Chapter Nine: Trouble About My Soul

Emiliano

TROUBLE ABOUT MY SOUL

Performed by The Trishas

I thrust the man up againstthe side of the barn with my forearm shoved into his throat. He let out a garbled noise, yanking at my arm, but I didn’t budge. I used my free hand to open the switchblade I’d taken from my father and wave it casually before his eyes.

“Explain to me how this happened,” I demanded.

Before he could reply, I shoved harder into his neck. He gasped. Even without me cutting off the air to his lungs, his eyes had been little slits, shoved close to his nose. They’d always screamed untrustworthy, but I’d paid him enough to ensure a beacon of loyalty. I’d paid him not to fuck up.

Fury washed over me as I poked the tip of the knife into his cheek, instantly drawing blood. I eased up the pressure on his throat just enough for him to speak.

“Talk.”

“She came at me with a knife first.”

“You shouldn’t have been in the room with her. You were to take it without her knowing.”

His eyes drifted to the side and back, and I knew. This little weasel of a man had wanted a piece of her. Wanted to put his dick inside her. Wanted to take what was never intended to be his. The edge of my knife slid downward. The man didn’t cry out, but his eyes narrowed until they were almost nonexistent as blood dripped over his chin.

“She stole from you.” He gasped as I varied the pressure on his throat. “I did what you asked. I got it back.”

“I needed her alive.”

“Jefe, you are smarter than her. You do not need her.”

If he thought flattery would save him, he was wrong. I was smarter than Natalia. I’d always been smarter and more patient than her, but she’d had a skill I’d needed. She’d taken my ideas and made them a reality by carefully applying zeroes and ones. My mistake had been in forgetting her persistence. Forgetting how good she was at hiding that stubbornness under a mask of serene acceptance.

While I’d stormed at our family’s dark secrets with brutal force, she’d quietly slid out from beneath them. I should have known better than to assume she’d accept the bonds I put on her any more than she’d accepted our father’s.

My anger grew. At myself for the error. At her for her lack of loyalty.

She’d forgotten the promises of our youth.

The promises we’d made while bleeding together…or while playing together. Father had tried to use stories of a big cat that lived in the forest around our compound in Mexico to keep us from wandering away. Instead, we’d used the idea of Balam to hone our skills, biding our time ’til we could use them against our father. I’d enjoyed the hunting, the stalking, the kill. She’d enjoyed the hiding, the camouflaging in the trees, and stealing away in the night.

Now, there would be no more hiding for her. No more escape.

It wasn’t only sorrow that tried to worm itself into my heart, but disappointment.

Both emotions only fueled my rage at the man I had pinned to the wall of the barn.

His muscles, his skills, were nothing compared to mine. He was in my territory. Mine.

“You brought everything from the room?” I asked as my knife tip settled on his pulse.

“Yes. Except a suitcase with only clothes in it.”

“Nothing at the scene can tie you to this?”

“I know what I’m doing.” He hissed out the words while attempting to put some distance between his neck and the knife digging into his skin.

“Bueno,” I said calmly.

At the same time as I released him, I moved the blade across his jugular. Blood spurted out, hitting my white button-down, ruining it. I let the man fall to the dirt, bending only to wipe my knife off on his hideous, army-green jacket.

I turned to Julio, who’d been waiting off to the side. His eyes held mine. Not a flicker of disgust or surprise in them. Nothing but calm. I should have sent him after Natalia, but I needed him here. He was the only person I truly trusted.

“Bring the items from his car to my office and then deal with this,” I said.

I strode away from the barn, with its forest-green slates and river rock, toward the main house. The sprawling single-story building was carved into the mountainside and had been in my mother’s family for dozens of generations. Just like the nearly forty thousand acres of land had belonged to them. Land that belonged to me much more than it had ever belonged to my father—a man who’d married into it.

I’d taken it back from my father in the way my ancestors had defended it from the white invaders, cleansing the blood he’d spilled onto the soil by shedding his on top of it. It was his penance for what he’d done to me. To Natalia. Our home no longer haunted me as my sister said it haunted her. I’d shaped it into another tool I could wield in a way my visionless, brute of a father would never have been able to see.

I walked up the stone steps, smooth from decades of use, through the wide brass doors carved with motifs of warriors, and into the marble-floored entry. I tapped a code into the box next to a set of black doors, pressed my eye to the retinal scanner that popped up, and strode down the corridor on the other side. The main residence now held guests spring through fall, but these private areas, with their sleek black-and-white marble floors and walls, were all mine. Soothing. Colorless. Cool.

At the end of the corridor, I repeated the code and eye scan, opening another set of black doors into the monochrome luxury of my bedroom. I’d enjoyed ripping out the old master suite with my bare hands and sledgehammers. I’d enjoyed filling it with the most expensive fabrics and materials I could find, knowing just how much my father would have hated it. How he would have screamed at the expense.

I stepped into the white marble bathroom, shedding the blood-stained clothes.

In the mirror, my gaze skipped over my black hair, nearly black eyes, and pale-white skin to land on the blood on my cheek. It was the only color in the room.

It made me furious.

I turned, heading for the shower. I left it on cold, scrubbing at my skin until I could be sure the taint had been removed. My body shivered, and I fought back the reaction. I’d made a mistake. When was the last time I could say I’d done that?

Father.

I gritted my teeth.

I stepped out, drying off and dressing in a pair of black slacks. I couldn’t face the row of white shirts. Atonement had to be made before I wore them again. Errors had to be cleansed. My hands went to the first of a dozen black button-downs, pulling one off the hanger and carefully tucking it into the pants. I double-knotted my shoes, which were shined to perfection, and made my way from the bedroom to the study next door.

Black shelves lined the walls running from the floor up to the vaulted, black-lacquered ceiling. Every single book had a cover that was a shade of black, white, or gray. They matched the black marble floor, partially covered with a white, woven rug handmade in Morocco, and the white armchairs taken from a French chateau. They sat perfectly perpendicular to the ebony desk I’d commissioned, carved with the same motifs of ancient Mayan warriors who graced the front doors.

I ignored the desk, even though I was craving to sit there, just as I itched to bring the next CEO to their knees by undoing his company line of code by line of code. Instead, I went to the side table where Julio had brought in the items Vito had retrieved from Natalia’s hotel room.

The pile looked large for the side table but was small considering it contained the entirety of her life. Two laptops, a copy of the golden box we’d created together, three burner phones, fake IDs, and credit cards sat beside over three thousand dollars in cash. Inside a black backpack, I found a handful of clothes in bright colors that assaulted my eyes. I lifted them to my nose, catching a hint of geraniums. Something deep and visceral inside me woke. A longing I thought I’d burned from my soul. Then, I reminded myself that she’d tried to turn on me. After all I’d done for her. For us. After the revenge I’d executed on our behalf, she’d turned her back anyway.

I welcomed the hatred that coursed through me.

After shoving the clothes back into the backpack, I turned on the laptop. I opened the golden box, withdrew the terabyte drive, and used the code I knew like the back of my hand to explore what Natalia had been working on. My excitement grew as I followed the lines. She’d been close. Closer than she’d led me to believe. More betrayal. Losing her life was the consequence she’d paid. But if she’d been going to die, it should have been at my hands. The princess should have been killed by the king, not some nameless, low-life scum.

The computer screen went dark, a single blinking cursor appearing.

I tried several passwords, and when those didn’t work, I typed in code we’d used to break into some of the most secure systems in the world.

Nothing. The cursor just stared at me. Taunting me.

If I wasn’t so infuriated, I would have smiled. I would have felt some pride at how good she’d become.

I’d need her key. She would have kept it close, knowing she could use it as leverage. Perhaps it was camouflaged just like the jaguar we’d played at being. I carefully went through the other electronics and found nothing. My eyes landed on the backpack. I pulled it closer, tossing the clothes aside once again, digging farther, and stilling as my fingers hit something soft and furry.

I pulled it out, and a flicker of triumph bled through me.

It was a sign. It was as if thinking of the cat had brought it to life.

My ancestors were speaking to me. They wanted me to succeed.

I used my knife to slice the stuffed animal open from head to tail, pulling out stuffing, searching every nook for what she’d hidden. I grew both frustrated and intrigued when I found nothing. Why would she have the stupid toy if it wasn’t to hide the key?

When I emptied the remaining items and found a kid’s T-shirt at the bottom, the realization hit me, followed by surprise. This was the reason she’d been so determined to stay anywhere but here. Not because of the nightmares she said surrounded her whenever she came home, but because of a child.

She should have known better than to hide it from me.

I always discovered the truth.

It was what I’d been made for.

I was the sword.

I was the fire.

I was retribution.

For the first time all day, a slow smile found its way over my lips.