Chapter 81 Celia
CELIA
“No. He’s not here,” I told him, stepping into my tío’s mindset and realizing what this truly was.
“What?” He looked at me with confusion, putting the injured girl on the ground so she could find her people. “But the bombs—”
“His men, yes. He’s not here, he’s not this ignorant.”
“Then where is he?” Santos asked.
“The Villa.” My skin pebbled though I was the one speaking the words. This would end where it started, the very place my tío began his disruption to my life would be the very place it would end.
Cathartic.
That’s how it would feel too as I skinned him alive and plucked the teeth from his mouth like feathers from poultry. My papá once said his revenge was so close, he could taste it, smell it in the air.
He died that very week.
All I could taste was blood. All I could smell was blood.
That was enough to tell me that death was on her way.
Santos and I rushed out of the building battling through the chaos of bodies gathered at the front of the collapsing building as it slowly crashed its way to the ground from the weakened foundation.
“Text César, tell him to bring Mateo and Ronan home with him. Tell him to keep ALL of the men outside the villa,” I instructed Santos, charging through the crowd while looking for the vehicle we’d arrived in.
“Where are you going? You can’t go off alone, Celia.” He wasn’t wrong, my tío’s men along with whatever stray Los Muertos soldiers he’d collected were likely all lurking around here, waiting for us to flood out of the building like mice scurrying from the fire.
“Then keep up with me,” I told him, finding an orange Mastretta parked away from the crowd and unblocked by other cars. “Are you driving or am I?” I smirked at him, memories of our youth flashing through my mind.
“Get in,” he said, taking his jacket off and wrapping it around his elbow before breaking through the driver’s side window.
The alarm went off, but it was already far too loud between the sound of the flames engulfing the historic Palacio, the sirens of the ambulances and firetrucks in the distance arriving, and the screams of innocent people attempting to piece together what had happened.
He brushed the broken glass from his seat before unlocking the passenger door for me.
Santos reached into the electronics of the car, yanking out a wire that shut off the blaring of the security system before hot-wiring the engine to start.
“It’s been a long time since we’ve done this.” He smirked, his hand casually dropping to my thigh and slipping through the slit in the side of my dress.
“We never did it like this,” I reminded him.
“You never did it like this. If you think for one second it wasn’t all I thought about during those drives, those runs we made, you’re fucking crazy, Morena.” His hand rubbed up and down my skin, calming me as I fought to slow down the current of excitement running through my veins.
Cálmate. There was a bigger end game here.
Me and Ignacio.
One of us would die tonight.
I almost didn’t care which one.
Closure was kind of like that, like it didn’t matter how things ended as long as they did. People seemed to be satisfied as long as they knew the ending. I didn’t get the need, why did the book always end just when you got to the part where the main character finally found happiness?
You spent all that time watching them suffer, you cheered them on hoping they could have their happily ever after. When they finally did it was a five-page epilogue with some stereotypical idea of what happiness looked like. A pregnant belly, a picket fence, no threat of death.
Maybe it ended there because they couldn’t possibly describe something they didn’t understand.
Maybe none of them actually knew what it truly meant to be happy.
You couldn’t write happiness if you didn’t experience it for yourself, your readers would surely know it.
They’d see past the pretty lies in the words you spelled out and see the sad person beneath it all.
Maybe authors were just truly unhappy people, forcing imaginary creations to undergo the cruel darkness that lived inside their own minds as if the characters weren’t simply mirrored shards of themselves.
Certainly cheaper than therapy.
Not that I understood anything of the sort. I was allergic to healing. The thought of being examined under a lens gave me hives.
Or maybe I had just become bitter. Cynical over time, and maybe that was the problem.
I’d never been delusional enough to think that I could ever earn myself a happy ending.
When I turned thirty, I realized I was really only ten years away from outliving my papá.
A rare feat for a Flores. That was what brought me to the Black Crow Brotherhood’s door in the first place.
I was alive because I was lucky, and I knew that luck would eventually run out.
I might have not been ready to die yet, but we weren’t the ones who got to choose that day.
Santos pulled into the villa with a screech as he yanked on the emergency break. He opened his door, but I wrapped my hands around his wrists and pulled him back down to me.
“I want him alive.”
He grabbed the back of my neck, closing his mouth around mine and sliding his tongue between my lips. Kissing Santos was like inhaling summer in the middle of the snowy winter, like drinking clear tequila with no chaser.
It was liquid fire.
But it didn’t last nearly long enough. He broke free, and the right corner of his lip curled up.
“Then you shouldn’t have brought me.” He got up, walking around the car and opening my door for me.
“Who said chivalry was dead?” I joked.
He pulled his phone out, scrolling through the texts before shoving it back in his pocket.
“Zerkos and Kane are headed here now, we should wait for them,” he said with a wince, like he expected some sort of angry outburst at his logical suggestion.
“We should. But I’m also well aware my uncle will use anything I give a damn about to get to me, and to get what he wants.
” Both could be one in the same, depending on how you looked at it.
“Which is why I need you to stay out here. I don’t need distractions and I don’t need him to use you against me. ”
A deep V formed between his eyebrows.
“Fuck no morena, I won’t be at the mercy of the unknown again. I won’t be helpless,” he said with a rising panic as if it was something he had to prove to me.
“You’re not at the mercy of the unknown, you’re at my mercy Santito,” I whispered, tapping his cheek with my hand gently. “I need to do this alone, if I’m not out in thirty you can come look for me.”
“Screw that. You can’t seriously think I’m just gonna let you go in there on your own, to possibly fucking die. You don’t know how many men he might have in there, and you don’t know what’s waiting for you,” he screamed.
“I had to watch Guillermo hurt you, over and over again. Every single day I watched him carve you up, I watched him maim you and kill your spirit. I will not risk hurting you again Santos. Whose sins are you paying for at this point?” I asked.
“I’m fucking coming, stop being so goddamn stubborn.” He grabbed my wrist, yanking me towards his hard chest with a slam. “We’re done making stupid decisions Celia.” His nostrils flared out passionately. “We do this together.”
I stared at him for a long moment. So many words and emotions silently passing between us. “Let’s go,” I sighed, releasing the safety on my Glock as we walked towards the side of the villa.
I didn’t know how many men he had inside, but we only had so much time before the cavalry arrived.
It wasn’t that I wanted to do this alone, it was that I needed to do it alone.
I needed to kill him for the sake of my family, for the things he broke within us…
within me. The minute the others arrived it would become a shootout.
I knew exactly where he was, and I knew exactly how to get there without being noticed.
“Are we not going inside?” he whispered.
“Not through the door.” I led him through the side of the villa, ducking under the windows and staying closer to the shadows as we snuck around the building.
Once I found the right window, the one just below the veranda door of my papá’s second story office, I peeked inside the glass to see if I could see anyone. It was empty.
“Give me a boost to the balcony,” I whispered.
He clasped his hands together to hold my foot and lift me up. It was just barely enough to get my arms up onto it. I muscled my way, struggling to get my lower body up on that balcony. Fuck, how much did my legs weigh?
“How am I supposed to get up there?” Santos whispered, too loudly, and I shushed him with a reprimanding stare.
“I’m sorry Santito. I told you I have to do this alone.” I gave him one final look before I turned my back to him, ignoring his hissing of my name from below.
“Celia! What the fuck!”
I pulled a bobby pin from my fancy but now disheveled hair and forced it into the lock, jiggling it until I felt the resistance I needed and turning until I heard it click.
I opened the door slowly, finding the room still dark and empty.
A cloud of disappointment loomed over me.
I really thought I’d find him here, waiting for me.
I thought at this point we’d been doing this dance long enough that we moved in sync, a macabre choreography of carnage that only ended with shallow graves.
We’d been playing cat and mouse for years and I hadn’t noticed I’d become the predator, checking behind the curtains to see if I could strike him first.
Was it all in my head? Was he even here?