Their Cartel Princess: The Complete Series: A Dark Reverse Harem Box Set Read online

  Crack. Crack.

  Rivera’s eyelids quivered with each blow, but he didn’t cry out once.

  It was like flogging a dead horse.

  “Enough,” Zachary said.

  Angel lowered his hand, breathing hard, and stared at Zachary from under lowered lashes. Blood tinted the boy’s cheeks with spots of color.

  “Lesson two. Humiliation.”

  Angel’s eyes went wide, but he didn’t say anything. Zachary’s gaze flickered to him, and he cocked his head to the side as he studied Angel.

  “Was the coyote kind to you, Angel?”

  “No,” Angel said, sounding confused.

  “It must have been a long journey to the border from Michochoan. What did he do to you? To Marco?”

  The young man spun to him, lips parted as he strove for breath. “¿Que?” came Angel’s flustered question. But he’d heard right—the shock on his delicate face was proof enough.

  “Humiliation,” Zachary said quietly. “Sometimes it’s the only thing that can break a man’s spirit. Don’t you agree?”

  Angel’s face became a blank slate.

  Zachary held a hand to the side. Seconds later, Rodrigo put a blade in his hand, the same he’d used to carve Noah’s tongue from his mouth. “I see great potential in you, Angel,” Zachary murmured as he held the knife out to the young man. “Now show me what you’re capable of.”

  Anger flushed Angel’s cheeks and dashed venomous lights through his eyes. His jaw clamped shut as if he refused to speak. But he took the knife, and went down on his knees beside Rivera, using the blade to slice through the man’s grimy trunks. Then he paused, flicked the fabric aside, and twisted slightly toward Zachary, not meeting his eyes.

  “You have…bazuko?”

  Zachary cocked his head. “Why would I want to make this easier on him?”

  “Is for me,” Angel said, rolling the ‘r’ in a strange way as he touched fingertips to his chest.

  He stepped closer to the young man, and laid a hand on his shoulder. “And why would I want to make this easier for you? Confronting the past is what purges it from us.”

  This time, Angel didn’t pull away his shoulder. But he didn’t move, either. After a few seconds, the young man rested his cheek on Zachary’s knuckles. “Por favor, Don Zachary.”

  Zachary snatched away his hand. He drew a long breath that he let out in a hiss through his teeth. He snapped his fingers behind him without turning. “Get him his fucking churro.”

  “Cremita, por favor,” came Angel’s soft plea. “Cremita.”

  Zachary gave a nod, and listened to Rodrigo’s boots thumping out of the barn. The man returned a few minutes later and held out a lighter and a thin joint for Zachary.

  He handed both to Angel. The young man lit the churro and took a long draw, resting his forehead briefly on the back of his hand. He blew out a pale plume of smoke and then took another hit. Another. Until Zachary tugged what was left of the intoxicating mix of weed and coke from his lips.

  Angel rose to his feet. Without looking at Zachary, he murmured a quiet, “You wait outside, Don Zachary?”

  Rodrigo’s boots scraped on the barn floor as the man hurried forward a step. “You loco, boy? What makes you think jefe—”

  Zachary lifted a hand, and Rodrigo’s mouth clamped shut with an audible click. “You have ten minutes to make him tell me where the archives are.” He stepped forward, and took a hold of Angel’s chin, turning the boy’s face to him. It had gone slack, his dark eyes the black of crow’s feather dipped in ink. “Ten minutes, or the next time you see Marco, it will be before they shovel dirt over his eyes.”

  Angel jerked like he’d slapped the boy. Then he lifted a trembling hand.

  “You’ve had enough,” Zachary said, his lips lifting in a snarl.

  He didn’t like to think that he’d underestimated Angel’s capacity for violence, but perhaps he had. If he’d need an altered state of mind to perform anything more violent than a belting, what use was—

  “Globo,” Angel said. His eyes flickered away from Zachary to Rodrigo who stood statue-still beside him. “Por favor.”

  From the corner of his eyes, Zachary watched as Rodrigo rummaged in the pocket of his denim jacket. He drew out something held in a cupped hand, glancing askance at Zachary before tossing the foil packet at Angel.

  They left Angel standing with a bowed head, knife in one hand and condom in the other, and partly closed the barn door behind them.

  Ailin was smoking a cigarette, which he hurriedly ground out under his heel like a school kid who hadn’t expected a teacher to come around the corner. Then he ran a hand through his red hair, glancing circumspectly at Zachary as if to see if he’d noticed.

  Zachary ignored the furtive motion, choosing instead to scratch Lady behind an ear. The dog gazed up at him with the fervent supplication that only an animal could have for its master. Blue just glanced at them, and came to sit beside Zachary’s boots. He very rarely wagged his tail.

  From inside the barn came the sound of a brief, furtive struggle.

  Some of the dank, flowery stink of weed had followed them out. To him, it coiled around his body like an invisible serpent. The smell—no matter the strain, how it had been cured, or what other drugs had been added—would always bring back a tide of unwelcome memories.

  Memories he’d confronted a long time ago. Do unto others what has been done unto you. It was a form of catharsis, one he’d readily employed in his hard struggle up this cartel’s ladder. He was almost thirty when he earned his nickname—El Macabro. The macabre.

  Angel didn’t need the full ten minutes Zachary had allotted him. In less than seven, Lady’s ears pricked up at the hollow sounding of boots against a wood floor.

  Zachary turned to the barn door. It opened another foot. Angel stood bathed in light, radiant as his namesake, sweat glittering on his forehead and down his naked chest. Ailin had dressed him in jeans, a white vest, and a dark green shirt. The shirt hung from his hand, the other held the knife and the bundle of his blood-and-shit-streaked vest.

  Angel hesitated, swaying, and then pushed the door open all the way to step outside.

  “His daughter. She—she has it,” Angel said. His voice was so tight, so unsteady. Tears filled his eyes a second later. “Eleodora. His, his—”

  Angel stumbled forward, words cut off by a throttled sob. He fell to his knees, and Lady surged forward. Zachary called the dog back with a loud, “Tsk,” and the pitbull froze inches from Angel’s exposed back.

  The boy slammed his arms into the dust, a wracking sob making the muscles on his back convulse. A small smudge of blood painted the inside of one wrist, disappearing when Angel dragged his hands through the dirt to fold into a fetal position.

  Zachary crouched beside him, but didn’t touch the boy. Instead, he patted the ground beside Angel’s quivering, clenched hand.

  “It becomes so much easier over time.” Zachary rose up and cocked his head at Angel, giving Rodrigo a meaningful look. The man came forward and scooped Angel from the ground, gripping him tight when the boy began to fight him. “Next time, you will not smoke first.”

  Angel gave him a loathing glare, eyes red-rimmed and dusty face streaked with tears. “Never!” he howled in a hoarse, broken voice. “I will never—”

  “Oh, but you will,” Zachary cut in quietly. He clicked his fingers, and Lady came to his side as he made for the distant ranch house. “And soon…” Zachary glanced back at him over his shoulder. “Soon you will come to enjoy it.”

  12

  Bone & ivory

  Cora was nursing a cup of coffee in the kitchen, when the Jeep pulled up outside the cabin. When she opened the cabin’s door, the cold stole her breath away in a plume of vapor. She watched silently as Lars and Finn dragged a stiff deer though the snow, to the back of the cabin.

  Finn came back a few minutes later, but not Lars.

  “We’re leaving in ten,” he said, pausing just long enough to ra
ke his gaze over her before disappearing inside.

  Well, it wasn’t as if she had anything to pack. All she had in her possession were the clothes she was standing up in. She took her coffee with her as she picked her way to the back of the cabin.

  The world had transformed into a monochromatic canvas overnight. Everything was white or a shade of gray; the snow, the firs, the gloomy sky.

  There was a small lean-to built against the side of the house, beside the generator. She’d seen its roof from the upstairs window when she’d overheard Lars and Finn talking last night. From it, came a steady thump-thump-thump, like someone practicing their tennis stroke. A garish orange light glowed from behind the ajar door. Cora’s shoes crunched through the snow as she crept closer and peeked inside.

  Lars stood over a wooden table. There was a bucket beside him, into which sluggish blood streamed from the lip of the table.

  Air stirred inside the small room and brought with it metallic blood and the bittersweet stench of intestinal juices.

  Cora forced a hard swallow, and stepped inside.

  Lars paused, shifting slightly to the door but not looking at her. Then his arm lifted, and came down with a thump on the deer’s body.

  It looked alien; stripped of its hide, pink marbled muscles standing proud. Lars severed a leg and tossed it to the side of the wide table.

  “You need something?” he asked.

  There was that strange lilt to his voice again.

  “Where are you from?”

  “Colorado,” he said without a pause.

  “I mean…you speak with an accent.”

  “So do you.” He turned, this time glancing at her before returning to his work. “What of it?”

  She gave her head a shake. Did the military train each soldier to avoid personal questions at pain of death or something?

  “Will it take long to get to Texas?”

  “We’ll be there tonight.”

  Her stomach tightened at the thought. Or maybe it was the way Lars was hacking through the deer’s spine that was making her queasy.

  “Guess I’ll wait in the car.”

  “No hard feelings, right?”

  Cora hesitated, giving Lars a frown when he looked her way. “Excuse me?”

  He began tossing salt over the deer’s severed limbs, enough to turn the flesh white with crystals. It almost looked like snow. “Most women consent to me tying them up.”

  “Most?” she snapped, before she could stop herself.

  Lars’s lips stretched into a wide grin. “I never said they complained.”

  Heat worked its way onto her cheeks. She looked away, and shrugged. “I’m sorry, okay?”

  “Say it like you mean it, bunny.” Lars straightened, wiping his hands down with a rag. They were so stained with blood, it was difficult to see if the rag helped.

  “I’m ever so sorry, Lars.” It felt strange saying his name. Was she pronouncing it correctly?

  The man’s quirk of a smile told her she wasn’t. Her cheeks grew even hotter, and she whipped her head to the door, chewing the inside of her lip. “I thought you were—”

  “I know.” Lars came up to her, moving so fluidly she bumped against the door frame trying to get out of his way. “You’re going to have to work on your interrogation skills, bunny.”

  “Stop calling me that!”

  Lars’s pale eyebrows twitched up. They were close now, less than an inch between them. Lars didn’t seem ready to move away, and she was pinned by the door frame unless she slunk past him like a kicked dog. Instead, she straightened her shoulders and gave him her best glare.

  “My name’s Cora.”

  “I like ‘bunny’ better.” He gave her another one of those smarmy smiles, like he knew something she didn’t, and then shrugged.

  “That’s not my name,” she muttered.

  Lars grabbed his chin in a hand, studying her like a puzzle piece that had ended up in the wrong box. “Yet neither is Cora. It’s Eleodora, right?”

  There was blood under his nails. It etched bright red half-moons across his fingertips. For a moment, the hut became insubstantial. She was back in the passenger seat of a car going too fast down a dirt road, her breasts bouncing painfully every time the car went over a bump. Except…there hadn’t been pain back then. She’d been floating on a cloud of apathy, its mists drenching her with some kind of anesthetic.

  Noah beside her. Lifting her hand to kiss her knuckles. Red staining his cuticles. Blood. Whose blood?

  Sangre por sangre.

  It had been staring her in the face the whole time. His intentions with her. And she’d been the fucking fool who’d looked straight at it without seeing. Had he known? Had Noah known that she wouldn’t be able to put two and two together and get even close to four? Had he known it would be that easy to snatch her, drug her, and almost rape her?

  Anger blossomed inside her, lava-thick.

  She was so sick of being dealt with as easily as a little girl play-acting to be a woman. Lars hadn’t even bothered to pretend she’d scared him yesterday when she’d been pointing the Taurus at him.

  Because she’d never actually been the one with the upper hand, had she?

  “Show me,” she said, voice half-strangled with the effort of holding back a scream of frustration.

  “I’m listening.” Lars jutted out his chin, eying her with a steady green gaze.

  “How to interrogate someone. How to make sure they’re tied up properly. How to, how to do that thing you did.”

  “What, a hogtie? Now?” He let out a half-hearted laugh. “Why? In a few hours, you’ll be someone else’s problem.”

  With that, he shouldered past her and a flurry of snow swallowed him. Had it started up again while she was inside this death hut? She took a last look inside. Lars had strung up the deer meat on hooks dangling from the ceiling, and hung a net curtain around it. She wrinkled her nose. Was he planning on eating that meat after it had been hung out to dry in the middle of this dark shed?

  Something caught her eye. She bent down and picked up the small, pale cube and squinted through the gloom to identify it.

  A deer tooth.

  Knocked out while Lars had been skinning it? She rubbed her thumb over the enamel. Strangely, there was no blood on it. It was the color of aged ivory, smooth, and warmed in response to her touch. La Flaca would love it, if she ever had the chance to set up another altar for the saint. She grabbed absently at the pendant around her neck.

  What had happened to her bag, the one she’d left behind at the Rocky Mountain Inn? The one with all of Santa Muerte’s things in it? Her clothes. Her underwear.

  She squeezed the deer tooth in her palm so hard that it bit into her flesh. The pain was good, but it did nothing to eradicate the tiny pinpricks of fear scattering over her skin. How was she supposed to protect herself, when no one wanted to take the time out to show her how? What Bailey had taught her hadn’t been enough. But could anything ever be enough?

  She could run.

  She could run so far that the cartels would forget she ever existed. But then what about Papá? He’d never be free of them.

  Sangre por sangre.

  “Close the door, would you?” Lars called out, snapping her from her reverie.

  She yanked the door closed, dislodging a small heap of snow from one of the eaves.

  In a few hours, you’ll be someone else’s problem.

  No…in a few hours she’d be even deeper in the cartel stewpot. And if she tried to run again, what was to say another Noah wouldn’t spot her—a falcon snatching up a chick that had ventured too far from its mother’s wing?

  Cora trudged back through the snow, arms wrapped tightly around her. Earlier, she’d put on one of Lars’s parkas, a pair of gloves, and a scarf…but the cold ebbing inside her couldn’t be warded off with layers of wool.

  She could run. She could fight. But she’d never be free, would she?

  13

  Sniper eyes

&nb
sp; It took them longer to get down the mountain than it had taken them to drive up it. There was just too much snow. More than once, Finn had to get out of the Jeep and shovel some aside before they could maneuver further down the road.

  Lars led the way on his snowmobile, kept tracking ahead and coming back like a fly buzzing from the window to a piece of rotting meat. More than once, Finn told him to go on ahead, but he seemed to enjoy watching the Jeep laboring through the snow.

  The man had been away for more than five minutes this time while Finn guided the Jeep through a series of low trenches. Here, the snow was pristine except where snowmobile tracks had sliced through it.

  Cora had been silent the entire way down. Brow furrowed in deep thought, those honey-gold eyes flickering to take in the surrounding land. She kept toying with the skeletal pendant dangling around her neck.

  He didn’t try and make conversation with her. What was the point? In a few hours, she’d be at her uncle’s side, and he would be on his way back to Albuquerque. Back to his empty apartment.

  Lars reappeared. Instead of coming up beside the Jeep and yelling at Finn through his window, he swung the snowmobile across their path, blocking them.

  Finn’s jaw clenched as he put the Jeep in gear, yanked up the safety brake, and climbed out. Leaving the vehicle to idle behind him, Finn crunched up to where Lars stood.

  “We’re fucked,” Lars said casually. “Road’s blocked up ahead.”

  Finn closed his eyes, and gave his head a shake. When he opened them again, Lars had taken off his goggles and was watching him. “How far to Route 15?” It was the main road that cut through to Silver City.

  “A mile, give or take,” Lars said. “But even if you reach it, it’ll be miles before you see anything more a goddamn squirrel.”

  “Too far to walk,” he murmured.

  “For her, yeah.”

  Finn gave a half shrug. It was true—both he and Lars had enough training that they could easily survive a mile-long trek through freezing conditions. But Cora wouldn’t make it. And she couldn’t stay in the Jeep, not this close to civilization. Not in case someone happened to find her before they came back.