Page 1 of Empire of Carnage
1
Celia
Lo juro por Dios que, this is the last time I end up in the fucking trunk of another sedan.
Fucking cocksucking hijo de la chingada.
Guillermo’s lackeys had barely shut the trunk before they opened it again, this time to throw Santos in with me. I watched the needle slide into his neck, and the same medicine they used to immobilize me was now coursing through his veins as well. His gagged screams of protests turned into mumbles just as his tongue froze inside of his mouth.
There was nothing worse than staring into the face of someone you loved and seeing nothing but pain, knowing that there was absolutely nothing you could do to make it better. We laid there, staring into each other’s eyes, crammed into that tiny, piece of shit trunk Los Muertos had stuffed us inside of for what felt like an eternity. An awkward tear rolling down our cheeks every now and then that we could only ignore and pretend we didn’t see. Time moved slowly and eventually my muscles tingled with an intense burn when sensation began to return to my body.
I wiggled myself closer to Santos, resting my forehead on his chest. He moaned a muffled sound that was filled with pain. He was hurting, physically and in every other way possible. Mateo and Ronan were dead, and we were headed towards our end too.
The realization was a blade dead center in my chest.
It was all my fault.
I would have gladly met my demise a hundred—no a thousand times over if it meant the boys would have survived. But it was too late now to make those kinds of compromises and I had cost them their lives. I deserved this, they didn’t. My sobs were an incoherent mess of sounds echoing off the trunk that caged us in together.
They were gone.
They were fucking gone.
My ocean, my fire. Both snuffed out from right in front of me and there was nothing I could do to stop it from happening. Nothing I could have done to save them.
I wanted to drown. I needed to burn. Instead, I was trapped inside my own body and locked in this trunk, forced to do nothing but feel and come to terms with my loss.
Our loss.
They’d been glued to each other for half their lives, and in a matter of weeks I destroyed it all. I wasn’t the rain that mortals knelt for, I was the deluge that swept all of existence from the Earth.
The question of whether or not we’d be able to survive without them briefly crossed my mind before I realized we wouldn’t be surviving at all. We were headed towards the inevitable muerte. Death.
By the time the paralytic ran its course through my body, the car came to a stop, and we were forced to take an undignified piss break. Being groped and manhandled by Los Muertos grunts was the better alternative to peeing myself. Santos tried to fight, earning himself a few more sucker punches to the gut and two more syringes of muscle freezing bullshit before they tossed us back into the trunk.
I was sore, stiff, and every inch of my body burned by the time we made it to the West Coast. I could smell Ocean Valley before they’d even bothered to open the goddamn trunk. The salt in the breeze and sound of the waves crashing was undeniable. And then a surge of emptiness washed over me, where home just didn’t feel like home anymore. That place you once had belonged to was now lost in the drawer of your mind and filled with the rest of your nostalgia.
Home went by a lot of different names in the last thirty years. México, Ocean Valley, my 2003 Ford Mercury.
I knew better now.
Home wasn’t a place. It was a person, or rather, people.
And I’d never be home again.
I would never smell the scent of Ronan’s cologne on his neck. I would never feel Mateo’s strong fingers dancing over my flesh. Grief would drive me and Santos apart. I could already feel my heart turning cold, feel myself losing the will to fight.
I cried so much that by the time we finally came to a stop my skin burned, and my throat dried out from the tears I lost. Santos never looked away. His eyes stayed fixed on mine as if to prove that he could endure my pain. Afterall, it was also his pain. Those were his brothers, and he was mourning them too.
He looked defeated. Like all the fight had been taken from him with the sound of those two bullets hitting Ronan’s stomach. I couldn’t get the vision of Mateo’s lifeless body hitting the grass two stories below me out of my mind. I just replayed the night in my head trying to figure out how it could have gone so wrong. The Russians, the cártel, they were more involved with each other than we were aware of.
And I brought nothing but death to the door of all of those who cared for me.
I was still completely immobilized when Guillermo’s men slung me over their shoulders and carried me into the old house. It must have been right off the shore because I could feel the sea salt on my skin the minute the fresh air wafted into the trunk. I couldn’t focus on anything in the present. My brain kept taking me back to the first moment I stepped into the Black Crow’s building. Ruminating over every choice and decision I had made since the age of eighteen.
I spent so long running away. Maybe if I hadn’t been such a cowardly pendeja, maybe if I would have just owned up to my duty, claimed what was mine, none of this would have happened.
Maybe I’d just already be dead with a few less casualties involved.
