Chapter 60 Celia
CELIA
Carolina hadn’t shown her face down here again.
After Guillermo had made the decision that all my punishment was to be given to Santos, she didn’t bother to grace us with her presence anymore. As if it was only my misery she’d been interested in witnessing. It had taken me a full three seconds to wrap my mind around my sister’s betrayal.
Grief, shock, and happiness, along with complete and utter rage filled its way into my body before I could process the truth.
Puta miserable.
Not only had she been alive the last fifteen years, but she had watched, maybe even had a part in our mother’s death. She wasn’t ignorant to the attacks Ignacio had attempted over the years or the lives he had taken to try to get to me.
My papá was right.
Power changes everyone. I could almost hear his voice in my ear.
“How are my two favorite lovebirds?” Guillermo chirped as he stomped down the stairs.
It was impossible to know how long we’d been here. I couldn’t dissociate and wait for it to be over or for death, because it wasn’t happening to me, it was happening to Santos. I was apparently on a fucked up journey, trying to figure out what the cruelest form of torture was.
Each time I found it, a worse version would show itself to me, letting me know it could always get worse.
Watching one of the men I loved with all of my heart, suffering and bleeding, was the most painful violence I’d ever endured.
But my screams did nothing for Guillermo except urge him on.
It showed him that his plan was working and by hurting Santos, he hurt me.
And somehow that was worse than the physical pain itself.
Santos hadn’t spoken a word to me in days.
I didn’t want to be protected if it cost me his love.
Or worse yet, if it cost me him.
I screamed and begged every time Guillermo or one of his men came down here and sliced that knife over his flesh, again and again, until he went pale from losing blood.
They burned him, scarred him, and pummeled him senselessly all in the name of loyalty and family, hoping this would bring him back to them.
Maybe it would.
Maybe every hit that was supposed to be mine forced him closer and closer back into Guillermo’s poisonous reach.
“What do you think primo? You ready for me to cut you down and get back to work?” Guilermo teased, dangling the keys to his restraints in front of his face.
A dance they did every few days.
Santos raised his chin slowly, a large vertical scab began to form over his eyebrow and the top of his cheek, while another crossed from his ear to the corner of his lip.
My own matching wound itched just from staring at it.
His shirt had been cut off and every mark Los Muertos had put on his body was now on display.
The five petal Flores brand ruined his gang tattoo, the skin was angry and raised up, red all around and likely nearing infection.
“I’ll never work for you again, Guillermo,” he said through a crooked mouth. “You might as well kill me here and now.”
Guillermo chuckled as if he noticed how Carolina’s cut had deformed his speech.
“Oh ‘cuz, that’s where you’re wrong. I won’t kill you.
I’ll keep you both here, barely alive, for as long as it takes.
Years if I have to. I’ll feed you old bread and dirty water until you hate her almost as much as you hate yourself.
But I will prove my point, and you will do the job I’ve asked of you.
” He stepped closer to him. “Eventually, you’ll be begging me to let you put a bullet in her brain to free you. ”
Santos snarled, yanking the chains that kept him bound to the pole across from me.
“I even heard my men talk about how loud she moans every time they wipe her cunt when they take her to the bathroom. How she begs them to let her get on her knees for them to be free.” I clenched my jaw shut, looking away from Santos, hoping he didn’t believe the lies.
I would do just about anything for his freedom.
Not for mine.
“Just let her go,” he mumbled, forcing Guillermo to bark out a laugh.
“Primo you’re not getting it. She’s the reason you’re here, sewn up with half-ass stitching.
” He plucked at a gash on his arm, forcing a pained moan from Santos.
“Looks like this one needs to be closed up again,” he said before slicing a knife over the old cut, tearing even deeper into his flesh this time.
Santos hissed, his eyes filled with a hatred I’d never seen before, all of it directed at Guillermo.
He grabbed a short blade, less than half an inch long and placed the handle between his fingers. Closing his fist so that nothing but the sharp edge of the knife stuck out from his knuckles he slammed it into Santos’ stomach, once, twice–
“Please! Guillermo stop,” I shrieked, seeing the blood pour down his waist.
He stopped striking, dropping his head back in a psychotic laugh and twirling the blade through his fingers.
“Little cártel princesses, begging me to make their lives better,” he sighed. “There’s really nothing that makes me quite so hard.” He cut again, opening another old wound in his primo’s arm.
My voice was scratchy and worn out from screaming, pleading with this monster to stop hurting Santos. I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d even felt the urge to pee, my tears were taking everything from me.
“Please… Please,” I chanted between sobs as he cut into Santos repeatedly, with such brutality, I thought for certain he had every intention of ending him this time. “I’m sorry… I’m sorry.” I shook my head. “I’ll do anything, please. Whatever you want. Please Guillermo, stop hurting him.”
“Anything, now?” He turned to face me with a calculating look on his face while he seemed to weigh out his possibilities.
“Just stop hurting him, please,” I begged again.
“You do realize that he’s taking your punishment right now? How you gonna do me better than that?”
“Celia, stop,” Santos growled, making Guillermo laugh.
“Celia, stop,” he mocked. “You’re right, maybe he’s had enough of this for now. I can torture him in other ways. I’m ready for that anything now, morenita,” he said before pulling at the chains that kept my arms hooked to the pole above my head.
I dropped to my knees on the cold concrete floor, my wrists were still cuffed together, and my body ached from hanging.
“Here’s the rules zorra. You use your teeth; I’ll fuck him up.
You try anything funny; I’ll fuck both of you up.
You do a good job, make me come, make me feel like a special boy, and I’ll let Santito here have a whole day without pain.
How’s that sound?” He brought his fingers under my jaw to lift my gaze up to him.
“Celia don’t you fucking do it. Celia!”
Santos snarled and growled like a caged animal, his chains rattling while he screamed with ferocity for me to stop.
There wasn’t a choice here.
Anyone who could even think there was, would be a fucking idiot.
I nodded my head, doing my best to avoid Santos’ stare and his defeated pleas.