Chapter 89 - Celia
CELIA
“So then, how did you expect this would all go down? You were always the one with the flair for dramatics hermanita.” I gave her a side-eyed look. “You can’t really think my men won’t come looking for me in anything short of a few minutes.”
“It’s actually them we’re waiting on.” She smiled from ear to ear.
“What did you do?” My heart dropped. “How did you get in here?”
“There’s always a hole in the security, Celia.
You should always expect that if you have enemies alive, there is someone close to you, working with them.
” She wasn’t fucking wrong, and I wasn’t sure if I was angry that she was giving me lessons, or if it was because I’d been so naive to not suspect otherwise.
And I already knew which pathetic pendejo it was that had betrayed me.
Fernando Garcia.
He’d involved himself in our business just long enough to get what he needed to feed it back to my sister.
“How many of my men did you kill?” I asked, wondering how many lives I’d have to push down and bury beneath the reach of my conscience.
“Just your security here. Kept your little maid alive if she promised to bring you inside without suspicion and lead your boys up to their rooms without a fuss. Looks like she gets to live after all.” She walked towards the wet bar and unscrewed the cap to the tequila and poured two shots.
“Why are you here? Did your fiancé not tell you that his daddy is dead yet?” I hardened my eyes, waiting for the change in her expression.
She schooled it well, but she didn’t hide the way she momentarily froze. As if all her thoughts had bombarded her at once with all the possibilities. If Allisher Sokolov was dead, then his son would be the new Bratva king.
“Good. Then he’ll be twice as pleased when I come home wearing your crown.” She narrowed her gaze my way, downing her shot and wiping the stray drops spilled from the corner of her lips.
“Or maybe he won’t need a wanna-be cártel bitch if he’s got his own.” I suggested, throwing her off.
I thought this would be hard. That her death would be another scar in my psyche that would never heal.
That I’d carry the pain of this my entire life.
But when I looked at her, I saw nothing but the sum of my pain over the last fifteen years.
How differently this would have ended had she stayed at my side instead of coming at me from behind
I truly believed Death always had a plan. Maybe I’d been made to mourn Caro all those years so that when the time came for her to die by my own hands, My heart would already be calloused over. The wound; already healed before the knife could cut me down.
“Why did you kill Mamá?” I finally bothered to ask.
“Because in the end, she favored you most,” she said bitterly.
“Ha! Jamila had no love for me, you’re delusional. You were her favorite.”
“Then why did she refuse to tell me where our fortune was? Why did she hide that key from me when I went begging her for it? Why did she choose to die over letting me be reina?”
She wasn’t my little sister anymore.
She wasn’t anything to me anymore.
“To keep you safe you fucking idiota.”
We were taught that family was everything. That no one from the outside would love you and be there for you like your blood. But here I had created a family with three men who I’d give my life for over and over again. And there stood my sister, asking me to bleed myself open for her.
She poured herself another shot and finally picked the other glass up in offering to me.
Fuck it.
I grabbed the glass and downed it knowing my sister wasn’t smart enough to use poison against me or drug me like the men who held her leash.
And if she was, then I guess I deserved to die for being stupid enough to trust her.
“Ronan,” she chirped, her eyes lighting up, making me turn around to see him with a purpling eye and his wrists bound tightly.
The gun pressed to the back of his head was held by a bald man.
I could only assume he was working for the Russians.
There was one more Bratva on his other side, because clearly it would take two men to outmatch Ronan Zerkos.
His green eyes were raging with anger, and just as he opened his mouth to speak the Bratva grunt bashed the butt of his gun to the back of Ronan’s head.
He dropped down to the ground unconscious with a hard thud.
I screamed, but before I could run to him Carolina had a gun cocked and the sound of the safety coming off forced a chill up my spine.
“Tie her up, Adrik.” She nudged her chin at me and the same grunt who’d knocked Ronan out pulled my arms in front of me with little to no effort despite my best attempt to fight against him.
He pulled a zip tie from his pocket, closing it around my wrists too tight before walking over to Ronan and doing the same to him.
“You’re going to sit right here hermanita. We’re going to play a little game,” she said, using her gun to gesture to the Victorian style red, velvet couch with two matching chairs across from it.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” I sat down, doing my best to hide the creeping panic that came with the thought of how many men might be hiding in my home right at this moment.
“You said you didn’t have to choose between them. Let’s up the stakes shall we?”
Mateo and Santos came in next, both looking worse for wear than Ronan had, not a shocker considering their size compared to his. Three grunts surrounded them, all with guns pointed at their backs as they pushed them further into the room. That’s when I realized one thing was not like the others.
Among her ‘soldiers’ was Fernando Garcia.
Traitor to the Flores Cártel.
Mateo’s eyes registered Ronan before looking my way, the worry etched deeply into his expression.
“Celia.” Santos rushed to me, but a shot rang out, the bullet hitting a framed piece of art causing the glass to shatter and spray onto the floor.
I screamed, trying to get up once more but Carolina pressed the gun harder against my temple.
“Everyone sit,” Carolina commanded, eyeing Santos with a hateful stare. “Away from her,” she clarified.
They both took a seat on opposite chairs from me, Ronan was still on the ground knocked out next to us.
“Wake him up.” She gestured to her Bratva lackeys.
Which begged the question, where were her cártel men?
Loyalty must have been hard to buy these days. I didn’t need to blackmail for it, I had earned it.
“Where are your men?” I asked with a smirk.
“These are my men,” she gritted out.
I laughed, forcing her upper lip to curl up.
“Fine, then where are Ignacio’s men?” I clarified.
“Dead.”
I didn’t press any further.
I didn’t need to.
They were dead because she killed them. Because they refused to bow to her and her deranged plans of washing away everything the cártel was by merging it with Bratva bullshit.
We didn’t deal in the sale of flesh, and we never would.
There were many fucked up things I was willing to be blind to for the sake of money and power.
Human trafficking was not one of those things.
They slapped Ronan’s face a few times until he finally woke up, roaring, and readying himself for a fight before the gun in front of his face reminded him of our situation. We were outmatched, and worse yet we were outgunned.
“Glad you could join us, Ronan,” Carolina said in a cheery voice. “You were always like a brother to me, you know?” She sighed. “Way more than that pendejo César.”
Ronan’s jaw hardened, the muscle bulging as his brain slowly pieced together what was going on.
“What’s your plan?” he asked.
“Well,” she drew out the word. “My big sister is going to pick one of you to die, before I kill her.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because you don’t get to have everything you want if I didn’t. And let’s face it, neither of these assholes fucking deserve it either.” She pointed her gun at all three of my men.
“And if she doesn’t?” Ronan squinted like the pain of the hit to the head was catching up to him.
“Then I’ll make her watch me kill all of you, before I kill her.
” She placed her index finger over her lip like she was thinking.
“In fact,” her eyes widened, “I will kill you all.” She laughed loudly, clapping her hands together.
“Why leave witnesses? We just upped the stakes again hermanita.
Now we're choosing who you get to watch die, while the others die after watching me kill you.”
I turned my head to the side, my eyes burning straight into Fernando Garcia’s hateful stare. He thought he was clever, that he’d fall to his knees for my sister and somehow steal it all out from underneath her.
Lackeys with too much ambition always thought they could rule. They didn’t understand the game, they didn’t know the logistics, and they certainly weren’t blood thirsty enough for it. At least Carolina had the taste for it, even if she was shit at the admin portions of the job.
“Hurry up, or I’ll choose for you.” She demanded.
“Choose me, flower,” Ronan said softly, “There isn’t a world for me if you aren’t in it and I can’t watch any of you die.”
I shook my head, tears pooling at my eyelids as I refused to make the decision.
“It’s me, morena. Say it,” Santos demanded but I hung my head down, looking away from all of them. “Don’t make me go through this again.”
“I can’t,” I refused, crying as my entire world crashed around me and I realized there was no one left to save us, there was no one who would care.
Fletcher was dead and gone, César had gone back to his motorcycle club, and we… we had been bested, just a foolish and rookie move was enough to be the blade in our guillotine.
“How romantic,” she said sarcastically. “You have two minutes.” Her voice dropped to an icy tone as she stepped back and sat on the piano bench, noisily clanking the keys without an ounce of skill in her bones.