Chapter One
Selena
Six weeks later…
I had been by his bedside for more than a month.
When we first took him from the hospital he had been in, we kidnapped his doctor and a nurse as well.
They assured us that his coma was very real.
He and a few other Castillo Cartel members tried to kidnap Alessia Mancini.
Two cartel members were killed and Carlos drove into a tree while trying to escape.
Due to head injuries, he had been hospitalized and he had been in a coma for months.
Now he was my stake for the future.
A few times in the recent past, before the coma he was in, I had watched this man from a hidden vantage point.
I had made it my business to find out everything I could about him.
Back then, I took note that Carlos Castillo had radiated power as naturally as he breathed.
It was reported by a few that he didn’t care for drugs or excessive drinking.
He kept his mind sharp. His MBA from Wharton and his finance degree from UCLA only made him even smarter.
He had been proof that brains and confidence could be as dangerous as a gun.
Of course, he knew that about himself, so he’d been unafraid to express pride in himself.
This made him mouthy and cocky. This also had rubbed many cartel leaders the wrong way.
However, despite the horror stories I heard about how intimidating and reckless he could be, I believed he was the same pure soul that he had been when he was a teen.
I remember him from my hometown in Mexico.
He was about seven years older than I and that meant we didn’t run in the same circles so to speak.
But I knew of him. He had been a joking, happy young man back then.
I now worked for the Diego Cartel and despite being a female, I was a high-ranking member of my organization.
One might say I was number two in this cartel.
It had been my idea to kidnap Carlos Castillo and our leader, Quanto, always listened to my ideas as they had made our cartel very rich over the years.
We intended to use him as a trade for two of our upper echelon members who were reportedly being held by the Castillo Cartel.
However, my intentions were more personal than that. I had chosen Carlos because of an old wound. An old injustice.
Then finally, Carlos had shown signs of awakening.
He had moved his fingers after the doctor asked him what he had asked him every day for the last thirty days, “If you can hear me, move your fingers.” Only this time, instead of no response, he had actually moved his fingers.
Then the next day, he shifted his body in his bed and he groaned.
On the third day, he opened his eyes. The doctor announced that it was a true miracle.
On day five, they removed his intubation tube and all but one monitor.
So I waited another week as he went through some physical therapy. Then finally today, I would find my answer. I would show him what I had been sent. A recording made by a woman I knew of but had never met. Then I could finally ask him the question that had burned a hole in my soul for many years.
The nurse had just left after they propped him up on pillows.
Staring at me, Carlos asked in a raspy voice, “So, who are you and what do you want?”
I paused as even though his voice was still weak it was deep and commanding. I shrugged and replied, “My name is Selena but that isn’t really important.”
“Very well, then what do you want?”
“I have something to show you, first. Bien, it is for you to hear, not see. Then I will tell you what I want.”
He scoffed. “I am helpless right now, so I suppose I have no choice. Show me.”
I pulled up a chair and sat down next to his bed. Then I handed him my phone and said, “Press play.”
He looked from me to the cell phone in his hand. Then he did as I said, he tapped the play button.
I could not help it – my breath hitched a bit in my chest – when her voice came from the phone…
“I am Gabriela Mora Mancini and this is my story…
At sixteen, I fell deeply in love with a young man named Alex.
He was just a mechanic in a local garage with an average life.
He had been my brother’s best friend since they were small children.
But he was very special, sweet and warm.
Before him, I never saw how bright a day could be.
I never cared about much as my unhappiness was a life I’d been born into.
I never believed that a person could change all of that.
It had been Alex that breathed life into me.
He showed me that a walk by a stream could be a whole adventure.
He told me that butterflies had wings so they could be free and perhaps humans could be free as well.
That sunshine was addictive to the soul and beauty could be found in a wildflower.
He believed in the possibility of miracles and he showed me that money wasn’t the only thing in life.
And that even simple things could bring joy.
Alex was my whole world and he meant everything to me.
You see, I come from a dark world. One full of fear and death.
Where lives were traded for money and emotions were a waste of time.
Yes, I grew up in total luxury and wealth.
Yet it never made me feel happy. I believed that happiness was a myth.
Just a story people made up to lull you into going through life while trying to attain it.
I felt truly poor in so many ways as I was not happy at all even though I lived in a true mansion.
It was a place where the servants cowered before a master.
And this master was Santiago Castillo, the feared head of a ruthless cartel.
My father. In fact, he ran the Castillo Cartel with an iron hand.
When he discovered my romance with Alex, he called me a foolish little girl, demanding that I break up with Alex because he had a proper suitor lined up for me. Sons would step into the business and daughters would further the business when traded as a deal. This was the rule of life in our family.
I told Alex that we must part as my father was a dangerous man.
He showed no mercy for those who crossed him or even looked at him wrong.
Alex implored me to run away with him. I felt very afraid to do this but how could I resist when I wanted to build a life with him?
When he was the only light in my life. I didn’t wish to be the bride of some old man for a business deal.
Not if I could escape the darkness and chaos of the cartel and create my own life outside of my father’s bloody legacy.
I assured myself that I could be anyone I wanted to be.
I could even be just an average person. I longed to be that.
I was at an age where I thought I would live forever and love was all that mattered.
So, before my father could marry me off, Alex and I escaped to a small village on a beach up the coast. We were married by a priest in a small chapel as Alex said we shouldn’t live in sin as he and I had not been intimate like that since we got together.
I couldn’t believe my dreams came true. We were married!
We vowed to enjoy our lives to be free of the dark world of my father.
We lived in a small two-room place on the baja.
We swam in the ocean with a wondrous abandon and caught fish for our dinners.
Made love under the stars of heaven and slept with the wonderment of the very young in our dreams. We traded fish for vegetables and fruit from the village to add to our diet.
It was the brightest, most magnificent dream I had ever lived.
But like all dreams—you are finally forced to wake up.
We were only happy and carefree for two weeks before my father and his cartel hunted us down. We came up to the beach from our daily ocean swim and became surrounded by gun-toting cartel soldiers.
My father had always been a harsh reality in my life but what he did next topped all the cruelty I had ever known. He forced me to be a witness as he made Alex kneel in the sand at my feet. Panicked and very afraid, I struggled uselessly to get released from the hold of his men.
My father Santiago was handed a weapon and with malice and aforethought, he shot my Alex in the head. He showed no emotion, no regret or human feeling in his eyes as Alex’s blood ran over the white sand.
I screamed and screamed as even threats from my father couldn’t silence me.
All Alex was guilty of was loving me, not for my wealth or to be in the cartel.
No, he simply loved me and it had cost him his life.
I was inconsolable and mostly incoherent.
My trauma even blocked out my father’s rage and shouts.
I was brought home on a blur of a hysterical-surreal ride then was locked up in my room, under guard.
I laid around for I do not know how long, weeping and wishing to die.
My father had several women on shifts watching me.
He knew I was done listening to him and that I would escape this cold life somehow.
Even if it was simply to spite him. I devised ways to do away with myself.
He had bars put on the windows and the bathroom window.
I still felt determined to foil his plans for me, whatever nightmarish idea he had to make me pay for defying him.
I refused to be any kind of boon for his business.
I even contemplated attempting to kill him.
I just really did not know how I could do it though.
Yes, I had been trapped in a very dark place. A bitter-hateful brick of revenge had replaced my heart. I was barely sane, barely human in my grieving misery of a life.