Page 57 of To Claim A King
“Leave them!” he barked, shooting us one last contemptuous glower before turning on his heel, fast-walking to what I presumed was a door or hallway behind us.
Carmen’s head whirled around, body frozen in confusion. Before she could retreat, Aaron shifted his legs with whip-like movements, raising the naked limbs and wrapping them around her neck.
She struggled under the weight, grunting and wheezing as she clawed at the thighs crushing her cheekbones and stealing her air. I watched in fascination as the injured man’s face wrenched into a vicious snarl, his raw hatred for this woman as pure as my hatred for my father.
He let out an animalistic roar and violently squeezed with the last remnants of his strength until she fell to the ground in an unconscious heap. Aaron’s legs dropped, and his entire body limply dangled from the exertion. The alarm continued to blare above our heads, less ominous now we were alone.
“It’s Lucky!” Hillary’s voice was much weaker than mine, but it held onto shreds of hope. “It’s Lucky,” she repeated, before several navy-clad FBI agents flooded into our torture cell, weapons drawn and flashlights raised.
My whole body convulsed with the new emotion rising in my chest.
Hope had found its way into my heart again.
Maybe there was a little out there in the universe after all.
My body hung in the cell, violated and exposed. I did not see the FBI agents filling the room from behind, instead overtaken by a vision beneath my eyelids. The memory of the final time I’d shed tears in front of my father swam in front of me, as if I were an underwater observer, rippling and undulating as soft sea waves.
I sat in his office bent over the large cherry wood desk with my legs exposed to his mercy.
“Men do not cry.” Vicente’s stern admonishment hovered above my head as the strike of his switch brought a fiery ache to the backside of my calves. “Rodriguez men do notcry, especially. You are a man, Aaron. Show me you understand this, or I will hit you again.”
I was six. Not a man. I had been unable to control my tears as little boys cannot, and he’d beaten me so badly I could not sit for weeks from the bruising.
I thought I’d never feel her lips on mine, or smell his skin, or hear the lilt of his accent ever again. The home I had found in our group of tattered souls was a loss I deeply mourned as I swallowed my pride and let her touch me, for the hope of one more moment in their presence.
ThatMi Reinaand our protector were still alive, and I still had all of my limbs, however sore, forced a fresh flood of tears to wash my dirty cheeks. I squeezed my eyes shut as I allowed them to cleanse me from the inside out, the dam of my walled emotions finally disintegrating under the true power of my love.
A few muttered curses broke through my haze, and I cracked open a wet eye. A shocked agent stared at my situation with an open mouth before moving to release the cuffs above my head.
“I need a little help here!” he called to his colleagues as he struggled to uncuff me and hold my dead weight at the same time. Several agents came forward—through a single eye alone ten were within our radius—and guided my spent body to the floor. Unimaginable burning pain rushed into my arms and shoulders as blood once again found the veins. I gritted my teeth at the pain and relished the feeling all the same. It meant I was still here.
The scraping pebbles dug into the tender flesh of my naked legs. The carcass of Kellan’s agent was too close for comfort. The stench coated me in a thick layer of grime. But his was not the body that interested me. Carmen Delgado still lay on the floor within feet of my body, still unconscious, but alive.
The despicable woman would be put through the legal system and eventually sentenced for her crimes, but shewould evade death, too kind a fate. Could I allow this to happen, after everything she’d done to cause harm to my family?
No, I could not.
If I had the luxury of time, I would torture this woman in ways she could not imagine with the techniques I had learned as a teenager, but I had no such gift. If I were to be saved today, I would grant this wish to those I loved.
I ignored the agony in my broken wrist and burning limbs and reached over the chasm of two feet, grasping the knife still housed within her pocket. Barely gripping it with numb fingers, I pulled it from the loose cloth of her linen pants and stabbed the dagger through her heart.
Warm blood rushed over my fingers as the knife connected with the tissue I’d aimed for. I twisted it deeper into her chest, wrenching it roughly until the hilt hit bone. She shuddered once beneath the blade while every drop of her poisoned essence drained from her under my hold.
Carmen Delgado was dead.
Shouts erupted all around me, the noise its own dagger inside my head. Several hands gripped my shoulders and waist, hauling me away from her fresh corpse. I had no energy to fight, and no need. My contribution was complete, the consequences be damned.
The laugh of a madman escaped my swollen lips while I was carried through a long corridor. Then my mind shut down to nothingness and I promptly passed out.
I was not a normal child. The sole heir of a mafia empire had many privileges but came with many poisons. My parents had trained me to endure torture. Vicente through his hewn weapons and toxins, Veronica through her barbarous words and acidic tongue.
Still, I was unprepared for its reality. My body could not move. The searing heat in my abdomen from overextending my healing wounds made me immobile in the hospital bed. I was a lump of flesh in the form of a battered man. A visceral ache overtook each individual limb, down to the pads of my fingertips and toes, and deep within the fabric of my bones where the binds had fractured one wrist and torn the ligaments within my shoulders.
We’d been airlifted to the closest major hospital in Sequoia, having been driven three hours outside of Carlisle to one of Antonio’s private distribution sites to endure our torture session.
Hillary slept softly in the bed adjacent to mine, Kellan on her other side, our orientation identical to the way we hung in the cell. We’d been here for several hours, and would be here for several more while we healed our bodies and our hearts. We had nowhere else to be.
Mi Reinahad been groggy from pain medication and almost incoherent in speech, yet she’d insisted on paying for a private wing when we’d arrived so the three of us could share a room, though she’d barely accompanied us in the last several hours. The doctors rushed her into emergency surgery to repair the broken bones and severe tissue damage on the soles of her feet, while removing the bullet deeply embedded within her thigh.Mi Reinawas bruised and beaten, but not broken. My heart swelled in size as pride blended with my highly medicated blood.
