Page 5 of Burdens
His oily hair stuck to his damp forehead, his skin was pale from the blood loss and he was in his signature tracksuit. Chains encircled his wrists which were tethered to the hook that extended from the ceiling.
My eyebrow quirked up at his plea. “Spare me your lies, Mehdi,” I said, cleaning my nail beds with the bloodied curved dagger. “I only told a few people. You happened to be one of them and all the others are dead.”
Whatever color he had left drained from his face at my statement, the reality of his fate sinking in.
Metal scraped against concrete as I stood up from the chair I’d been sitting in. Cold indifference settled over me like a second skin as I walked over to the wall of his cell and pressed the button that controlled the hook from which he was hanging. The loud, clanging sound rattled against the walls and Mehdi’s pleas rose.
“Please, Lalla Ines. I promise it wasn’t me!”
“Beg all you want. I like it,” I taunted. “You’ll tell me what I need in a few seconds so I can go back to enjoying my breakfast before it was rudely interrupted.”
I had barely taken a sip of my coffee when Hamza, Omar’s underboss, came over to tell me they’d finally caught Mehdi, who had been on the run for the last five days.
I usually dealt directly with Barrera, but since his son Mateo had died recently, he’d been a little unstable, to say the least. He kept making rash decisions and snapped—or shot, depending on his mood—at anyone who disagreed with him.
Even, or should I sayespecially, when they were right.
We’d been having issues with our cargo over the last few months and this man right here was our leak. Every time we’d struck a deal with the Dutch and scheduled a drop to acquire the guns they provided us with, Alaoui’s soldiers, Barrera’s biggest rival, had magically shown up, stolen our cargo, and killed our men in the process.
The Alaoui cartel usually dealt in trafficking, but for some reason, over the last few months, they’d been stealing the guns the Dutch provided for us in exchange for access to our ports.
After a few failed drops, I’d decided to leak the information about our nextfictionalexchange to the few men I suspected were stupid enough to spill the information to any rival cartels that were interested for a couple hundred dollars.
“Please, Ines.”
I snapped my attention back to him. “What did you just call me?” I asked as I strode closer, stepping into the blood-stained concrete, and pointed my knife at him.
“I… I’m sorry, Lalla Ines,” he blabbered when I slid the bloodied tip down to between his fourth and fifth rib, right where the apex of his heart was. He closed his eyes as I pressed lightly. “I… I didn’t mean…Wallah?1 I didn’t say anything. I… I can help you…”
He kept going on and on, but I tuned the rest of his words out.
God, were men exasperating when their lives were on the line. The lies, the pathetic pleas to save their skin. But the more they begged for their lives, the guiltier they were.
And the more I enjoyed terminating them.
An irritated sigh left my lips. “Stop making false promises. I already know it’s you. I just need you to tell me who from the Alaoui cartel you’ve been leaking the information to.” I pressed a little harder and blood bloomed on his already soiled white shirt from the force. “You can either be a good boy and tell me, or I canmakeyou tell me.” I twisted the knife slightly to help with penetrating his skin. “And trust me, you don’t want that.”
He recoiled when I made eye contact and fear emanated off his skin.
I reveled in it.
Being undercover for this long changed you, whether you wanted it to or not. After killing the amount of people I’d killed for Barrera, the darkness had skewed my sense of morality and blurred the lines of why I was actually here.
In my time here, the information I’d collected had ranged from how much it cost to pay off corrupt officials to how to efficiently slit someone’s throat, something the Bureau definitely hadn’t taught me before sending me here.
Over the years, I’d kept convincing myself that despite the innocence that had perished at my hands, I was serving justice.
By all means necessary, right?
I’d been undercover working for Barrera as his sicario for almost three years now and spent the last five before that making a name for myself as one of the most feared hitmen in Morocco.
I knew Barrera wouldn’t hire a woman to work for him, so I had to do everything I could to convince him I was the best person for the job after his previous hitman was killed in an accident.
And that bastard had been a tough one to kill.
Killing a cartel man was already not the easiest task, but killing a sicario was a bitch. They didn’t have a routine and were suspicious of everyone. Although getting him alone and vulnerable wasn’t an effortless mission, I’d finally done it because men always had a weakness.
I’d found his just in time to strike and finally get my in with Barrera.
