Page 16 of Empire of Carnage
“No, this says César Ortíz. Your mom was Maria Villalobos, but your father was Diego Ortíz,” Mateo said as César ripped the document from his hand.
“What the fuck?” Celia looked pissed. “Did you fucking know?” She stepped up to her brother and I flipped over her own birth certificate, her mom’s name bright and clear.
“You’ve said a lot of dumb shit before princesita, but this one takes the cake.” He shoved her shoulder, and Mateo and I both shifted towards him.
He eyed both of us, raising his hands up in defeat, before he’d even gotten a point across.
“None of this makes sense. Diego was my tío’s name, he was my mamá’s brother. Her last name was Gomez.” She ran her fingers through her hair, like she was trying to make sense of all this new information.
I picked up her birth certificate again.
“No.” I shook my head, handing it over to her. “This says her name was Jamila Ortíz.”
“No.” She shook her head in disbelief. “That would mean—”
“We’re cousins,” César finished, but Celia continued to shake her head.
“It means that it’s technically,hiscártel. No?” Mateo asked.
César wrapped his hands around Mateo’s neck and slammed him into the wall. His nostrils flared widely for a few moments before he decided to finally speak.
“Listen here pendejo, I’m only ever going to say this once. You ever repeat those fucking words again, I don’t care what you mean to her, I’ll gut your gringo ass alive. Entendiste?”
“Roger that, hermano.” Mateo said with an exaggerated American accent, pushing him away.
“I was four when they took me in, I kind of always knew I was Diego’s son. I think you knew it too. We knew we were already family, but it always felt like brother and sister, so why mess with that? There was no way I was a random stray, Rafa? He was too cold to just take in some pup from the street. I knew there was no chance I was his bastard either, she would have hated me if that was the case, Jamila was good to me. They never talked about Diego, and she always sent me those sad eyes if someone brought him up.” He scratched the back of his head.
“Why so testy about it?” Mateo asked.
“Something deep in my gut tells me my dad didn’t want to be a part of this shit. I don’t either. I just wanna finish this war for her, go home to my club and live the rest of my miserable life. Is that too much to ask?” He turned back to her. “He raised you for this shit. You’ve bled for this chingadera princesa. This isn’t my empire, it’s yours. And I’ll kill anyone who says otherwise.”
“Tia Larissa wanted as far away from this desmadre as physically possible. That’s why she moved to Ocean Valley. Now it’s clear it wasn’t just because she was protecting my mamá, but because she’d seen the carnage of it all first hand. She grew up with this too.” She lamented, piecing together her family’s history.
César simply nodded.
“How many times did we hear Diego’s name but nothing about him? No memories, no stories. They buried him just like they buried all the lies and secrets they thought we weren’t old enough to handle.” Celia’s voice shook with anger.
“Age had nothing to do with it princesa, it was about the fact that no one wants to be the person who shares the painful truth. They’d rather absolve themselves from the burden and leave it up to the universe, or some higher power to bring you to find it yourself.” César said with a sneer.
“God didn’t bring me here. Revenge did.” She peeled her upper lip and he nodded in agreement.
César pulled a lighter out of his pants, flicking the flame on and touching the corner of the paper to it. It quickly lit, and he dropped it to the ground, letting it burn to completion on top of the stained concrete floor. The flames triggered the smoke detector and an alarm went off, causing the sprinklers to pour down on us in a heavy torrent.
We ran out of the room, leaving the empty box on the table before collecting our weapons and running out of the bank at rapid speed. We piled back into the car in a rush to avoid the angry bank teller cursing us down.
Celia stared blankly at the piece of paper that had her birth name written on it after we left the building. Her eyes didn’t unglue from it the entire ride out to the middle of nowhere.
Because of course the GPS took us to the fucking desert.
The mystery coordinates, on the random piece of paper in a fifteen plus year old safety deposit box, took us to the middle of nowhere.
Why the fuck would it not have?
And of course we all fucking followed it, with the insane hope that none of this was a trap or a terrible idea. When we arrived it was practically dark already. We left the headlights on to provide us with a fraction of visibility to find the exact location we needed.
Celia and César took turns digging at the precise location where X marked the spot—figuratively of course. Celia insisted that the three of us were far too injured to be exerting ourselves that way and refused to risk us opening any stitches. Villalobos grumbled something about not wanting to deal with the Doc’s wrath.
She hadn’t come out unscathed though, her scars weren’t so visible this time, at least not all of them. But they were still very much real.
