Chapter Twenty-Four
Elio
Control, unpredictability, and the ability to make decisions for the sake of the greater good have always been my strong suits.
Some of my father’s many lessons and why I had lasted so long in this business, in this world.
I didn’t throw temper tantrums; I didn’t do things incapable of benefitting me; I didn’t go off my self-made script.
I was always ten steps ahead of a situation.
For example, the ugly but priceless chihuahua painting.
It didn’t look like much, just a square-framed blue-and-gray picture of a chihuahua with too-wide eyes, a crooked mouth, with her head bent at an odd angle, a head I’d had the pleasure of patting once …
Many people wouldn’t believe it—but that chihuahua, though odd-looking, was one of the sweetest pets that had ever gotten to grace this world.
Arturo Garza, the owner of the chihuahua, a dark-skinned, burly man who was untouchable to the point that he had the pleasure of dying at an old age, had been quite influential during his reign.
This man knew everyone who was anyone. He could answer any question with the right incentive—a nutcase on his best days—but I still admired him.
Why? He had been the mastermind of all masterminds.
There was also the fact that he was the first man my father had cowered in front of.
I was eighteen when we first traveled to Mexico to find him.
Then, I didn’t know why, but my father had said Arturo was a man never to be crossed; he said he could squash us with just a snap of his fingers.
When we’d gotten to Arturo’s manor, my father had been sweaty and shaky. Though I waited outside, I could hear my father’s angry voice, yelling at Arturo, trying to intimidate the man, but the man’s response was always level, not shaky or lacking composure.
My father had opened the door, and I caught a glimpse of Arturo, a cigar between his lips and a small dog in his arms; our gazes connected before the door closed, and my father pulled me out with him.
On the way back, my father had been reeling with anger, and I just watched him. Feeling some peace from seeing him so unsettled.
At twenty-six, a few years after I’d taken over the empire, I took a trip to Mexico, seeking Arturo.
The man recognized me, and the dog perked up at the sight of my figure, tail wagging from left to right. I had crouched down, patting her. I liked her; she was odd but confident.
She reminded me of myself, and I temporarily forgot where I was until Casmiro discreetly kicked me.
I looked up, catching Arturo’s interested gaze as he ushered me to his study.
He told me I was the first to look at his dog for over a second. “People are always threatened by things they don’t understand,” he had said, and he had been right. He sounded so wise and made me feel comfortable enough to ask him anything.
I had gone straight to the point, telling him I needed his help to pull my family’s name to the ground. I needed his information on us to do it myself.
Apparently, I had taken him by surprise because he stared at me like I was from a different space and time.
When he asked me why, I told him I wanted to see that look again—the one my father had worn after exiting his home.
He had a question in his eyes that clearly asked how possible it was to compel a facial expression from someone who was supposed to be dead.
He didn’t ask it. Instead, he told me he would have loved to help me, but he had his own plans, and that I would be informed of them when everyone else was informed.
The moment I received a letter after his death, I registered the man as a crazy person, even though I partially understood his motive.
His dog had been his only family, and everyone avoided it like the devil’s spawn.
What better way to seek justice for the chihuahua than having people hunt for it like it was their salvation?
So, he had an artist paint her. Created a map.
Turned every single one of his assets into gold, roughly 300 million pieces of solid gold.
He gathered dire information he had gotten about six of the most prominent criminal families and world governing bodies, turned it into software copies, and placed them on custom-made flash drives.
Then, he duplicated the painting into ninety-nine reproductions, inserted a map to find the gold along with those flash drives inside the frame of the original artwork, and then distributed them around the world.
This was his way of making people hunger for the painting of his dog; the dog they’d feared and made fun of was now the very thing they had to find to get their hands on the gold … and those flash drives.
Although 99 percent of the people gunning for the painting were there for the gold, only a few like myself needed those flash drives; this was because people who were hunting for the gold had no clue about the flash drives.
Therefore, whoever found the original painting first got the gold, the flash drives, and the key to being as powerful as Arturo was in our world.
The ultimate power. The final key to my puzzle. I’d find it. Let my father know that I had achieved the power to make anyone bend to my will. I would dangle what could have been right in his face.
Then I’d burn it all.
When Zahra had mentioned the painting in that supply closet, I knew it was the same one perilous people were looking for. When she showed me the picture, it took everything in me not to snap her neck right there, kill the rest of Street, and send Elia far away from the chaos.
But I reined it in because I knew the painting that would be in the gallery was a fake. I had checked even before it arrived at the gallery.
The people who sent Street to retrieve the painting had cheated them. But I would have done the same. There were so many fakes and one original.
Each of these paintings was treated with equal attention and importance.
It was clear how Arturo had achieved all that he desired and more through this ridiculous quest.
The more paintings were released, the more crafty and dangerous people got in on the quest. A decent example of this was how we were ambushed and how curiosity had made Zahra fight to keep the painting, to get in on whatever it was about.
I knew I was close to finding it. This was precisely why I couldn’t afford any distractions. Zahra was a distraction, and that would not do.
I couldn’t kill her. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t let her get herself killed.
Having left the clearing to get the painting and bring a car to get us back to the compound, I genuinely didn’t think there would be such a huge turn of events.
She had been asleep when I left, and I couldn’t bring myself to wake her. Sleep was a luxury I didn’t get to have in abundance. I admired people who could do it without restlessness and the need to make it permanent.
On getting to where the car broke down, I stopped when I saw a white van by the side of the road, a small distance from where I stood.
I’d shoved both hands into my pockets when I caught movements at the corner of my eye.
Leaning casually on the SUV, I watched about five men in black clothing and masks emerge from the woods and walk towards the van.
One of them held an unconscious Zahra over his shoulder, and the other quickly opened the back of the van, where they filed in, dumping her body.
They spoke in another language. I couldn’t hear much from my distance, but I knew it was a language I didn’t understand.
They locked the back doors, started the engine, and swiftly drove away.
I stood there for a couple of minutes, just watching them disappear down the road.
Well … it’s not as if there was anything I could have done.
I pushed away from the SUV, grabbed my gun from the console, and shoved it into the back of my pants.
A few minutes later, I was getting in a red open-roof Beetle, hitching a ride back to town with a blonde who looked at me like it was the first time she was seeing another human being.
I politely ignored it.
“I gotta admit,” she started, her voice sweeping with the wind, blond hair flying all around but tamed by a small scarf, “when I left my house this morning, the last thing I expected was to give someone as unreal as you a ride.”
I frowned in genuine confusion. “Unreal?”
“Yeah! You got pretty eyes, a pretty face, and that body, whoosh.” She glanced at me. “Are you a model or something?”
“No.” I didn’t like compliments, they made me uncomfortable, but the least I could do was be nice, seeing as she was giving me a ride. “But—thank you?”
She chuckled, all bright and sunshine. “How are you that hot, with a rough edge that screams walking red flag, and also so cute at the same time?”
Should I thank her again?
“Do you have a girlfriend?” she asked.
“No.”
She glanced at my fingers. “A wife, then.”
“No, I do not.”
She smiled. “I like your rings; they look cool.”
I brought my fingers to my view, turning them back and front. “Thank you … I like rings; they’re … a mystery.”
She chuckled. “Like you…”
“Hm.” I watched her. “I like your hair.”
Her eyes widened in surprise, but a grin broke through. “That’s sweet, thank you.”
I nodded, looking away.
She glanced at me, then back to the road. “You know you give off the vibe of a serial killer, right?”
I slowly looked back at her. “Do I?”
“You’re dressed in all black, standing by the side of the road at the crack of dawn, you’ve got this mysterious aura, and you talk like you’re testing out the words before you say them; you have this odd calmness to you … It’s kind of unsettling.”
“Yet, you offered to give me a ride.”
She glanced at me and shrugged. “Maybe I have a death wish.”
It was silent for a few beats.
I broke the silence. “I’m Elio.”
She grinned. “Gemma.”
“Put your mind at ease, Gemma; I have no reason to kill you. I just needed a ride.”