Empire Page 4

  ‘Wait here,’ Guillermo said finally, opening his car door and slamming it again.

  Like hell. I got out, getting exactly three steps before Guillermo had rounded the car and backed me against it, effectively pinning me in place.

  ‘Am I speaking Chinese? Wait. Here.’ He stepped back enough for me to open my door again, but I didn’t. Emboldened by grief and rage, I reached into my purse and pulled out the handgun I always carried.

  ‘I’m going in,’ I said grimly. ‘So grab the suitcase and let’s go, ese.’

  Guillermo stepped back, shaking his head as he eyed the gun I was pointing at him. ‘Gotta say, my feelings are kinda hurt,’ he said, patting his chest with his palm. ‘I ever point a gun at your head?’

  ‘I do what you tell me to do,’ I said calmly, the gun heavy but also oddly soothing. A mechanism by which I could be heard for once. A tool for controlling a situation that would ordinarily be out of my control.

  ‘So do it now,’ Guillermo hissed, looking around to make sure nobody could see our little Mexican/Colombian standoff in the back lot of Budget Funerals. ‘Do what I’m telling you. Put that fucking thing away and get in the car before you accidentally shoot me, you silly bitch.’

  I shook my head. ‘I saved that baby,’ I said, my throat burning as a lump grew and grew within it. ‘I saved him, and he died because our fucking boss wanted to teach me a lesson. I started this, and I’m going to finish it, Guillermo.’

  ‘Pointing a gun at me ain’t gonna bring that kid back,’ he ground out. ‘Watching him burn ain’t gonna do anything except fill your head with more black shit, so black you won’t be able to close your eyes at night without seeing it. You really want that?’

  I shrugged. ‘I can’t close my eyes anyway, so it doesn’t matter.’

  Guillermo made a low noise in the back of his throat. Not a growl, but almost. ‘You see some freaky blue eyes when you close yours?’

  I swallowed thickly, my pulse pounding in my temples. My grip on the gun wavered. ‘What?’

  ‘I’m not an idiot,’ he said, his dark eyes shining in the stark sunlight. It was too hot. Too bright. Too loud. Everything was too goddamn loud.

  I looked around the lot nervously.

  ‘I know my place,’ Guillermo said, his expression tight as he shoved his hands in his jean pockets. ‘I’m the thug. I’m the stupid Mexican who does the grunt work.’

  ‘You’re not stupid,’ I said.

  One corner of his mouth tugged up for a second, and then it was gone again. ‘No. I’m not. You know who was stupid?’

  I wasn’t sure I liked where he was going with this. ‘Who?’ I asked reluctantly.

  ‘That damn DEA agent,’ he said, and in that moment, all doubt was gone. Guillermo knew I’d killed Murphy. He knew.

  ‘Guillermo,’ I whispered.

  ‘You move the money, too?’ he cut in.

  I chewed on the inside of my cheek, my arms heavy and tired from pointing the gun at him for so long. I wondered how long I could aim it at him before I’d have to lower it. How long before one of the employees at Budget Funerals came out for a cigarette break and found me bailing up a biker at gunpoint in their parking lot.

  ‘You trust me?’ Guillermo asked, his eyes wild as he fixed them on me. It was an excellent question. Did I trust him? Did I trust anyone?

  ‘I killed Murphy,’ I said, the gun getting warm in my sweaty hand. ‘I killed his girlfriend, too.’

  ‘I knew it,’ Guillermo muttered, shaking his head. ‘Of course it was you. Look at you. Waving a gun around. Creeping around with the prez like I’m stupid. Of course I know. You’ve changed, Ana. You finally grew some fucking cajones.’ He grabbed his crotch for effect. ‘If I didn’t know better, I’d say your balls are made of brass, cholita.’

  That saying – my blood ran cold – it’s such a cliche. But I swear, in that moment, I felt all of the thick red blood in my veins turn into freezing sludge and sharp icicles that cut me from the inside.

  I sagged against the car, all the fight draining out of me. I wanted to cry. Creeping around with the prez. Jesus Christ. It was all going to come undone.

  ‘You love him?’ Guillermo asked.

  ‘Who, Murphy?’ I asked incredulously.

  Guillermo rolled his eyes. ‘John. You love John.’ It was a statement more than a question. It was true.

  Yes. A thousand million times, yes.

  ‘Shut up!’ I said, launching myself at him.

  He stepped back, my show of brute force apparently unperturbing to him, and raked his eyes up and down me. I imagined how crazy I must have looked. Messy hair, cheeks raw from crying and waving a loaded gun around like I was some kind of gangster.

  ‘You got it bad for him, don’t you?’

  Was I really that easy to read?

  ‘You don’t know anything,’ I protested. The gun was so fucking heavy.

  ‘Dornan will find out, you know,’ Guillermo said.

  ‘Shut up!’ I replied. ‘I will fucking shoot you, Guillermo!’

  I saw the impatience on his face. I felt the trepidation. Any minute now, somebody was going to see us: one woman, holding a gun at one man, as they stood beside one car that housed the body of one infant who’d been inexplicably caught up in a war that was fought with blood and innocents.

  ‘You’re not gonna shoot me,’ Guillermo said, the self-assured prick that he was.

  ‘Give me this one thing,’ I urged.

  He glared at me. Neither of us spoke for several long, excruciating moments. Guillermo sighed audibly.

  ‘Put that fucking thing away,’ he said finally. ‘Don’t talk. Don’t tell them your name. Definitely don’t tell them your name.’

  I nodded.

  ‘Wait here.’

  He shook his head again, apparently very disappointed in my sudden raging psychosis, and disappeared into the service door, carrying the pink suitcase in his arms like it was fragile cargo. For all his bravado, Guillermo was one of the good guys. Well, one of the better guys, at least. I felt guilt at the way I’d just treated him, but I’d been desperate.

  Then again, once upon a time I’d believed that Dornan was one of the good guys, and look where we were now. He was a baby trafficker and a fucking murderer.

  I waited beside the car, staring at the fire escape door where Guillermo had disappeared. Just when I thought he’d been lying to me, that he’d taken the boy’s body and gone on with the plan without me, the door opened a crack.

  ‘Hurry up,’ he murmured.

  I entered, jumping a little as the thick steel door closed behind me. My eyes took a moment to adjust to the dim inside, as I followed Guillermo blindly through a series of scuffed linoleum hallways. I started to catch the signs as we walked past. There was a viewing room. Then another. A records room full of boxes and files. The further we got into the belly of this place, the more uneasy I became. The staff stared openly, and I guess I couldn’t blame them. I didn’t belong there. I was dressed for a day on the sofa, watching re-runs on TV, my hair in a messy bun and flip-flops on my feet. I wasn’t exactly dressed for a funeral.

  ‘In here,’ Guillermo said tersely, ushering me through a door. The smell hit me right away. The stench of scorched bones settled into my nostrils and I wanted to gag, but it hardly seemed appropriate. There was a guy, probably in his early twenties, wearing a white plastic apron and white plastic boots that belonged in mud and dirt, not in a place like this. I studied the boots for a moment. It looked like somebody had tried to scrub blood flecks off them and failed. The apron was the same. Dull brown patches that told a harrowing tale.

  I looked from the apron to the boy’s eyes and was shocked to realise he was younger than I’d first thought. His light brown eyes looked dulled by life – no wonder, when he was spending his living hours with the dead.

  ‘Hey.’ I turned my head to Guillermo’s voice, having forgotten him for a moment there. He stared down at something in front of him, pointedly, and my ey
es followed his path.

  Baby Doe was on a small metal table, lying on his side, just as he’d been in the suitcase. His eyes were closed – a small mercy – and Guillermo was arranging a blanket over him.

  I crossed myself, thinking that it had been years since I’d been inside the walls of a church, let alone made the sign of the cross upon myself.

  I try to believe that the next part didn’t happen, but it did.

  I looked away as his bones burned.

  I waited while those bones were ground into dust.

  It was so loud. I hadn’t imagined it would be so loud.

  ***

  I carried him away with me in a box.

  It was so small. Too small to house the remains of what had once been a living, breathing, innocent human being.

  I threw up in the parking lot, feeling the grit of bone dust on my skin, in my hair, and realising that Guillermo had been right – I should never have gone inside.

  But nobody, least of all a child, should have to burn alone, forgotten, in a place called Budget fucking Funerals.

  I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and got back into the car, staring straight ahead.

  ‘You still with me?’ Guillermo asked, putting a hand on my shoulder.

  I nodded. The sorrow inside me splintered, became two halves of something that birthed something new.

  Rage. The sort of quiet rage that turns men into monsters. I felt it crack apart the grief in my chest and travel like vine tendrils, down my veins, until my fingertips and my toes and my cheeks hummed with a hot fury that felt like a fever.

  I vowed to kill Emilio Ross if it was the last thing I ever did.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  MARIANA

  ‘Where are we going?’ I asked Guillermo as we drove.

  ‘Home,’ he replied firmly.

  Home. I’d had a home, once upon a time.

  The small cardboard box on my lap weighed barely a pound, but its weight on my existence was unbearable. This child would never have a home, unless you counted the ground where I would finally bury his remains.

  Guillermo handled the car silently and with purpose, occasionally turning his head ever so slightly to look at me. To check on me? I didn’t return his gaze; I couldn’t. I couldn’t do anything except think about the dead baby who had now been reduced to ash and dust and poured into a small box as if he had never existed.

  The freeway traffic was heavy, and it took us a long time to go across town to Santa Monica. By the time I’d walked into my apartment I was seething. I was rage personified.

  ‘Hey, we gotta talk about this shit. We’re due to see the big man. Where do you think you’re going?’

  I didn’t bother to stop to acknowledge his question. I was on a mission. I stormed into my room, hot tears threatening to roll down my cheeks. I hadn’t let myself think about Emilio while I watched the baby burn, because it had seemed disrespectful to be considering my problems when a child was decomposing into ash in front of my very eyes.

  Guillermo followed me into my bedroom, and that pissed me off. I couldn’t even indulge my rage in private, it seemed. I turned on him, pushing my palms against his broad shoulders.

  ‘Give me five fucking minutes, Guillermo,’ I muttered, pointing to the door. He didn’t move.

  ‘Get out!’ I yelled. ‘Just go.’ I was going to cry. I was going to cry, and once I started, I wasn’t sure if or when I could stop. It was like there was a tidal wave of fear and rage and sorrow that had been building up inside me for ten years, and it had reached tsunami proportions. I was about to lose my shit, and I was about to lose it in a massive way.

  But Guillermo didn’t just go. I pushed him again, hard, and he grabbed my wrists, shaking me. ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ he breathed, his eyes narrowed to slits.

  I couldn’t see his face anymore. All I could see was rage. And in my rage, I saw Emilio in my mind’s eye, dead on the ground, blood leaking from the hole in his head, the hole that I was about to put there.

  ‘I’m going to kill that motherfucker,’ I raged, the answer to all of my problems so simple, yet so profound, it was almost like an epiphany. Guillermo’s face fell, his grip around my wrists lessened, and I pulled myself from him, running into the bathroom. I slammed the door behind me, locking it loudly for effect. It had been six months or more, and every time I was alone in this bathroom all I could think of were two things: Christopher Murphy’s blood circling down my shower drain, and John Portland’s feverish hands as he cupped my face and guided his lips to mine.

  I looked at myself in the mirror as Guillermo pounded his fist on the door. I looked fucking terrible. I’d done my make-up extra special this morning, being that it was my birthday and all. But now, my mascara was plastered over my cheeks, my normally bronze skin was pale and blotchy, and the whites of my eyes were so fucking bloodshot, it was like someone had taken a scouring pad to them.

  ‘Mariana,’ Guillermo called, ‘you’re not killing anybody today.’

  I ignored him, turning on the cold faucet and splashing my face with water to try and snap myself out of my stupor. That image, that singular image of Emilio with blood pumping out of his head, just the same way Murphy’s blood had pumped out of his head, filled me with some kind of renewed hope. I had always wanted to kill him, but I had never really believed that I could.

  Now, I knew that it was the only possible thing left for me to do.

  The cold water didn’t work. It didn’t dissipate my rage; indeed, it only grew. Maybe it was because now I was actually a killer. I’d racked up two kills to my name, and ending Emilio would solve every problem that I had in my life. If he was dead, I would be free. If he was dead, I could have my son back.

  If he was dead, I could finally get out of this fucking place.

  I dried my face with a towel, taking one last look at myself in the mirror. I didn’t bother reapplying my make-up. I didn’t give a shit what I would look like, because either way, Emilio Ross was going down. It was hardly a fucking fashion parade, shooting somebody square in the face.

  I opened the bathroom door, fully expecting to see Guillermo standing outside, waiting for me. But he wasn’t there. I heard a soft beeping noise, and suspicion grew in the pit of my stomach. I stormed through my bedroom, the closest room to the front door, to see him tapping something into the security keypad on the wall. He looked up as I approached, guilt written all over his face, as if I had caught him in the middle of something he didn’t want me to know about.

  My handbag was sitting on the hall table. Inside was my gun. I snatched up the bag, rummaging through it, almost sighing in bitter relief when my fingers touched cold metal. I drew my piece and aimed it at his head.

  ‘Tell me you didn’t just change the fucking security code to try and keep me in here,’ I said.

  Guillermo stood his ground.

  ‘Since when do you think it’s okay to keep aiming a motherfucking gun at me?’ he mocked. ‘I just risked my fucking dick by taking you to the crematorium. Pulled it out of my pants and rested it on the fucking chopping block. And this is how you say thank you?’

  I could hear the blood pumping in my veins, hot and thick and syrupy. That blood, it needed reparation. It demanded it.

  ‘I don’t care about your dick,’ I said, deathly calm.

  He rolled his eyes, bracing himself against the front door. ‘And I don’t care about your little revenge vendetta,’ he snapped back. ‘You stupid girl, you really think you’re going to achieve anything by going down to see the boss man, guns blazing? No. He’ll take you back to San Diego and shove you in that dungeon of his so fast, you won’t even know what’s happening until he slams the door shut on your pretty Colombian face.’

  Well. I didn’t know what to say to that.

  ‘Think about it,’ Guillermo drawled, pointing at his temple. ‘He wanted you to react, Ana. He’s trying to make you crack.’

  I dropped the gun to my side, curiosity winning against the rag
e, at least temporarily.

  ‘Why,’ I asked. ‘Why would he do this now?’

  Guillermo raised his eyebrows. ‘He’s trying to get into everyone’s heads, isn’t he? His right-hand man still hasn’t shown up, alive or dead, and Emilio wants to know what the fuck happened to his supposedly loyal prick of a business associate.’

  Murphy. He was talking about Murphy.

  Guillermo raked his eyes over me. ‘Girl, he knows Murphy visited you. He knows ain’t nobody seen the man after he left you.’

  I swallowed thickly. ‘What are you trying to say?’

  Guillermo took a step forward. ‘Nothing. I ain’t trying to say nothing. I don’t know what happened, and I don’t want to know, because knowing anything like that puts me in the firing line, you hear me?’

  ‘You know he’s dead. You know I killed him.’

  ‘I know you can be fucking stupid, Ana.’

  My anger kicked up a beat. I wanted to kill Emilio. I wanted to feel his blood on my hands. I wanted it to soak into my skin. I wanted his death to become a part of who I was. If that was stupid? So be it.

  ‘Open the door,’ I said, my voice hard.

  He didn’t budge.

  ‘Now, Guillermo.’

  He shook his head. Fucking prick. I responded by taking aim at the door, just to the left of his head, and squeezing down three pounds on a six-pound trigger. If I sneezed, Guillermo would be as good as dead.

  He just stared at me.

  ‘Open. The. Door.’

  ‘No. Fucking. Way.’

  There was a hard rap on the door outside, and it was lucky I didn’t blow Guillermo’s head off. He stepped to the side and ducked, as I stared at the door, panting heavily. I took my finger off the trigger.

  Guillermo glared at me, motioning for me to lower the gun. ‘Jesus fucking Christ, I’m on your side, bitch. Settle down.’

  I was seething. ‘Who did you call?’ I demanded. Guillermo ignored my question, tapping a code into the security pad that I didn’t quite catch, and opened the door with a heavy thunk.