Chapter 48 Celia
CELIA
The car ride wasn’t quick, at least six or seven songs played to completion before we arrived, wherever the fuck I was now.
Santos sent a text out on a phone as he opened the trunk, eyeing me with a look of uncertainty before throwing a cord around my ankles to tie my feet together.
He hitched me over his shoulder with a grunt.
“I can carry you if it’s easier,” I snorted out, but he didn’t find the humor in my joke. We were outside some warehouse, nothing else nearby and not a single car driving on the secluded dirt road that connected to the building.
And I was starting to regret my decision.
“I have to go Morena, they can’t see me here or they’ll think you’re some sort of trap.
” he said looking down at me as he laid me on the ground on my side, too many visions of regret shadowing over his eyes.
He brushed a strand of hair behind my ear, our gazes locked as my heart thundered in its cage.
This was likely the last time we’d see each other, and all I could think about was that we’d never gotten a chance to be anything more than this.
Contrition.
Fate took with the same hand she dished out.
He broke his stare, rising to stand as he pounded on the rattling tin door behind me. With one last look he turned around and got in the SUV. By the time the door was lifted up noisily behind me, Santos had already cleared out and was likely back on the main road.
A lanky blonde stood over me, shouting back in Russian into the warehouse.
“Well, what have we here?” A crisp accent cut through the dimly lit space as a man in a gray suit stepped into the little bit of light that shone from above.
He barked out an order in his native tongue and the mountainous, scarred up motherfucker from the basement appeared in front of me with a snap of his finger. It was a small comfort to know that Mateo had killed the other one, in fact, I hoped they were friends.
I hoped he mourned him.
“Where is your handler?” The man who exuded confidence and leadership asked.
“Smart enough to not stick around Bratva shit,” I said, spitting on the ground. The scarred-up giant’s hand met my face with a deafening sting that had me seeing stars, skin burning hot from where his hand connected with my cheek.
It would have been easy to be afraid here, to cry and beg to be free.
But as the giant Bratva cocked his hand back as if to hit me again, his other hand tightly clutching his weapon, I could only feel my own hands steading with my breathing.
No. Fearful wasn’t the type of woman I was shaped into becoming.
I wouldn’t beg.
There was no God who would receive the pleasure of my reverence.
There was no man I’d ask to save me.
When La Madrina would finally come to collect my soul, I’d take her by the hand and gladly cross that threshold, when my time came.
This wasn’t my time.
The silver-haired man gave out orders in another language and the giant asshole began tearing at my clothes. I instinctively kicked out at him, to absolutely no fruition, he felt like he was made of stone, practically indestructible as my attempts to hurt him went unphased.
He grabbed me by the throat and lifted me until my toes could no longer touch the ground. I grasped at his arm, my throat raw and burning from the sheer power of his left arm and then I noticed his right hand held a syringe.
“No! No! No! Please! Anything but that!” I scratched out as I bargained, and I tried to slap his right arm away from me. The man in charge whistled to get his dog’s attention.
“I think she can be reasoned with, Lev,” he gave a subtle nod to his man, who apparently wasn’t named, “Giant-mountain looking motherfucker” or “Scarface”, and he dropped me back to the ground, before pulling me up by the shoulders.
He slipped the straps off of my pajama tank top and didn’t fight back a growl at me while I once again attempted to keep him from taking my clothes off.
“Undress little one,” the Bratva leader spoke to me, a crooked smile on his face as he sealed my fate, “Or we can do it for you.” He gestured back to his man, Lev, standing over me with the drug-filled syringe in his hand.
I let the top slide down my body and pushed it past my hips with the silk matching shorts and I stood there, bare.
Unashamed of my body but unwilling to hide my sneer, so he could see just how disgusting he was to me.
I’d been through his gauntlet once before, I wasn’t afraid of being taken advantage of, or that one of his men would rape me.
No, this was purely transactional for them, he wanted a good look at what he’d be getting rich off of.
Again.
“Now, what is your name, little doll?” He stepped into me so closely I could smell the lingering vodka on his breath, tapered by the smell of an inferior cigar.
My papá had good taste in everything he put into his body, this guy here consumed for the hell of it, maybe addiction, but not for the taste. The price tag was high but the product itself was inferior.
“Does it matter?” I asked with a snarl, and he smiled.
He scraped the back of his index finger down the side of my face, and I turned my chin in defiance, unable to hide my revolt at the gesture.
Lev stood at my back and pulled my arms behind me, using a single hand to keep them tightly bound against my spine so I wouldn’t be able to lash out at his boss.
I wasn’t an idiot.
I would behave here, for now. I knew my chances were only good as long as I was able to stay sober, which meant I needed to play obedient and keep that syringe the fuck away from me.
He tugged at my chin, pulling it side to side as if he were checking to see if there was something disagreeable about my features.
His fingers traced their way around my collar bone, then down my breasts.
The touch was brief, and he dropped his hands to my hips as his palms rubbed up my sides.
His thumb stopped right below my right breast, and he thumbed the ancient, raised scar in the shape of a five petaled flower.
I let out a hitched breath I could no longer suffer to hold.
His face twisted, and a sinister smile curled up on one side as he continued to rub the brand on my skin against his thumb.
“And here I thought you were going to be my ticket to tearing apart the Black Crow Brotherhood,” he chuckled and shouted out to one of his men in Russian before turning back to me.
“Looks like that will have to wait for a better opportunity someday.” He winked up at me as he peeled his face away from my breast, “Someone’s been looking for you, little one.
You, my dear, are going to make me a very rich man today.
” He winked and before he could fully turn around, one of his men were already holding up a phone behind him.
My stomach dropped and I felt the giant warehouse closing in on me faster than I could breathe.
“Whatever you think this is-” I started but he cut me off.
“Is exactly what it is my dear, I’ve seen a few of those five petal flower brands in my time.
You don’t belong on this side of the border.
” The insult stung more than the rapidly settling realization that I’d soon be reunited with my tio.
There was always someone who thought the Cártel had no business in the States, like we didn’t have a place at the table with the other syndicates.
If I was queen, like it had been intended, I would prove them all wrong. I would build my throne out of the skeletons of all the men who once doubted me. I would reign through the ruins of my papá’s legacy until I built something better on my own.
Yeah.
If I made it out of this again, that’s exactly what I would do.
Rain hell on all of the men who saw me as nothing but a pawn to advance their own empire.
If I made it out of this one.
“Sorry little one, you behaved, but I’m not a man of my word, and I need you sweet for the trip.” The boss breathed out too close to my face and his man jabbed the needle deep into my neck. The heavy sensation settling into my body quicker than before.