Total pages in book: 124
Estimated words: 116046 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 580(@200wpm)___ 464(@250wpm)___ 387(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 116046 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 580(@200wpm)___ 464(@250wpm)___ 387(@300wpm)
It had been close to a year since we lost Jason, my bright eyed and loving nephew who’d been one of the few sources of real happiness in my life. To say he’d been adored was an understatement. From the moment I first held his tiny form in my arms and looked into his baby blue eyes, I’d lost my heart to the kid. And I wasn’t alone.
While Leo had extracted his pound of flesh from Nina before my mother tortured her to death, there was a list of people a mile long who wished Nina was still alive so they could make her suffer. Even in the fucked up criminal world I lived in, a mother getting her kid killed for money was shocking, and they all agreed that my mother’s slow dismemberment and slaughter of Nina, with me and my cousin’s physical help, was a fitting end to a ruthless bitch. Some may say we went too far, but I promise you, if your child was tortured to death, your outlook on justice would swiftly change.
While her end was fitting and swift, the destruction Nina wrought while she was alive continued to hurt us, day after day, with her evil actions. My nephew’s death changed me, hardened me in a way I knew could be dangerous if I didn’t find a way to bring some light into my life. In many ways, I’d never experienced unconditional love until I met my nephew, never really knew what it was like to love someone unconditionally like I loved him.
But no matter how tormented I was about Jason’s passing, for my brother Fernando…well, his life was living hell.
Sorrow filled me as I sank to my knees next to the bed of my older brother. He continued to fight weakly against his bonds while my mother’s personal physician, an elderly Asian man who worked miracles, sank a needle into Fernando’s arm. The doctor’s expression was tight with sadness and anger as he gave Fernando’s shoulder a soothing pat. Like most of the people that worked directly for my parents, he’d known us since birth, and like the rest of us, it hurt him to see my brother reduced to this.
My heart ached as I looked at Fernando’s gaunt cheeks, his full lips pulled into thin pale slashes as he sobbed and cursed. “Please, Dad, I’m begging you. Let me die.”
“I will not,” my father spat out. He visibly struggled to hold himself together and remain calm despite his visible tremble. “I’m tired of this shit, Fernando. You have to stop trying to hurt yourself.”
The drugs must have hit my brother’s system because he slowly began to relax. He looked over at Leo, the Cordova cartel’s torture master and one of my best friends, then slowly shook his head. “Leo, you have to let Hannah go.”
“Never,” Leo replied in a cold voice, his dark eyes menacing as he glared at Fernando. “You’re lucky as fuck you’re insane, or I’d be beating the shit out of you right now for what you said to my woman tonight. This was supposed to be a nice dinner, to introduce her to everyone, and instead we have to deal with yet another fucking suicide attempt, another drunken rage where you hurt everyone around you. Hannah didn’t deserve all that bullshit you flung at her. Enough, already.”
Fernando flinched, but continued to hold Leo’s gaze. “You brainwashed her into loving you, brainwashed her to be loyal to the cartel, and you expect me to just be okay with it? To be all right with the fact that you and my mother messed with her mind? You turned her into a fucking sheep. If she’s smart, she’ll run as far away from you as she can and never look back.”
“You know that’s not fucking true,” Leo roared. “You can’t brainwash someone into loving you. It doesn’t work. My Hannah loves me because I worship the ground she walks on, and she knows it. I give her what she needs, I take care of her in every way, and I love her more than anyone in this world. So, watch your fucking mouth, you pathetic piece of shit, and man the fuck up.”
Clearly glassy eyed with drugs, Fernando snorted, then said, “Baaaa.”
I leapt up to restrain Leo as he lunged for Fernando, my moron brother cackling in the background like a lunatic.
“Easy, my friend.”
“Enough,” my father growled as he straightened the cuffs of his dress shirt, his bald head gleaming with perspiration.
It had taken all three of us to wrestle Fernando into the restraint bed, my drunk and high brother insisting we let him kill himself so he can join his dead son in heaven.
Stupid fuck was too drunk to realize that, when he died, he was going right to hell with the rest of us.