Page 74 of Empire of Carnage
“Abre la boca or I’ll pry it open with a hot knife,” I promised. He didn’t dare to disobey, opening without hesitation just wide enough so that I could stick the rubber block inside his mouth.
I pinched the plyers shut around his back molar, putting one high heeled Louboutin on the wall for leverage. It wasn’t as easy to pry a man’s tooth out without the adrenaline of survival running through your veins. But he didn’t deserve easy, and I relished every pained grunt out of his chest until the tooth finally came loose.
His screams echoed through the dungeon walls.
“I asked if she was getting in with Sokolov.” I pulled the rubber block out of his mouth.
“Getting in? She’s nice and cozy in their family tree now. She’s made arrangements to marry his eldest son.” He spat out a wad of blood onto the ground.
“Since when?” I asked, trying to figure out how long my sister may have been responsible for my misfortunes.
“A year now?”
“But she was with Guillermo Álvarez,” I said, knowing that what I’d seen between them in that basement was much more than something casual.
“Clever zorra that one. Smart enough to understand just exactly how to use her pussy to get far in this world. She kept Guillermo in line for me, made sure he didn’t get too big for his own britches. I guess your papá didn’t teach you every lesson you needed.”
“Except now it looks like she’s the big fish in your pond and she’s about to swallow you up tío.” I clucked my tongue, “all this blood and war just to hand México over to the Russians?”
He growled with disapproval but we both knew I was right.
Carolina was a garbage truck full of hot trash waiting to unload.
But she was my fucking sister.
Even if she was a pendeja.
“We can stop her together,” he labored out.
“I can stop her myself,” I told him, shoving the block back inside his mouth, pulling another molar out with a bit more ease this time.
I didn’t give him time to mourn his tooth before jamming the pliers back and finding the next addition to my collection. One by one I pulled out his remaining teeth, all aside from the few bits and pieces that were barely hanging on in the front from my previous assault. I was sweating, my hands aching and sore by the time I finished. His head hung from his neck, blood dripping from his open mouth as he moaned and shivered from the pain.
“I gave your papá the gift of an easy death.” he mumbled with difficulty.
“I am not my papá. I am the woman both of you helped to create, and youwillfeel the full force of my wrath. I will give you the death you deserve. Nothing more, nothing less.”
“Where are you going?” he shouted at me as I turned to leave.
“To beat some sense into my sister.”
He laughed like it was an outrageous thought.
“That’s not how this ends, sobrina. It ends in blood. It always does.”
“I’m better than you. I decide how this ends,” I said, turning on my heels.
“You can’t leave me here like this Celia,” he moaned, and I laughed darkly.
“Tío, that’s exactly what I’ll be doing. And I’ll keep you alive, and I’ll come down here and inflict pain on you whenever you cross my mind, until the day I die. Unless you bore me, then maybe I could be persuaded to forget to feed you and put an end to your misery.”
He groaned, yanking at his chains and making a loud racket.
I ignored him, placing the pliers back on the table and leaving the torture chamber, striding past each cell until I entered the control center of the dungeons. I gave a smirk and a nod to Taylor Constance and she returned me a beaming smile.
“How are you settling in?” I asked her.
“Well, you pay better than Ronan and considering, regardless of location, I end up between four walls with a computer for a window, I’m finding myself right at home.” She laughed.
