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I tore my attention away from the gun and back to my father and brother. Pablo was a year older than me, and we’d always been close. He had always been less fiery than my sister and me, much more mellow, and his laidback temperament meant that we got along most of the time.
‘Papa?’ I choked. Revulsion and despair engulfed me as I looked upon the man who had raised me. Physically, he was everything Emilio Ross was not — balding, overweight, a sheen of sweat coating his brow as he knelt in one of the cheap suits he wore like a uniform. He’d been on his way out, judging by his slicked-back hair and the fact he was still wearing a suit this late at night.
Emilio’s men had probably arrived just as he was getting antsy and about to go out and spend whatever cash he had on a losing bet. His biggest weakness was cards, poker, more specifically, but he’d been known to bet on anything and everything. He almost never won any money, and if he did, he just lost it all again. The house always won. Our house always lost.
Emilio nodded at the guard in front of my father and brother and the guy responded without missing a beat, aiming his Beretta expertly between my father’s eyes.
‘Wait!’ I cried, and the thug flicked me a look of derision before returning his attention to my father. I watched in horror as he applied a few pounds of pressure to the trigger, millimetres away from letting the clip loose into my papa’s head.
‘Emilio,’ my father said nervously, pressing his meaty palms together in a desperate prayer, ‘please believe me when I tell you I was ambushed by those motherfuckers. They were tipped off!’
I sucked in a breath, watching Emilio as he stared my father down. ‘You lost us a lot of money, Marco. A lot of money. And you were drunk. You understand?’
‘I know,’ my father blubbered, still holding his hands together in prayer. I doubted that Emilio Ross was going to take pity on him because he was begging. ‘I swear, Emilio, I swear I will repay you. Everything of mine is yours. Take my house, take it all.’
Emilio’s mouth turned down at the edges as if he’d just sipped sour milk. He glanced around at the peeling wallpaper, the dented fridge, and then, he looked at me.
‘I’ll take her,’ he said, his eyes lighting up as he pointed at me.
My stomach dropped. He’ll do what?
My father’s eyes grew wide. ‘No, please. Anything, Emilio, but not my family. Please, sir, not my family.’
Sadness washed over me as I listened to my father beg for my life. I might have been mad at him, and he might have been a shitty father, but he didn’t deserve to die on his knees, execution style. It would be like ripping the last piece of his dignity away and grinding it into the dirt he’d be buried in. But it seemed those were his only two options — die in the dirt, or let Emilio take me away and do God only knew what with me.
‘Then I kill you all now,’ Emilio said, nodding at the guy with his gun to my father’s head.
‘Wait!’ I demanded shrilly, reaching out and closing my bound hands around Emilio’s arm. ‘Take me. I’ll do whatever you want. Just please don’t kill them.’ The words tasted like ash in my mouth as I observed the look in this man’s eyes. Soulless. He was enjoying this.
‘Your father has disrespected me greatly,’ Emilio said, shaking my hand off like it was a dead cockroach. ‘Whether I take you or not, cholita, he must pay the price for his mistakes.’
‘Please,’ I begged. ‘Please just take me and let them go.’ My heart leapt as a spark of something appeared in Emilio’s eyes and he raised his hand to the guard, who lowered his gun slightly and took his finger from the trigger.
‘You could kill him,’ I pressed on. ‘He probably deserves it, for what he’s done. But wouldn’t it be so much better to let him live? For him to know, every day for the rest of his life, that his transgressions were paid for with the life of his daughter? For him to suffer, knowing it was all his fault?’
I was angry, but I could not watch my father — my whole family — be executed in front of me.
A small glimmer of hope wrapped itself around my chest and contracted painfully; Emilio was listening.
‘Wouldn’t it be more satisfying,’ I continued, ‘to destroy him completely, instead of just putting a bullet in his head? Isn’t that too kind a retaliation? Your cartel is named Il Sangue. What is more important to any man than blood, the blood of his family?’
Emilio’s lip curled.
‘If it doesn’t work out, you can still kill us all,’ I pleaded. ‘Please. My mother and my brother and sister don’t deserve to die because of my father’s mistakes.’
‘No, baby,’ my father said urgently. ‘Better for them to kill me than put their hands on you. You don’t deserve that.’
I narrowed my eyes as I took in his stricken expression, softened by booze. I could tell he was struggling to keep up with things since he was half drunk, and that realisation lit my veins on fire as anger burst inside my chest. ‘That’s not an option,’ I snapped. ‘They either kill us all,’ I flicked my gaze to Emilio, ‘or this man is smart enough to realise how much more money he could make from me.’ I swallowed the last of my lingering fear and stood straighter.
‘I’ll clean your house, I’ll smuggle your drugs, I’ll suck your dick, I’ll do your books. I’ll fuck your sons and I’ll lick your boots if that’s what it takes. Just please,’ there was that horrible word again, ‘please don’t kill them.’
‘Mariana!’ my father yelled. ‘Stop this talk!’
Emilio frowned, completely ignoring my father. ‘I prefer blondes.’
I fought the urge to roll my eyes as I tried not to imagine just what this dirty old man preferred doing with blondes.
‘For you,’ I said sweetly, ‘I’d wear a wig.’
