Obsession (2 page)

She motioned to me when she reached the doorway and my heart sank. I knew by her face my mom didn’t make it. A high ringing filled my ears as everything inside of me screamed in agony, in denial. I didn’t need to hear the words to know she was gone.

I stared with unseeing eyes at a window, looking out into the dark night, the thoughts of how I was going to torture those responsible for her death soothing me.

Leo – Age 28

The darkness within my cold heart held no pity for the once beautiful woman trapped in the dog cage bolted to the floor, dirty and beaten. If anything, I wish we’d had longer to torture her, longer to keep her in the same pain her young son, Jason, had experienced at the hands of his kidnappers. Kidnappers his mother had hired to hold him for ransom.

I’ve always known Nina was a no-good ruthless bitch, but Fernando, one of my best friends and the son of the Cordova cartel leader, loved and married the bitch when she’d turned up pregnant, so I’d tolerated her. But now the sight of her disgusted me so much, I spat on her cringing form, fury sending a throbbing rush of strength into my clenched hands, urging me to dole out a richly deserved punishment.

“You wanna know how we found him, your beloved son?” I snarled. “Beaten, filthy, tied up with wire that had cut his wrists so deep it was embedded in his flesh, missing three of his fingers and one of his ears—
dead
, having choked to death on his own vomit because they gagged him too tight. So fucking tight the corners of his mouth were ripped open. All for fucking
money
.”

I wanted to kick the cage again, to have another hour to draw more pain from her body, but Nina’s mother-in-law, Judith Cordova, was about to arrive, and she was going to demand her pound of flesh from the treacherous cunt whimpering in her own filth.

The hermetically sealed door behind me hissed open and I tried to calm my breathing as I went over to one of the industrial sinks in the corner of the interrogation chamber and began to wash Nina’s blood from my skin. Normally I protected myself against any contamination from other people’s bodily fluids; I dealt with too many nasty fucks who’d stick their dicks in any pussy offered to them. But I wanted to feel Nina suffer, to feel her tremble and writhe from the pain I was inflicting while trying to purge from my head the memory of Fernando’s screams as he held his son’s battered body.

Tears and heavy emotions were something that seldom bothered me, but I understood the loss of family enough that it awakened my rarely felt compassion. So while Fernando had been unable to personally deal with his betraying wife, I had stepped in for him, trying to ease his burden in any way I could by making sure she paid.

Unfortunately, I hadn’t come close to slaking my blood lust, but I had to step aside as hushed voices spoke quietly behind me, the sound of Nina’s moans and sobs almost drowning them out, but one woman’s strained voice I recognized.

Judith was here to collect the debt Nina owed Fernando’s family.

Dressed from head to toe in a stylish black pantsuit and decked out in tasteful diamonds, for once Judith looked like shit. Her normally carefully styled, short silver hair that framed her wrinkled but classically beautiful face was in disarray, the deep lines around her mouth betraying her grief. But her eyes, her dark eyes—much like my own—glittered with pure insanity. Not many people were aware of it, but Judith could sometimes lose her grip on reality and do some crazy shit in her rage. I had a feeling I was about to witness the demon that lived inside the wife of the head of the cartel I worked for come to life.

Behind her, two of her nephews came in, along with her son Ramón. Her other son, Diego, was no doubt with Fernando and their father, Jose. Diego and Fernando were twins, so they tended to rely on each other in times of crisis, and Jose was there to help keep Fernando from trying to take his life—again. A shudder ripped up my spine as I remembered the sound of my friend screaming in complete and total agony until his voice broke.

Judith strode to the middle of the large concrete room in the basement of one of the popular and trendy restaurants she owned, the drain in the floor stained with drying blood. The door hissed opened again and more high-ranking members of the Cordova cartel moved in, until there were around twenty of us circling the room, pressed shoulder to shoulder, all focused on the cage situated beneath the bright floodlight overhead.

My stomach clenched as I realized Judith was about to make an example of her daughter-in-law, one none of us would ever likely forget.

A heavy metal cross let out a teeth-clenching screech as it was dragged across the floor, both men pushing the weighty piece softly grunting beneath its bulk.

In short order, Nina was bound, nude and covered in bruises and cuts, to the X shape, almost incoherent pleas for mercy falling from her lips, saying that she didn’t mean for it to happen, that the men she’d given Jason to had double-crossed her. Pleas for compassion mixed with her now panting breaths, her one good eye madly roving the room, looking for a hero, for someone to save her. She’d find no forgiveness here.

We’d all loved Jason, Jose and Judith’s first and only grandchild. While Nina had been a mostly absent mother, Fernando had lived and breathed for his kid. Jason’s birthdays were already legendary at the age of five and I’d been assigned to his bodyguard detail at various times over the years, enough that the kid always greeted me with a hug and a smile.

A deep pang of sorrow reverberated through me, my chest aching like someone had beat it with a sledgehammer, breaking ribs and sending deadly shards of razor-sharp bone straight to my heart. I could remember the earthy smell of his little boy hair warmed by the sun, the sweet ring of his laughter. Such a bright light, gone forever.

The tips of Judith’s shiny red heels clicked across the floor as she slowly walked up to Nina, the rest of the room having disappeared for her as her focus narrowed on the evil bitch. Back in the day, before Judith married Jose and semi-retired to focus on being a good mother, Judith had been the Cordova cartel’s torture master, and she made inflicting pain an art form that she greatly enjoyed practicing. Not that she got off on it in any sexual way, but breaking down an enemy, dishing out well-deserved punishment, satisfied her in a way I understood all too well. It fed the beast without breaking whatever particular moral code we subscribed to.

But this—this was personal.

Cocking her head to the side, Judith studied her daughter-in-law’s once supermodel-perfect face. “You have committed the worst crime a mother possibly can, something so heinous it sickens me down to my soul. My grandson,
mi dulce bebe
. He died alone and in agony because of
you
.”

A rare tear traveled down Judith’s ashen face while Nina continued her hysterical pleading, saying she was innocent, lying out her ass even though she knew we had video proof of her talking about how she let the kidnappers into her house and poisoned her bodyguards.

I shook my head, seeking out the rage that lived inside of me as I stared at Nina, allowing my own crazy to surface and chill these emotions seething within me. The muscles along my back and hands twitched as I barely restrained the need to join Judith. She’d mentored me during information-gathering sessions with our enemies many times, I was her apprentice of sorts, but this moment was entirely hers.

The breathing in the room picked up as Ramón moved to stand next to his mother, the hatred and disgust on his face making Nina sob anew.

Two of the Cordova cousins moved behind the metal X and together they held Nina’s head in place, their grips digging no doubt painfully into her bruised cheeks.

Ramón handed his mother a knife then pulled a device out of his pocket that I was familiar with.

A mouth spreader.

In short order, Nina’s mouth was held wide open, her shrill screams making it hard to hear what Judith was saying, but I could easily read her thin lips.

“I’m taking your lying tongue, with which you told your baby you loved him.” She swiftly did as she’d said, then closed her eyes and inhaled slowly as one of her bodyguards helped her put on gloves and a white hazmat suit that would soon be red, her cold voice almost clinical in its detachment above Nina’s garbled shrieks. “I’m taking your breasts, a symbol of the motherhood you shit all over. Your fingers will be next, so you can feel what Jason went through when they took his. After that, I’ll slice out your womb, then your eyes—and last of all, I’ll cut your vile heart from your chest. Don’t look forward to death to rescue you from the pain. If I were you, I’d try to hold on to life for as long as I could, because a special place in hell is surely waiting for you.
Espero que te pudras en el infierno
.”

And so it went, for a long, long time, until Nina finally died in agony.

The entire room was hushed yet still ringing with Nina’s screams, and so very still as Judith turned to us, using a wet wipe Ramón had supplied her with while the cleanup crew got busy.

Judith’s dead gaze locked on mine, and I noticed a fine spray of red droplets in her hair, glittering like rubies. “Leo, come with me, please.”

A faint tremble threaded her voice and most people would dismiss it as being from shock, but I knew it was just the adrenaline leaving her body, the hard-addictive rush of a prolonged torture session coursing through her bloodstream.

I followed her, grabbing my shirt and jacket from a hook near the doorway and shrugging both on. Normally I would have paused to make sure I didn’t have anything incriminating on me, but it was well past two a.m. and the restaurant above us was empty and dark. It was only below ground that the Cordova cartel continued to thrive. This basement area of the building the restaurant was situated in was normally used as a warehouse for moving illegal goods, but tonight it was unusually quiet, a sense of mourning hanging thick in the air, like the humid fog in New Orleans.

We reached her office at the end of one of the hallways, the normally pristine place littered with broken glass and wood. It took me a moment to realize that Judith had probably smashed all the pictures of her daughter-in-law and only grandson in a rage, the images too painful to handle. I know after my mother died, it took me years to even glance at a photo of her, the sense of loss still too great.

“Out,” she snapped at whoever had followed us in.

The door shut behind me, but I didn’t take my eyes off her as I carefully walked over the smooth oak floors to the long, tan leather couch that stretched out against the wall near her desk. This was my preferred place, out of the way if she was dealing with business and comfortable enough to rest if I had to wait.

After my mother’s death, Judith had understood my need for revenge and had assigned her son Ramón’s crew to help me find my vengeance. It was her contacts that had found out which rival cartel murdered my mother, and her top bodyguards had helped us plan out my revenge.

Of course, we got the extra help because Ramón was her son and this was his first big job, but she also did it because even then she’d recognized something twisted in me that she felt a kinship with.

When she slumped back onto the couch next to me, I knew what her silent request was. Leaning in, I pulled her to my side and hugged her to me, internally sighing as I felt how delicate she was becoming. At fifty-four, Judith had led a hard life as the wife of a cartel boss, and the loss of her beloved grandson seemed to have struck her a physical blow. Her entire body shook as she sobbed, and I held her, letting her get her grief out. I understood what an honor it was to be there for her like this, to provide her with the comfort she needed. She couldn’t show this pain to her sons and husband, not when they needed her strength.

After a few minutes, she quieted, taking yet another wad of tissue that I handed to her. She hated being messy and quickly wiped her face. Her breath came out in a ragged sigh then she visibly wilted.

“I can’t do this again, Leo. I can’t bury another baby, can’t watch my son beg me to let him bleed out after he cut his wrists, to let him die and join Jason.”

Unable to think of any way to sooth her, I took her hand in my own and gave it a squeeze. “I understand.”

“No, you don’t.” She pulled her hand away then stood, beginning to pace, her heels crunching against the floor when they hit a piece of broken glass. “There has to be some way to protect my boys from women like that bitch. Some way to make sure the girls they love will never betray them, will remain loyal and be good mothers to their children.”

Not sure where she was going with this, or if she was just venting, I watched her as she ran her hands through her hair, attempting to fix it. “And how are you going to make that happen? Interrogate them? Blackmail them? None of that will work, and both your sons and their women will end up resenting you. Even if you could order them around like robots, your sons won’t love Stepford Wives. They’re probably even more paranoid than you now about trusting the wrong women, and will be constantly on alert for any odd reactions. Plus, you can’t force love.”

Her shoulders slumped. “No, you can’t. But will you think on it for me, Leo? You never know what that unpredictable, brilliant mind of yours can come up with.”

For once I had a clear insight into her feelings—and I knew she needed something to cling to, something to hope for. “I promise you, Judith, I will.”

“That’s all I can ask.” She sighed then moved over to her desk, her gait slightly hitched and her head bowed. “I need to be alone for a while. Can you take Ramón to get something to eat? I don’t think he’s done anything but drink coffee and whisky since this whole sordid affair started.”

“Of course, anything you need, Judith.”