Page 43 of Cartel King

“I’m certain you told her there’ll be times when you have to go out of town and can’t tell her where you’re going. Why couldn’t she tell you where she was going? How is that such a secret?”

“We don’t know each other that well, Luis.”

Even though I bared my soul to her, and I thought I did.

“Yeah, well, it’s strange no one’s finding records of her.”

“If you step back from this for a moment, can you blame her for not telling a guy where she went when she barely knows him?”

“I’d say you know each other pretty well, don’t you?” Again, Luis is the only person who could get away with saying something like that to me.

“You know damn well what I mean. Tread lightly,manito. You know you can say anything to me, but that doesn’t mean you need to say everything.”

“Fine. There’s no need to point out the obvious, anyway.”

“Exactly. So don’t make me remind you she owes me nothing.”

“Yet.”

He stresses that one little word, and I stare at him. We both know she’s mine. Inevitably, she’ll come to accept that. But first, I need to know who the hell this woman I fell for is.

Chapter Nine

Ellie

“Ignacio, you’re wasting my time, and you know I’m not as patient as I pretend. You thought your disappearing act would save your ass. All it did was piss me off, having to track you down. At least you have the good sense to have a decent place as your hideout.”

The ten-thousand square foot home would do Pablo Escobar proud. Ignacio has a veritable compound out here, and it’s fucking invisible with the canopy cover. You’d never guess, flying over, that all these buildings are down here. It took a shitload of money for me to convince a helicopter pilot to bring me out here. Then it was a twenty-minute horseback ride to get to the gates. It took me five minutes to convince the guard to even tell Ignacio I was here. That was after wasting four days trying to find his sorry ass.

“Well, you are certainly persistent,senhoraMessina.

Emelia Messina is one of many personas I’ve had over the years. It’s the one I use in Brazil. I have a different one for Colombia, and a third for Bolivia and Uruguay. That doesn’t even scratch the surface of all the fake identities I have for Europe and Asia. I have three that I use in South Africa alone. It’s fucking mental jumping jacks on some trips to remember who I am on any given day of the week.

But it’s been like that for twenty-seven years. Tommaso has sent me on these little excursions all over the world. My complexion and features allow me to blend in most places. I mastered various accents as a kid and used to do impersonations. If only I hadn’t found that so much fun and hadn’t shown off too many times to Tommaso and Frank. Now I collect money no one else can find. That’s what I’m doing here.

“Ignacio, I should charge you a fee for every day you’ve wasted my time to track you down.”

“SenhoraMessina, that’s not how it works.”

“Ignacio, you don’t make any rules with me. We do things the way I say, or I make one call to Tommaso, and you can say goodbye to all of this.”

“We took your phone and your tracker,senhoraMessina.”

“You don’t think I sent him a message before I came knocking at your door? I suggest you figure out how to make all of my wishes come true, or this will cost you more than what you owe Tommaso and my service fee.”

It’s going to cost him a shit ton more than he realizes. But that’s a secret I’ll keep to myself for now. I put my hand out and flap my fingers, waiting for him to hand over a thumb drive.

Fucking prehistoric system keeping any financial information on a thumb drive, even if it’s a backup from a cloud. I slide his computer in front of me. There’s not a fucking chance in hell I’d ever use my computer, whether it’s really my personal one or the one Tommaso gave me for work.

From his hesitation, I know he’s put something on this thumb drive he doesn’t want downloaded onto his computer. I’ll have to work fast before it clears out the data. I access files that would look like nonsense to most people. But I already know his encryption system.

When one of his men shifts to stand too close to me, I glare at the guy and raise an eyebrow. It’s a harsher version of the look I’d give my boys when they got in trouble. The toned-down version was enough to make them apologize without me guessing what they’d done. It makes this man give me a wide berth.

I type rapidly, pulling up a connection to a cloud where I safely upload all these documents I need. Then I hurry to wipe any traces of what I did. I barely finish before the screen goes blue. I spin the laptop toward Ignacio. Then I pick it up and hurl it against the wall.

“You fucked around, Ignacio. You’re going to find out. I saw enough to know what you did, even if you haven’t provided all that information to Tommaso or Enrique like you should have.”

Yeah, that was a motherfucking shock to discover the customer waiting offshore for Ignacio’s product was Enrique. I may be doing a job for Tommaso, but maybe Enrique’ll look at it as a gift when he inevitably finds out.

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