CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

JASIEL

Everyone and everything were taken care of.

The four of us sat on the boat, within radius of for the radio to trigger the C4 explosives, but far enough so that we wouldn't be caught and crushed under the weight of it all.

The sun was setting, the sky was turning pink and orange, and we were counting down from five until the moment I could press the button.

It didn't happen as soon as I pressed the button. A delay or a timer that last an additional five seconds before the first crashing thud boomed and echoed out. It was followed by a second, a third, a fourth, and a final fifth boom. The large, tall house fell.

The explosives sparked fireworks that had been prepared in the garden for Benicio's birthday. It was the perfect way to end the day. Watching as dust formed over the collapsing house and fireworks shot up from the ash.

I was handed a glass of champagne as Midas went through duffle bags of everything he'd swiped from the vaults around the house. And a pendant I saw, it was familiar. Too familiar. I reached into the bag and pulled it out.

"This was my mom's," I said, opening the locket up to see an image of me and my mom when I was only a baby. "She wore this for years. It went missing before she died." A wave of realization washed over me. Andres must've been there. I could only imagine it was him who took that. "I want to kill him," I whispered.

Daddy wrapped an arm around me as the boat sped off. "We'll kill him," he said. "Don't you worry about that."

A week went by as we prepared to leave this place for the final time, and neither of us were leaving alone. Except Midas and Trojan, they were leaving with their pockets full, and we were leaving for good, to go get married and honeymoon around the world.

Before we could do any of that, our final trip to the zoo.

My face was painted with oranges, reds, and yellows to make me look like a lion. Daddy carried the bag with everything I'd bought from the gift shop, and he also held onto all the helium animal balloons I'd collected too.

The only thing I was holding onto was my slushie. It wasn't the same as the one I got from the 7-Eleven, but it did a decent job at giving me all the slushiness that I enjoyed.

"We have our flight tonight," he said. "So, you'll have to pick what you want to keep because I don't think we can fill another suitcase. We could put it storage, but I don't want you to take something we could lose."

He was right. We were soon going to be jet setting from country to country, this wasn't the time to take everything I ever had with us. "I like them all," I protested. "But I'm not going to keep them. I'm going to donate them all to the orphanage, the nice one, not the one I thought was raising serial killers."

He pulled me in close. "What's wrong with serial killers?" he asked, pressing his nose to mine and getting a little of the orange face paint on his skin. "I mean, a lot, but we've done our fair share, people would call us that."

"But we're better," I said.

"I'm sure they think the same as you," he said, lifting his arm to look at his wristwatch. "Oh. Speaking of killers, we're going to be late for the big cat feeding show." He walked off, gesturing for me to chase after him.

"Wait, wait, but the timetable doesn't show any feedings," I said, keeping up and chewing on the slushie straw.

"It's a private showing," he said. "C'mon."

We went straight to a metal gate where we were met by a man in uniform. He welcomed us behind the metal fence and into a control room where we could see all the big cats inside the cages. It was awful that they were kept like this, but we'd just finished getting rid of one family, we'd battle the zoos next.

In a chair at the far end of the control room, a man was tied to a chair.

"You'll have to make it quick," the worker whispered.

Daddy placed my things on the floor before handing him a stack of bills. "We'll be gone in five," he said as the man walked out. "Surprise. Look what I got for you."

"Sal?" I asked.

"I saw him sniffing around the ruins of the house, weren't you, Sal," he said, kicking at the man in the chair. "You always were a roach. And you were also someone I never thought I'd see again."

His mouth was taped shut, but I wanted to know what he had to say. I tore the tape, pulling away some of his facial hair with it. "Oops," I chuckled. "You know where Andres is?"

"I've tried that," he said, handing me one of my knives.

"I don't know," he said, shaking his head. "If Andres doesn't want to be found, he won't. You said I'm a roach, well he's worse."

"Umm." I gave him a slap with the back of my hand. "I'm worse because I'm not going to hire someone to kill for me. I don't mind getting my hands a little dirty, or bloody."

"You don't have to do this," he said. "I could help you draw him out."

"I'm not sure if you could," I answered. "Not because I don't think you know exactly how to get him out of his hidey hole, but because I couldn't trust you, not now, not ever."

Daddy smiled at me. "And for what it's worth," he said. "It'll taste that much sweeter when we pull him out of that little cave ourselves."

I nodded at him. "So, how do you feel about being eaten?" I asked.

His eyes grew. "What?"

"Not by me, I'm not a cannibal, ew," I chuckled. "Context clues, duh. We're in a zoo. I'm going to kill you, and then you're going to be fed to these cats. They look super hungry by the way," I said. "And if I remember rightly, you used to feed people to these cats all the time. So, I think they have a taste for human flesh."

"You have no idea just how hungry they are," Daddy chuckled.

I wasted no more time. I stuck the knife into his chest, listening for that chorus of crunches as I punctured through his ribcage and got to the lung. I went in another, another lung. It was a slower death, and maybe he deserved a faster one, but I wasn't feeling as generous as I had been at Benicio's birthday party last week. I didn't know exactly why he wasn't there, because he could've solved a lot of those issues then.

"I'm not sure if you're going to get the answer from anyone else here," Daddy said. "So, let's throw him in, and let's go."

He was right. We still had that flight to pack for tonight, and then we could both be free, finally. I wasn't keen on the idea of changing name, but that was a requirement to starting over. Starting fresh came at a price, and that price was a lot of money, but we'd been saving. And by saving, I meant taking on high contract kills for years to make sure we had a lot of money squirreled away.

The cuts to Sal's body were mostly contained and clean. I threw him into the feeding pit for the cats to go wild. And they went wild, tearing his clothes from him and tugging his limbs away from his body like tough chicken.

I watched with amusement, knowing we'd got all the major players in the Coronado family, even if they told me the family was in my blood, I never felt like I was one of them. I'd fought with my fists to get to where I was. I'd overcome everything to be me, and I wasn't going to allow the words of a dying man to get inside my head, they didn't deserve to be there.

We finished out tour of the zoo as our last final goodbye to the city we'd lived in for years. It was a nice final goodbye, but I felt a longing to stay since it's where both my mom and grandma were buried. But I knew they'd want the best for me. They'd want me to get out of this place and every single ounce of pain it had caused me would be wiped clean.

In the apartment safe house, Daddy presented me with an ID.

"Who is this?" I asked, looking over the card. The man on the ID looked like me, but I wasn't Juan Carlos.

"It's just for travel. Our new life," he said. "You're still my baby. You're still Jasiel."

I snatched the other card from him. "And you're David. Why do I have to get Juan Carlos?"

He pulled me into a hug as I fought to release myself. "It was your mom's dad's name, remember, you told me that if you ever had to use a fake name, you'd use his," he said.

He might've been right, but it was a surprise, both that he remembered, and because I never even met the man. He was buried in the plot beside my mom and grandma, but I never physically met him. "Fine," I grumbled. "So, where are we going first?"

"First," he chuckled, planting kisses on my face. "We're going to get on the plane and we're going to get married, then, we're going to honeymoon around the world, we're going to take plenty of pictures, and we're not going to kill anyone or—" His eyes pinched together, looking me over.

"Or?"

"Or set fires," he said.

"What if—"

"No," he snickered, placing a hand over my mouth.

"What if," I continued, pressing my tongue against his hand. "What if it gets cold and we need the fire to stay warm?"

There was always an exception to the rule, and I knew what it was in advance so I could exploit it.

"In that case, sure. Now, do you have everything packed?"

I knew he'd be mad if I told him I hadn't been packing, instead, I'd been giving all the teddies we got today different names. They weren't sticking around with us, but I liked to name them.

"I'll take that as a no," he said, looking at his single suitcase as it sat by the front door. "We're gonna be late to start the rest of our life together."

"How can we be late?" I asked, pouting at him. "It's our forever. We can take as long as we like."

He chased after me, running into the bedroom and wrestling me into the teddies I'd lined up on the bed. In his arms, he nibbled at me softly with mouth over his teeth. "Fine," he said. "Let's get packed so we can get married, then start our new life."

It gave me butterflies when he talked about marrying me and starting a new life. We had enough money to set us up to do whatever we wanted. We had the fake IDs, and we were ready. All we needed now was for me to finish packing.

Besides murdering, escaping was the only thing I'd been able to think about.

And now it was finally happening.

We were free.