Page 7 of Empire of Carnage
Celia
Carolina hadn’t shown her face down here again.
After Guillermo had made the decision that all my punishment was to be given to Santos, she didn’t bother to grace us with her presence anymore. As if it was only my misery she’d been interested in witnessing. It had taken me a full three seconds to wrap my mind around my sister’s betrayal.
Grief, shock, and happiness, along with complete and utter rage filled its way into my body before I could process the truth.
Puta miserable.
Not only had she been alive the last fifteen years, but she had watched, maybe even had a part in our mother’s death. She wasn’t ignorant to the attacks Ignacio had attempted over the years or the lives he had taken to try to get to me.
My papá was right.
Power changes everyone.I could almost hear his voice in my ear.
“How are my two favorite lovebirds?” Guillermo chirped as he stomped down the stairs.
It was impossible to know how long we’d been here. I couldn’t dissociate and wait for it to be over or for death, because it wasn’t happening to me, it was happening to Santos. I was apparently on a fucked up journey, trying to figure out what the cruelest form of torture was.
Each time I found it, a worse version would show itself to me, letting me know it couldalwaysget worse.
Watching one of the men I loved with all of my heart, suffering and bleeding, was the most painful violence I’d ever endured. But my screams did nothing for Guillermo except urge him on. It showed him that his plan was working and by hurting Santos, he hurt me. And somehow that was worse than the physical pain itself.
Santos hadn’t spoken a word to me in days.
I didn’t want to be protected if it cost me his love.
Or worse yet, if it cost me him.
I screamed and begged every time Guillermo or one of his men came down here and sliced that knife over his flesh, again and again, until he went pale from losing blood. They burned him, scarred him, and pummeled him senselessly all in the name of loyalty and family, hoping this would bring him back to them.
Maybe it would.
Maybe every hit that was supposed to be mine forced him closer and closer back into Guillermo’s poisonous reach.
“What do you think primo? You ready for me to cut you down and get back to work?” Guilermo teased, dangling the keys to his restraints in front of his face.
A dance they did every few days.
Santos raised his chin slowly, a large vertical scab began to form over his eyebrow and the top of his cheek, while another crossed from his ear to the corner of his lip. My own matching wound itched just from staring at it. His shirt had been cut off and every mark Los Muertos had put on his body was now on display.
The five petal Flores brand ruined his gang tattoo, the skin was angry and raised up, red all around and likely nearing infection.
“I’ll never work for you again, Guillermo,” he said through a crooked mouth. “You might as well kill me here and now.”
Guillermo chuckled as if he noticed how Carolina’s cut had deformed his speech.
“Oh ‘cuz, that’s where you’re wrong. I won’t kill you. I’ll keep you both here, barely alive, for as long as it takes. Years if I have to. I’ll feed you old bread and dirty water until you hate her almost as much as you hate yourself. But I will prove my point, and you will do the job I’ve asked of you.” He stepped closer to him. “Eventually, you’ll be begging me to let you put a bullet in her brain to free you.”
Santos snarled, yanking the chains that kept him bound to the pole across from me.
“I even heard my men talk about how loud she moans every time they wipe her cunt when they take her to the bathroom. How she begs them to let her get on her knees for them to be free.” I clenched my jaw shut, looking away from Santos, hoping he didn’t believe the lies.
I would do just about anything for his freedom.
Not for mine.
“Just let her go,” he mumbled, forcing Guillermo to bark out a laugh.
