Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 106948 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 535(@200wpm)___ 428(@250wpm)___ 356(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106948 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 535(@200wpm)___ 428(@250wpm)___ 356(@300wpm)
In short order, Nina was bound, nude and covered in bruises and cuts, to the X shape, almost incoherent pleas for mercy falling from her lips, saying that she didn’t mean for it to happen, that the men she’d given Jason to had double-crossed her. Pleas for compassion mixed with her now panting breaths, her one good eye madly roving the room, looking for a hero, for someone to save her. She’d find no forgiveness here.
We’d all loved Jason, Jose and Judith’s first and only grandchild. While Nina had been a mostly absent mother, Fernando had lived and breathed for his kid. Jason’s birthdays were already legendary at the age of five and I’d been assigned to his bodyguard detail at various times over the years, enough that the kid always greeted me with a hug and a smile.
A deep pang of sorrow reverberated through me, my chest aching like someone had beat it with a sledgehammer, breaking ribs and sending deadly shards of razor-sharp bone straight to my heart. I could remember the earthy smell of his little boy hair warmed by the sun, the sweet ring of his laughter. Such a bright light, gone forever.
The tips of Judith’s shiny red heels clicked across the floor as she slowly walked up to Nina, the rest of the room having disappeared for her as her focus narrowed on the evil bitch. Back in the day, before Judith married Jose and semi-retired to focus on being a good mother, Judith had been the Cordova cartel’s torture master, and she made inflicting pain an art form that she greatly enjoyed practicing. Not that she got off on it in any sexual way, but breaking down an enemy, dishing out well-deserved punishment, satisfied her in a way I understood all too well. It fed the beast without breaking whatever particular moral code we subscribed to.
But this—this was personal.
Cocking her head to the side, Judith studied her daughter-in-law’s once supermodel-perfect face. “You have committed the worst crime a mother possibly can, something so heinous it sickens me down to my soul. My grandson, mi dulce bebe. He died alone and in agony because of you.”
A rare tear traveled down Judith’s ashen face while Nina continued her hysterical pleading, saying she was innocent, lying out her ass even though she knew we had video proof of her talking about how she let the kidnappers into her house and poisoned her bodyguards.
I shook my head, seeking out the rage that lived inside of me as I stared at Nina, allowing my own crazy to surface and chill these emotions seething within me. The muscles along my back and hands twitched as I barely restrained the need to join Judith. She’d mentored me during information-gathering sessions with our enemies many times, I was her apprentice of sorts, but this moment was entirely hers.
The breathing in the room picked up as Ramón moved to stand next to his mother, the hatred and disgust on his face making Nina sob anew.
Two of the Cordova cousins moved behind the metal X and together they held Nina’s head in place, their grips digging no doubt painfully into her bruised cheeks.
Ramón handed his mother a knife then pulled a device out of his pocket that I was familiar with.
A mouth spreader.
In short order, Nina’s mouth was held wide open, her shrill screams making it hard to hear what Judith was saying, but I could easily read her thin lips.
“I’m taking your lying tongue, with which you told your baby you loved him.” She swiftly did as she’d said, then closed her eyes and inhaled slowly as one of her bodyguards helped her put on gloves and a white hazmat suit that would soon be red, her cold voice almost clinical in its detachment above Nina’s garbled shrieks. “I’m taking your breasts, a symbol of the motherhood you shit all over. Your fingers will be next, so you can feel what Jason went through when they took his. After that, I’ll slice out your womb, then your eyes—and last of all, I’ll cut your vile heart from your chest. Don’t look forward to death to rescue you from the pain. If I were you, I’d try to hold on to life for as long as I could, because a special place in hell is surely waiting for you. Espero que te pudras en el infierno.”
And so it went, for a long, long time, until Nina finally died in agony.
The entire room was hushed yet still ringing with Nina’s screams, and so very still as Judith turned to us, using a wet wipe Ramón had supplied her with while the cleanup crew got busy.
Judith’s dead gaze locked on mine, and I noticed a fine spray of red droplets in her hair, glittering like rubies. “Leo, come with me, please.”