was.
A reward.
A prize.
Something I’d never be good enough to claim as my own.
It was bad enough I had to spend every waking day suffocating in her presence now, pretending like there wasn’t this hatred bubbling up inside me.
Hatred over the fact that she’d never be mine, loathing for how she lied to me while calling me her best friend.
Disgust towards myself for not being able to see coming what was now my doom.
But now she and Kane were inseparable, for some reason they were hitting it off way too well. Even if Zerkos blew a gasket every time he found them so much as sitting next to each other, neither of them seemed to put any effort into concealing what they were becoming.
It was fucking annoying.
He didn’t even know her.
I knew her.
But I guess everything I knew had been a lie, so in the end, maybe he did know her better than I ever did.
Maybe that’s why they looked so obviously in love, and when night time came, they practically sighed like teenagers before heading for Kane’s room. Always shooting questionable glares at Zerkos.
How I was going to go through with what I needed to do without those two stopping me was a constant thought in my head as well. They hardly left her alone to do Black Crow business to the point where Archer Senior had long forgotten his place and was starting to take more than what belonged to him.
Either they didn’t notice, or they didn’t care.
Like her presence here was polluting their thoughts and the only thing either of them could focus on was her.
I pulled at my hair with a groan.
She was all I could focus on too.
But my grave had already been dug, and the clock was counting me down to my last breaths. The risk of not doing what needed to be done was too great, the price to pay was too high and for once in my life, I needed to do the right thing.
So why did the right thing feel impossibly wrong?
I flicked open my tanto blade and twirled it around my fingers like a nervous habit.
Not being careful enough to avoid nicking myself as I secretly wished it would do more.
I moved from the bed and sat down in the black leather chair in my room, the PlayStation controller at my feet as I pressed the blade of the knife to my wrist.
Do it.
Everyone’s problems would end.
I would be free of the morena who cursed my dreams like the wicked witch she truly was. I would be free of my obligations to Los Muertos. My brothers would be free of all the burdens that came with being attached to someone like me.
A waste of space.
A tragic fool who’d never been loved by anyone else.
“Aghhh!” I screamed, stabbing the blade down on the leather fabric of the chair and dragging it down, wishing it was my own arm instead.
“Are you chill?” Kane asked from behind the door, tapping his fingers on the wood as if privacy was something any of us ever cared about before.
“I’m fine,” I lied, breathing heavily through my nostrils.
“We’re heading out for a bit, we may be gone for the night,” he said, piquing my interest.
“We?”
“Yeah. She’s coming too,” he explained what was already obvious and I waited a beat before responding.
“I’m guessing I’m not invited then, or you wouldn’t be telling me.”
“Bro, you are acting a million kinds of off. Do you even want to come? You’ve been treating Cecilia like she’s a goddamn leper, and she’s noticed, in case you didn’t know. You’re hurting her fucking feelings asshole,” he said, and I scoffed.
“No, I don’t want to come,” was the only answer I gave him, and he pulled the door to shut it all the way, my heart hammering viciously in my chest. They were keeping me out of everything, it was infuriating but I knew I couldn’t blame them.
I was visibly coming undone and there was nothing I could do to even hide it.
The truth was, I wanted to go.
Even sadder, I desperately needed to be asked if I wanted to go.
To be told my presence would be missed.
I wanted to be with my brothers, I wanted to soak up the girl whose laughter I could still hear in the wind as we wreaked havoc in a much less demanding world, during much simpler times.
But I had a murder to plan, and a betrayal to fulfill.
Or maybe I needed to go casket shopping.
Either way, I wouldn’t waste the time they were gifting me.