Page 10 of A New Days Don

Fuck, where am I going to make that money?

They are going to kill me!

Argh! That fucking dealer!

Or perhaps he’s cursing me out for sitting at that table and showing him up, allowing his fragile masculinity from the past few weeks to take yet another hit. He wasn’t going to let me watch as he put down puny hundred-dollar chips.

He gets into his car, slamming his hands down on the steering wheel before starting his white BMW 328i, the same one I had tagged when I found him mouthing off about Samuel’s sicarios. Samuel is the lugartenientes or second-in-command to Thiago, the capo of the Golfo Cartel.

Baldy’s real name is Carter Lopez, a halcone or lowest-ranked drug trafficker and soldier who can’t seem to stay away from the casino for more than a day. Las Vegas is a rough place to live when you have a gambling addiction. It doesn’t matter. After tonight, his addiction will come to an end, and so will his life. But he will also lead me to where the cartel has started to organize in Vegas, and that is the information I need.

The low-level wife beater takes off through the parking lot to the exit of the underground parking lot. I follow him out, keeping myself close enough to get onto the crammed downtown street, but far enough away not to be seen, though after the fourth fruity nightmare he was drinking, I don’t think he’s sober enough to notice even if I were.

As predicted, Lopez, in his freaked-out state, takes me straight to a house. He doesn’t even shut his car off before he staggers in through the front door, leaving it open. I am out of my car and following him onto the property. Peering in through the open door, there are bongs and pills lying everywhere. High men and women shout from somewhere in the distance, and Carter slurs back to them.

“We gotta get more product!” He groans as he staggers down the hallway. He stumbles, and I am surprised the bastard keeps himself standing. I slip into the house, keeping my back to the wall as the shadows slither around me and swallow me into their depths.

As I make my way down the hallway, I keep myself hidden along the dark edges. I’m not here to mess with some low-level enforcers and drug runners, but these people have contacts, and if I have to torture the contacts out of each and every one of them, I will.

Thiago and his cartel haven’t come close to Las Vegas since my father eradicated Thiago’s uncle, his lugartenientes, and some of the closest people in his circle. That led to their subsequent dismantling until…

Until my father’s head was left on my doorstep. The Golfo Cartel are back, and I am going to find them and slowly torture and decapitate every one of them before leaving their bodies to burn for what they did to him.

Red threatens to coat my vision, but I drag myself out of the seething thoughts and back to the thugs in the small basement room. Lopez stumbles in, almost landing on top of a couple who are currently fucking next to the door. She has her tits out, moaning like a porn star over the dirty fucker lying beneath her.

“What do you mean?” One of the men who seems more sober than the rest leans against a dirty stack of crates, narrowing his eyes. He lights a cigarette, taking a drag from it and blowing the smoke in the direction of Lopez.

“I mean, we owe Rodrigez eighty-five thousand by the end of next week, and we got nothin’.” Lopez groans, his face a sickly shade of pale in the single, halogen bulb lighting up the room.

Rodrigez.

Before I can sink further toward the room, there is a silent creak that comes from upstairs as the man leaning against the crate shouts, “YOU MOTHERFUCKER! YOU BLEW ALL OUR MONEY ON GAMBLING?! YOU FUCK!”

I wouldn’t have been able to hear the creak if the man had started screaming a mere half second earlier.

Lopez and the other man start shouting back and forth, but I have already sunk back into the shadows. My new concern being the uninvited guests who are shuffling slowly above us.

The raven-haired woman descends the stairs like a fallen Goddess in her police-grade gear. Her pale skin glows in the dim lighting, and then she freezes.

Lopez and the other man get off each other, still cursing at each other. The small woman looks frozen in stasis as she stares into the room.

What the fuck is she doing?!

Fuck!

I’m not here to be someone’s Godforsaken saviour.

It’s like my body acts of its own accord. I leap from the shadows at the same time the sober man turns toward the door where she stands in a stupor.

One second she’s in plain view, the next I have my hand over her mouth, silencing the scream I knew would come, and pulling her against my chest. Her gun clatters to the floor, and all eyes look to us.

FUCK OFF! Could this get any worse?

She struggles against me, her heart beating out of control. Her breath comes out in shallow, choppy breaths, like turbulent waters.

This isn’t normal panic. Panic isn’t a foreign concept to me. Many men and women have felt brief to extensive bouts of panic in my presence at varying degrees. But nothing has ever felt so all-encompassing.

Where is her team?