Page 63 of Empire of Carnage
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Celia
“No. He’s not here,” I told him, stepping into my tío’s mindset and realizing what this truly was.
“What?” He looked at me with confusion, putting the injured girl on the ground so she could find her people. “But the bombs—”
“His men, yes. He’s not here, he’s not this ignorant.”
“Then where is he?” Santos asked.
“The Villa.” My skin pebbled though I was the one speaking the words. This would end where it started, the very place my tío began his disruption to my life would be the very place it would end.
Cathartic.
That’s how it would feel too as I skinned him alive and plucked the teeth from his mouth like feathers from poultry. My papá once said his revenge was so close, he could taste it, smell it in the air.
He died that very week.
All I could taste was blood. All I could smell was blood.
That was enough to tell me that death was on her way.
Santos and I rushed out of the building battling through the chaos of bodies gathered at the front of the collapsing building as it slowly crashed its way to the ground from the weakened foundation.
“Text César, tell him to bring Mateo and Ronan home with him. Tell him to keep ALL of the men outside the villa,” I instructed Santos, charging through the crowd while looking for the vehicle we’d arrived in.
“Where are you going? You can’t go off alone, Celia.” He wasn’t wrong, my tío’s men along with whatever stray Los Muertos soldiers he’d collected were likely all lurking around here, waiting for us to flood out of the building like mice scurrying from the fire.
“Then keep up with me,” I told him, finding an orange Mastretta parked away from the crowd and unblocked by other cars. “Are you driving or am I?” I smirked at him, memories of our youth flashing through my mind.
“Get in,” he said, taking his jacket off and wrapping it around his elbow before breaking through the driver’s side window.
The alarm went off, but it was already far too loud between the sound of the flames engulfing the historic Palacio, the sirens of the ambulances and firetrucks in the distance arriving, and the screams of innocent people attempting to piece together what had happened. He brushed the broken glass from his seat before unlocking the passenger door for me. Santos reached into the electronics of the car, yanking out a wire that shut off the blaring of the security system before hotwiring the engine to start.
“It’s been a long time since we’ve done this.” He smirked, his hand casually dropping to my thigh and slipping through the slit in the side of my dress.
“We never did it likethis,” I reminded him.
“Younever did it like this. If you think for one second it wasn’t all I thought about during those drives, those runs we made, you’re fucking crazy, morena.” His hand rubbed up and down my skin, calming me as I fought to slow down the current of excitement running through my veins.
Cálmate. There was a bigger end game here.
Me and Ignacio.
One of us would die tonight.
I almost didn’t care which one.
Closure was kind of like that, like it didn’t matter how things ended as long as they did. People seemed to be satisfied as long as they knew the ending. I didn’t get the need, why did the book always end just when you got to the part where the main character finally found happiness?
You spent all that time watching them suffer, you cheered them on hoping they could have their happily ever after. When they finally did it was a five-page epilogue with some stereotypical idea of what happiness looked like. A pregnant belly, a picket fence, no threat of death.
Maybe it ended there because they couldn’t possibly describe something they didn’t understand. Maybe none of them actually knew what it truly meant to be happy. You couldn’t write happiness if you didn’t experience it for yourself, your readers would surely know it. They’d see past the pretty lies in the words you spelled out and see the sad person beneath it all.
Maybe authors were just truly unhappy people, forcing imaginary creations to undergo the cruel darkness that lived inside their own minds as if the characters weren’t simply mirrored shards of themselves.
Certainly cheaper than therapy.
