Page 88 of Empire of Carnage
I would kill my sister.
Because for the first time in my life, I had something to live for.
33
Celia
“So then, how did you expect this would all go down? You were always the one with the flair for dramatics hermanita.” I gave her a side-eyed look. “You can’t really think my men won’t come looking for me in anything short of a few minutes.”
“It’s actuallythemwe’re waiting on.” She smiled from ear to ear.
“What did you do?” My heart dropped. “How did you get in here?”
“There’s always a hole in the security, Celia. You should always expect that if you have enemies alive, there is someone close to you, working with them.” She wasn’t fucking wrong, and I wasn’t sure if I was angry that she was givingmelessons, or if it was because I’d been so naive to not suspect otherwise.
And I already knew which pathetic pendejo it was that had betrayed me.
Fernando Garcia.
He’d involved himself in our business just long enough to get what he needed to feed it back to my sister.
“How many of my men did you kill?” I asked, wondering how many lives I’d have to push down and bury beneath the reach of my conscience.
“Just your security here. Kept your little maid alive if she promised to bring you inside without suspicion and lead your boys up to their rooms without a fuss. Looks like she gets to live after all.” She walked towards the wet bar and unscrewed the cap to the tequila and poured two shots.
“Why are you here? Did your fiancé not tell you that his daddy is dead yet?” I hardened my eyes, waiting for the change in her expression.
She schooled it well, but she didn’t hide the way she momentarily froze. As if all her thoughts had bombarded her at once with all the possibilities. If Allisher Sokolov was dead, then his son would be the new Bratva king.
“Good. Then he’ll be twice as pleased when I come home wearing your crown.” She narrowed her gaze my way, downing her shot and wiping the stray drops spilled from the corner of her lips.
“Or maybe he won’t need a wanna-be cártel bitch if he’s got his own.” I suggested, throwing her off.
I thought this would be hard. That her death would be another scar in my psyche that would never heal. That I’d carry the pain of this my entire life. But when I looked at her, I saw nothing but the sum of my pain over the last fifteen years. How differently this would have ended had she stayed at my side instead of coming at me from behind
I truly believed Death always had a plan. Maybe I’d been made to mourn Caro all those years so that when the time came for her to die by my own hands, My heart would already be calloused over. The wound; already healed before the knife could cut me down.
“Why did you kill Mamá?” I finally bothered to ask.
“Because in the end, she favored you most,” she said bitterly.
“Ha! Jamila had no love for me, you’re delusional. You were her favorite.”
“Then why did she refuse to tell me where our fortune was? Why did she hide that key from me when I went begging her for it? Why did she choose to die over letting me be reina?”
She wasn’t my little sister anymore.
She wasn’t anything to me anymore.
“To keep you safe you fucking idiota.”
We were taught that family was everything. That no one from the outside would love you and be there for you like your blood. But here I had created a family with three men who I’d give my life for over and over again. And there stood my sister, asking me to bleed myself open for her.
She poured herself another shot and finally picked the other glass up in offering to me.
Fuck it.
I grabbed the glass and downed it knowing my sister wasn’t smart enough to use poison against me or drug me like the men who held her leash.
