She was better off dead.

And at that thought, the twinge of pity was gone.

I watched as she approached the gate. Though the two guards were facing forward, their eyes hidden by sunglasses, I could tell they were exchanging a look, wondering who was going to kill her first. Orders were orders.

They didn’t need to debate for long. A shot rang out, a bullet to the back of her head, and the whore fell to the ground slowly, as if she had just grown too tired to stand. Blood began to flow from her head.

I craned my neck, mildly curious to see who had done it. I couldn’t see anyone but the guards, which meant it had to have been Franco. It had turned into a hobby for him lately, as if he discovered he had a taste for being a sniper, but it was better the whores than anyone else at the compound.

Somewhere I knew my gardener, Carlos, was cursing himself. Franco never disposed of the bodies, and it would be Carlos’s job once again to do something with her, wash away the red mess from the hot stones. Naturally, he would never complain to me, or someone else would have to clean up his own blood.

There was a knock at the door behind me. I kept my hands behind my back, my eyes glued to the blood that was pouring out of her head, a hypnotic, moving painting.

“Come in,” I said. I didn’t have to turn around to know it was Este. “What was the whore’s name?” I asked, still staring at the growing crimson pond.

The door clicked softly and I felt him step into the room. “Laura,” he said. “She could fuck like no one’s business, hey. You should have tried her. You know I don’t mind sharing.”

I ignored him. “Don’t you think it’s a bit, oh, I don’t know … crude, to have the whores leave this way?” I asked him. “Wouldn’t it be better to kill them in bed?”

I heard him snort. “No, that would be crude. We might as well let them have that bit of hope that they’ll make it out alive, don’t you think? Besides, this is more sporting. It’s hunting. Hunting is elegant.”

I nodded. I supposed he was right. It wasn’t very sporting otherwise. I watched as Carlos came scurrying toward the body and started to drag Laura away. I never asked what he did with the bodies, but as long as I never saw them again, it didn’t really matter. Out of sight, out of mind.

I turned around and eyed Este. “I suppose in a perfect world, we wouldn’t have to kill them at all.”

He smirked and leaned on my desk. “Well, look at you getting all soft.”

I raised my brow. “It’s just a shame that you can’t buy silence anymore.”

He shrugged. “One whore talks and then you get fuckers at your door. We all need to get laid, well at least I do.” A wry look came across his face at that. “There really is no other solution.”

“I suppose not,” I said, and sat down at my desk. I adjusted my watch and stared up at him expectantly. “So, why are you here? Showing off your terrible taste in shoes? Are those made of cardboard?”

He peered down at his feet. As usual the man looked like he’d rolled out of the California surf with his T-shirt, board shorts, and terrible Birkenstocks. Not the image the cartel had at all, but there was no talking style into him. Believe me, I had tried.

He placed a large envelope down on the desk. “Got the email from Martin just a few minutes ago and had these printed out for you.”

I stared at the envelope for a beat before laying my fingers on it and sliding it toward me. A quiver of anticipation ran up my arms and I did my best to quell it.

“I didn’t respond,” Este went on. “He mentioned that the location of the wedding changed at the last minute yesterday, but he was still able to get everything done. I printed out the email. It’s in there too.”

I nodded and slowly opened the flap.

“Should I get anything more from him?”

I shook my head and slid the papers out of the envelope and onto the desk. “No, it doesn’t matter. Martin is dead.”

I glanced up to see Este staring at me with a stunned expression. “So soon?”

“Yes,” I said absently, looking back to the paper in my hands. I skimmed the printed out email.

“What a shame, I liked the guy.”

“I didn’t,” I said. “But he got the job done and that’s all that matters.”

“Kind of like the whores.”

I pursed my lips. “Mmmm,” I conceded. From the email, Martin had done the job well. He had observed Salvador Reyes and his bride from a few days before the wedding and gotten photographs during the ceremony. “But killing women is always so ugly, isn’t it?”

“You see,” Este said, crossing his arms, “right there, that sort of shit surprises me. You know, considering your issues with women and all that.”

I shot him a piercing look. “I don’t have issues.”

“No,” he said slowly with an easy smile on his lips, knowing all too much. “Of course not.”

It was those moments that I hated Esteban Mendoza. Hated that he was my right hand man, hated that he was the closest person to me, even though that never amounted to much. I hated that it would hurt me so to kill him.

“Martin would have talked,” I said to him. “Much like the whores. He did well. Don’t worry, his wife and children will be taken care of.”

Este raised his brows.

“With money,” I supplied quickly. “They will be fine without their father, who was stupid enough to get involved with us to begin with. I’m not cruel.”

“Well, you’re not shooting whores,” he said. “And I’m not worried. You know I rarely worry about you.”

“How touching,” I said wryly.

He walked around the desk and stood behind me, looking over my shoulder. I hated when he did that. “I’m interested in what you think,” he said.

“About what?”

“About her,” he said while I slid a photograph out of the pile. “Mrs. Reyes.”

It was black and white and printed on paper, making it less sharp than a photograph, but it did the job. It was a picture of a woman in a white strapless wedding dress, very fluffy and extravagant from the waist down. Her hands were clasped demurely at her front, her face caught in a nervous smile.

She was extremely beautiful but that was to be expected. The country’s most flagrant excuse for a drug kingpin would never marry anyone less than stunning, and this woman, Luisa, fit the bill. But despite her body, with her round, perky tits and elegant neck, her long dark hair and classic face, there was another layer to her that immediately got me hard. It was this look in her eyes. They were so pure and soft, giving her radiance that seemed to leap off the page.

I wanted nothing more than to have her on her knees, have her fix those round, angelic eyes on me and watch as I pinned her down and came right into them. I would take her purity and make her see the world for what it really was—a hot, sticky mess at the end of my dick.

“I bet she’d be a tight little fuck,” Este leered over my shoulder.

I shot him a disgusted look. “She’s not a whore, Este,” I chided him.

“Not to you,” he said, as I looked at the next picture of her, now with Salvador at her side.

“I mean it,” I said, my eyes drawn to her again and again. “No one is touching her. Not you, not Franco.”

“I give you my promise,” Este said. “But Franco can barely control himself around the whores.”

“No one is touching her,” I repeated. “She will be our hostage. She is collateral. No one is laying a hand on her.”

“Except for you, I assume.”

She almost seemed too good to even touch. I couldn’t wait to break her down. “She is very valuable,” I admitted.

I flipped through a couple more photographs and grew harder at each one. I wished Este would just fucking leave so I could deal with it. I almost wished Laura was still alive so I could flip her over and come all over her back. I never fucked the women around here, but that didn’t mean I didn’t use them.

“You know,” Este said, his lazy voice starting to grate on me. “If Martin had been there close enough to spy on them, close enough to photograph, why didn’t you just get him to put a bullet in Salvador’s head? Especially if Martin was going to die anyway.”

I eyed him warily, disappointed that he could be so rash. “Because life is a game and we’re all just trading cards. We play the right hand to get ahead.” I studied the smiling, ignorant face of Sal as he stared at his bride. “Death stops the game. It’s too final, too inflexible. Death is viciously stubborn.”

When Este didn’t say anything, I looked up to see a dull gleam in his eyes. I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose, annoyed at his ineptitude. “What good would killing Salvador do? Right? David Guirez or whoever, anyone, someone, they would step in and take over faster than you can shit after your coffee, and nothing will have changed. Look at Travis Raines. The moment he died, I was able to slither on through to the top, to right here, right now.”

“Only because you killed Travis,” he noted. “More or less.”

“We killed Travis,” I corrected him. “Anyway, the point is that the dead make lousy deals. If we want the shipping lane, we have to force him to give it to us. Killing him does nothing. Taking his new bride, now that will do something.”

“You sound so sure,” Este said, walking around the desk.

“I have no reason not to be sure,” I said. “They are newlyweds. He needs her, he wants her. We will get her soon, before he gets bored of her cherry ass. Sal has pride. We all do. It is our weakness. I know that enough about myself to know it about others.”

He smoothed his hand over the scruff on his chin and gave me a smooth nod. “All right.”