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Love,
Each letter felt like a nail in my coffin until I got to the end and I struggled to suck in a breath. I was burying myself— Yuri was forcing me to bury myself. Why do the hard work when you can have your captive do it for you?
I signed my name and fell back, my shoulders smacking into the hard wall. Yuri bent to pick up the paper and read my letter, my death sentence. Satisfied, he nodded. “You need to eat.”
“What’s the point?” I focused my stare at the point where the gray ground met the gray wall, the gray blending together until I wasn’t even sure my eyes were open.
“You won’t get out of here if you die of starvation.”
“I’m starting to think I won’t get out of here period,” I mumbled.
He folded the letter and stuffed it away along with the pen. I watched him pad to the door but instead of leaving, he picked up the tray and returned, kneeling beside me. My eyes flicked to the plate at the mouthwatering scent of peanut butter and cloying jelly. Both spreads dripped down the crust of the bred, plopping in neat dollops on the paper plate. “Eat.” He ordered.
I shook my head. It didn’t matter how bad I wanted to eat— in this, I actually did have a choice.
His jaw tightened and I felt his fury like a heat wave, blasting against the side of my face while he struggled to control it. “Eat,” he ordered again.
I shook my head.
Giving in, he used his thumb to scoop up some of the drippings, a swirl of the peanut butter and purple jelly coated the pad before he dragged the sweet mixture across my bottom lip. I sat frozen as he rubbed, trying to coax my mouth open, and his gaze darkened. The heat wave contorted until it curled down my spine and my core fluttered. It took me by surprise– both my body’s reaction and the growl that slipped out of him.
He was enjoying this a little too much. And so was I.
My lips parted and his thumb pushed forward, the syrupy blend exploding flavor against my tongue. My eyes fluttered closed as I licked, unsure if I was enjoying the sweetness of the food or the sinfulness of his invasion. Both, I settled on.
I suckled on him until the only thing I could taste was his hot skin and he pulled his thumb from my lips with a pop. I was sure my whole body was stained red and I couldn’t help pressing my thighs together to stifle the wetness pooling between them. My eyes stayed shut for fear of the look on his face. Which would be worse? Arrogance or lust?
The tray clanked on the floor next to me and when I pried my eyes open, I sucked in a breath. He was only inches away, his gaze feasting on my lips like any moment he would die to get a taste. I swayed forward, my body reacting on instinct, before my brain started working again. I shoved him back but his hands caught mine, holding me in place while my body throbbed for him. I needed to be away from him, his closeness was like a drug. His scent, his touch, he was too much.
“Please,” I begged, the word slipping out before I could contain it. I hoped he knew I was begging for my own space and not for him to devour me like the predator he was. With a snarl, he let me go, and I exhaled over his receding footsteps.
With him finally on the other side of the cell, I dared a glance and saw that same hunger in his stare.
“Eat. It would be a waste for those lips to go cold.” He pried open the door to leave when the fog of arousal disappeared, anger and resolve rushing in to take its place.
“Your leverage dies with me,” I snapped.
His fingers tightened on the door and for a moment I wondered if he was strong enough to snap steel. “You would rather die than see your enemies succeed?”
My lips pulled into a slight smile. For a man who had everything planned and figured out, he sure didn’t understand anything. My vision cleared and I looked up at him, certain of my words and the hopelessness that came with them. “Dragging you down with me is the only thing I have left.”
A muscle twitched beneath his eye and we stayed like that, staring at each other in the silence of the cell. A stalemate. When he saw himself out, my stomach heaved in ravenous hunger and I shoved the tray away until the sweet scent wasn’t tempting me anymore.
Both of us were learning. Our exchanges felt deeper than just captive struggling against her captor— both of us were at each other’s throats just waiting for the moment to strike. The only thing that separated us was that he needed me alive and I needed him dead. Whether or not I was strong enough to deliver the final blow was another question entirely.
And if neither of us delivered that blow, I feared my will to resist him would wither away until I’d be begging for him to visit me in my cell, begging for his touch against the grayness of captivity. I only had three options. Kill Yuri the first chance I got, starve myself until I took my last breath, or offer up my soul to the devil by giving into my shameful desires.
Instead of dwelling on it, I paced and paced until my feet ached and overshadowed the emptiness in my belly. I pushed all thoughts of him aside because deep down there was a niggling suspicion that the unspoken current between us was made of something so dark and twisted, that it elicited the excitement in my core all over again. I wouldn’t let myself go there— no matter how bad I yearned for it.
I kept pacing. Even as my mouth dried and I stumbled, I kept pacing. As my eyes drifted to the camera pointed directly at me, I paced. While my father was figuring out a way to acquiesce to their demands or spring me from my prison, I was working my own plan— knowing it was just a matter of time until I was lined up perfectly for a checkmate.
Chapter 5
Yuri
The screams faded shortly after I exited the decrepit shed, leaving Matteo to finish the job. He was swift and I could tell by the gurgles that he’d opted for a more intimate kill— using his own hands to strangle the man who’d refused to pay rather than dirty up his knife. Refused was the wrong word. Hecouldn’tpay. But this was business, not charity, and disposing of rats and roaches was what my brother did every day. On the payroll, we kept threesicariosbut none of the other two ever received a call from me. Once my father forced Matteo to pull the trigger on his first kill, my brother was never the same. He did what the job demanded and was barely alive to deal with the rest.
In the cartel business, there were two sides– production and distribution. Both were like the air and water necessary for any organization to survive. Of the two, production was the easiest and in the eighties, when my father Cesar and my uncle Oscar founded the Zaragoza Cartel, anyone wealthy enough to participate in the landgrab of the sierra madre oriental hit the jackpot on merchandise. Up in those mountains sat the perfect growing conditions and our family quickly snatched it up for profit. But cutting down plants and maintaining agriculture was easy– manufacturing it and trafficking it to the hands of paying customers took significantly more work.
