2. The Jekyll
2
THE JEKYLL
I thought nothing could ever hurt me as much as losing Sisely. Thought that was the worst possible thing that could ever happen to me. I was wrong. The worst thing that could ever happen to me was that vengeance would elude me. Because the scent of it resides in my blood. It flows through my veins, tracking through my body like a bitter poison. I’m thirsty, and I’ll do anything to achieve it.
But I’ve been going at it so long, sometimes I forget why I’m here. I lose sight of the bigger picture. It’s been so long, most people don’t even remember my real name anymore.
I’m no longer Cesar Cavalho, the successful builder with a bright future. I’m no longer the man they all knew. They know me now as The Jekyll. The dark side of a good man who went horribly wrong somewhere.
And those that know of The Jekyll fear even my shadow. For I lurk in the darkness, in the valley of death. Fire and destruction. And come out into the light only when I need to.
That thing with Ariadne Moore was a mistake. Well, no, it wasn’t. Because in taking her, I foiled the cartel’s plan to kill Caleph Rojas and collect a bounty on Ariadne Moore before she was killed or sold into a sex trafficking ring. That’s literally the only reason that Rojas let me live… because I had stepped on a landmine which detonated under the Mexicans rather than his life.
I wonder if all that’s behind us now. He was lukewarm when I landed on his boat. But he didn’t kill me, so there’s that. Even though his eyes maybe said he wanted to. I saw the way he was looking at his wife. Sort of the same way I had looked at Sisely when she was alive. She’s dead and gone, but she’s still anchored to my heart in a way I can’t explain. Yeah, I don’t blame Rojas for going all psycho and shit on me for touching his wife; I probably would’ve done the same thing.
I am doing the same thing. I’m trying to track down Sisely’s murderer. All I know is it was the Castillo cartel, and they’ve been slippery as fuck to catch. By some stroke of fate, it turned out that Caleph Rojas and I had a common enemy. Which is what brought us into each other’s world in the first place. Because I was tracking the cartel responsible for Sisely’s death; the same cartel that had been planning to steal Ariadne away from him and hand her over to the politicians who wanted her to burn at the stake. Their leader, Coyin Castillo, was also the man responsible for the death of Caleph’s parents. So now, he has more invested in the Mexicans than ever.
I’ve done my homework. I’ve been to Mexico, to Arizona and to California. Looking in every corner and under every rock until I was able to piece together the main players of the cartel. Coyin may be the leader who lurked in the dark and never showed himself due to how popular he was with every law enforcement agency in the world, but he also had a brother — Miguel — who worked alongside him and had been identified as the trigger man in Sisely’s death. They are two brothers with a similar thirst for evil. And the world would be better off without them.
It’s taken me five long years to track the Castillo brothers, or to track a thread to their whereabouts. Five long years of wreaking havoc on their infrastructure from the shadows as I tear them down bit by bit. Physically, I’ve been able to quietly and quickly make a few of their men disappear — putting the fear of the unknown in them. Grown men don’t simply disappear; they know there’s an unseen, unheard beast lurking on the fringes cutting them down one by one. The fear alone has them pissing their pants. Financially, I’ve annihilated them. As seen in the case of Ariadne Moore, I’ve foiled several attempts where they’ve tried to make some quick money to keep them afloat in their crumbling empire. I’ve stolen one of their shipments, then burnt it to the ground. Another time I set the feds onto them and that shipment, along with three men, was confiscated. And who knew all I had to do was lurk in the shadows and listen to chatter?
I run a hand over my bald head and let it rest at the base of my neck. There’s a reason I keep my head bald. And I’ve sworn not to grow my hair back until I’ve avenged Sisely’s death. A death that was in vain. No, not targeted. Wrong place, wrong time. My mind flits back to the day five years ago that I lost her. To the footage of what happened. I don’t know what was worse — losing her or watching it happen on the camera feed… feeling like if I could just press pause of the reel and rewind the tape, I could simply undo everything. The senselessness. The why. The utter stupidity of a gangster shooting an innocent bystander because she could identify him when the cameras could do just as good a job.
Sisely folded the money and tucked it into her purse, before turning to her left to make her way to her parked car. She’d barely taken two steps when four masked men burst through the doors of the bank and onto the pavement, waving about shotguns. Bystanders scattered like dust, screaming as they ran in opposite directions and across the road when they realized the drama unfolding before their eyes wasn’t part of a movie shoot.
But Sisely stopped short, a hand going to her chest in surprise and horror. She was absolutely still, frozen on the screen. One of the men who limped out of the bank removed his mask, and as he did, he spotted Sisely standing watching him. They made eye contact; something flickered in his eyes, but it was minute, before he lifted his shotgun, aimed it at her chest, and sent a shot blasting through her with such fury that she flew back like a stretched rubber band and landed on her back. The man was dragged away by the arm by another, and they climbed into a waiting blue van and sped off with a screech.
Sisely lay perfectly still on the pavement. Not even a twitch. The one concession to come out of that horrendous ordeal was that she died quickly.