by Sienna Blake
The smile she gave me back was forced.
* * *
Abel was waiting for me on my couch, robed in black like a Master of Death, when I returned to the Tyrell apartment at about ten past six that morning. “Where’ve you been?” His face was twisted into a snarl, probably from having to wait for me.
“For me to know and for you to find out.” I walked past him into my bedroom, barely glancing at him, an obvious dismissal.
He followed me. I could practically smell his acrid breath over my shoulder. “You’re late. Your father’s waiting.”
“Calm down, dog. Let me drop my gym bag and we can be off.”
As I dropped my bag on my still-made bed, I felt my burner phone buzzing in the bottom of the bag. Julianna. She was the only one who had that number. Why was she ringing me at six in the morning A strange feeling echoed in the pit of my stomach. Whatever it was, I couldn’t take her call now. I’d have to wait until I got back from…whatever my father had planned. I grabbed the gun from my bedside table and strapped it to my hip.
“Where are we going?” I asked when the driver of the limo that drove Abel to fetch me missed the turnoff towards my father’s mansion, continuing down the highway out of Verona. Seeds of apprehension sprouted weeds in my gut.
Abel smirked at me from the opposite seat, a slimy thin-lipped smile that made his scar whiten. “For me to know and for you to find out.”
Bastard. I strained not to fidget in the leather seat, watching the city hurtling past.
My stomach had become a knot of thorns as the limo pulled up into a small airfield. My father and a small entourage of black-suited men were waiting, a private jet waiting behind them, our family crest emblazoned in gold on the tail and wings.
“I said seven o’clock takeoff,” snapped my father to Abel as we got out of the limo.
“Apologies, sir. We were delayed.” Abel shot me a murderous stare.
My father grunted and turned towards the plane. I repeated my question to him as I strode beside him, watching our long morning shadows like ominous twins before us on the tarmac.
My father clasped me on the shoulder, pushing me forward to take the short flight of steps up to the jet. “It’s time you learn about the true heart of our business, son.”
“The true heart?” I sank into a plush cream leather seat inside the luxurious cabin.
My father nodded. “We’re going to Colombia.”
30
____________
Roman
Six hours later, we landed on a private airstrip, a leveled field in the middle of a dense jungle. Our entourage piled into three camo-painted four-wheel drives and took off down a dirt track through the forest. My stomach was rumbling as I was thrown around in the back seat, the air humid and stifling so that with every breath it felt like I was taking in less and less oxygen. My father sat to my left, Abel in the front seat.
We broke through the jungle and passed through a heavily guarded gate. Up a long gravel driveway surrounded by trees was a monstrous house on a hill, all glass and whitewashed walls making it look like a ripe, unnatural pimple upon the earth. We could have been on the gaudy side of Hollywood hills, except for the wild monkeys that scattered through the trees as we approached. We pulled up in front of the circular driveway. A thickset figure stepped from the door wearing a pressed white shirt unbuttoned at the collar, matching white pants and blue snakeskin shoes. He had an unlit cigar in his mouth.
“Well, well, well,” he said in greeting. “Baby brother has finally come to visit me.”
Marco, my other brother. I hadn’t seen him in eight years. I didn’t come back from Europe when the news broke that he had been charged for knifing a man in the back during a bar and had fled the country. That had been six years ago.
“Marco. It’s been a while.” He seemed smaller than I remembered. Then again, I’d grown a lot in eight years. He looked less like the fearsome and unyielding brother that I remembered, and more like a man who was trying too hard to be a king. His swagger looked borrowed and his ego seemed much too big for him.
Marco shot me a smirk. “It’s such a coincidence that Jacob was murdered, leaving you to snatch the Tyrell throne. Have you come to steal the rest of my inheritance, too?” he asked, the bitterness clear in his tone.
He should have been the one by my father’s side today, not the one exiled to a savage jungle country. He should be the next in line to the throne, the king of Verona and all that surrounded it. He still hadn’t accepted the fact that he had been the hot-headed idiot who thought that being a Tyrell meant that you were invincible in the eyes of the law; we were, but only if you were smart about it. He was still looking for someone to blame for his demotion, his misfortune. I was the clear target, the usurper to his rightful throne. He couldn’t see that the “prize” was really a chain around my neck. He didn’t realize that the “heaven” he desired with a sickness was actually hell. My hell.
The air filled with hot tension. I could feel all the men’s eyes on me, waiting to see what I would do. I would be judged by my actions. My weakness studied. My faults assessed. I could not look weak or I would be killed in my sleep here by an ambitious soldier. Or by my brother himself.
I leapt out of the jeep and landed toe to toe with Marco, gravel flicking out from my heels. Marco flinched. First point to me.
I lifted my lip in a sneer. “And if I did want to take it, who has the power to stop me? You, brother?” I spat out. I rolled my eyes over his body. I towered over him by two inches now. He’d let himself grow soft, his belly tumbling out of the top of his suit pants. “Too bad you let yourself go. I’d gut you before you could touch me.”
Marco let out a forced laugh and looked around at our audience. A red flush had crept up his neck. “I was just joking, Roman. Lighten up.”
I gave him a tight smile. “I’m not,” I said in a voice low enough so only he could hear. “Watch your step, Marco.”
“Where’s your wife? Where’s little Azucena?” my father asked, breaking the tension. Marco cleared his throat, shot me a weary look, and moved past me to walk my father through the open French doors. After he’d fled here, Marco had married a local Colombian girl. Azucena was the daughter that they’d adopted because his wife couldn’t have children naturally. She’d be eleven now if I remembered correctly. I’d never met her.
“Sofia’s in Bogota with Azucena,” I heard Marco say, a note of contempt in his voice. “Spending my money on shoes and dolls and God knows what else. It’s just us men.”
I followed them through the climate controlled house. It was an attempt to replicate my father’s mansion back in Verona; all glaring white and too much cold marble. Abel and the other suited monkeys cleared the rooms before they stationed themselves around the house like a well-oiled circus.
Marco took us out to the back balcony that stretched almost the length of the living area inside, coca plantations like a patchwork quilt across the jungle beyond. My family owned all the land as far as the eye could see, bursting with the flat leaves of the coca plant as green as money.
“We can produce cocaine here at about $1,500 per kilo in our labs,” my father said to me as we stood along the balustrade. He cut off the end of a Camacho cigar and lit it, the ruby end sparking as he puffed away. “It sells for up to $50,000 per kilo in America. A return of over 3,000 percent,” he announced in a puff of smoke like some kind of magic trick.
Three thousand percent return. It only cost you your soul.
“Marco oversees the operations from this side,” my father said. I glanced at Marco and found him already glaring at me. “If you’re to run the American side, you need to know how it works. We’ll take you for a tour through the plantation in a little while. But first, we eat.”
After lunch, an over-catered affair of imported meats, cheeses, breads, pasta and Dom Perignon, we took the same four wheel drives through the plantations. We passed gaunt sun-leathered workers being carefully guarded by well-fed
men with rifles.
“We provide work for the local communities,” my father said as we drove past field after lush field. “We’ve installed streetlights, provided clean running water, built a local school. We’ve done much to support them. They are much better off.”
I could only stare at him as the jeep rattled my bones. He truly thought he was doing good. The drug dealer with a heart of gold. I wanted to puke.
We passed through the workers’ camp, a jumble of huts ramshackled together from plastic tarp and plywood. Among the matchbox homes, I spotted a few females in short skirts and tight tops leaning against a wall. Their faces followed us as we passed. Other than that, they didn’t move. I caught the gaze of one, long dark hair in a ratty mess, thick, swollen mouth. Something seemed dead in her eyes. My gut twisted.
“Who are they?” I asked.
It was Marco who flashed me a grin from the front seat of the jeep. “Got to provide the workers some form of entertainment.”
I tasted bile at the back of my throat. These ladies were hookers. Used for sex. “Are they paid for what they do or forced?”
“They’re fed and clothed,” Marco said. “Isn’t that enough?”
The horror must have shown on my face because my father laughed. “Honestly, Roman. Anyone would think you were a bleeding-heart pussy.”
“If you like,” Marco said with a wicked grin, “we can organize one or two of them to entertain you tonight after dinner.”
A realization hit me like a sucker punch to the liver. This plantation had been funding my extravagant lifestyle in Europe the past eight years. I didn’t know. Truthfully, I didn’t want to know. It was easier for me to focus on my singular problems, to stick my head in the sand. To remain in my comfortable, luxurious ignorance.
I was no longer ignorant. This time I was not running away. I had a new plan.
I would bide my time. Wait until my father had passed, inherit his dirty empire, then dismantle it from the inside. I could do that. I could claw my way into being the kind of man who deserved to walk down the busiest street of Verona, chin held high and holding Julianna Capulet’s hand. Maybe even her father could learn to like me. Perhaps, eventually, see me as a son.
I was jolted out of my daydream by a series of yells. The jeep skidded to a halt in front of a large cluster of buildings, the labs where the coca leaves were dried.
“What’s going on?” demanded my father.
Marco jumped out of the front seat and snapped orders to a few of his men. Beyond them the yelling continued, the air ripe with tension. Now the Tyrell heritage was clear; with his back straight and a determined furrow to his brows, he seemed even taller. He could have been my father at a younger age.
I slid out of the jeep, my gun in my hands, as Abel helped my father out, his men scrambling from the other vehicles to form a protective circle around us.
Movement alerted my attention. A group of soldiers were dragging a bruised and bleeding man towards us. I almost recoiled as my mind threw me a picture of Vinnie Torrito, swollen with blood under his thin skin, face screwed up in pain. Inside I yearned to tear the unknown man from the rough hands clamping him in place, I wanted to pick him up from his knees. Outside, I numbed my features and stood my ground like a coward.
The man was shaking, begging in Spanish. I caught the words “yo no fui” and “ayúdame, Jesus”.
I didn’t.
Help me, Jesus.
We were a long, long way from help here. And Jesus never tread upon this land.
Marco strode up alongside the victim and pointed a gun at his head. “This sonofabitch was trying to steal from us,” he yelled, his voice like the crack of a gunshot, his face overripe, veins straining at the neck.
Around us, brightly colored parrots fled in terror. The sun hid her face behind a cloud. The faces of workers pressed against all the panes of glass of the buildings.
My father turned to me. “Roman, here is an opportunity for you to show us just what kind of leader you are.”
His dark eyes pinned me down. Don’t disappoint me, they seemed to threaten.
Around me I saw the sneers of my brother’s soldiers, heard the unspoken doubt that I had the balls to command as my father and brother did. Quieter, underneath the hostility, I sensed the collective held breath of the powerless workers. Would I be a tyrant just like my father, or would I show mercy?
“What has he stolen?” I asked.
Abel sneered. “Money. Drugs. What does it matter?”
Marco and Abel shared a uniting look, two men who have recognized that each other share a common enemy.
I shifted slightly. “How do we know he stole—”
“I am telling you he stole from our family. From us. From you,” Marco said, his voice booming like a megaphone. “Are you calling me a liar?”
I swear I heard Abel chuckle.
My eyes found the man still on his knees in front of me. He was begging now, his soft chanting now broken by hiccups and repressed sobs. His hands were clasped in front of him as best as he could with his elbows being held back. His fingers, despite being dirty, were elegant, long and distinctly feminine. If he had been born in another situation, perhaps he would have been a musician.
My windpipe felt crushed. This man would have no trial. He would get no fairness bestowed upon him. An unlucky birth had given him a cruel past but his future I would single-handedly tear from him. I could show him no mercy. No matter how much my soul screamed for it.
I could feel all their eyes on me. Waiting for my verdict, my judgment, my punishment. If I wasn’t harsh enough, I’d be laughed at. Accused of being weak, of having too much of a heart. I’d never make it out of here alive. I’d never live to dismantle this poisonous inheritance of mine.
If I wanted to survive, I had to be ruthless.
If I wanted to bring down the Tyrell empire from within, I had to first become like my father.
I had to walk like him, talk like him, punish like him.
I tore my eyes away from the accused and shut off his prayers from my ears.
No mercy.
A greater good. My chest swelled with purpose.
“Bring all the other workers outside and tell them what he’s done,” I said. “String him up, shoot him in front of them. Leave his body for the vultures and jaguars.” A bullet to the head would be the kindest thing for him now. It would be a quick death, a painless one. I would make sure that his family received an anonymous windfall. Measly restitution for the death of a loved one, but it was the best that I could do.
“Excellent plan,” my father said. “That’ll teach the rest of them never to steal from a Tyrell.” He turned to me. Like a father bestowing a toy at Christmas, he said, “You can be the one to punish him.”
I was too numb at this point to flinch. This “kindness” from my father, I had been expecting.
“Perhaps,” Marco said, his tone deceptively helpful, “shooting him would be too kind.” He uncoiled a rough python of a whip from his belt and held it out. “This would make a more painful and effective punishment.” His eyes glittered at me, mocking me, daring me to take it.
Don’t flinch. Don’t you dare flinch, Roman.
I took the whip, weighing the rough handle in my hands. The knotted tail had been stained with something dark brown. Blood.
Marco sneered at me, a hatred etched into his features. He was jealous. His baby brother being raised up higher than him in front of all his men. I needed to be careful tonight that I didn’t have my throat slit in my sleep. “Careful you don’t whip yourself, brother.”
They tied the man up with his back to me. The coward in me was thankful I couldn’t see his face.
His crying sounded muffled in my ears as if I were drowning underwater. My vision had taken on a blurry quality. And when I lifted my arm to make the first strike, it didn’t feel like my arm. I was merely an observer, watching through another’s eyes.
The whip came down across his back, opening it t
o the sky. Violent red blood appeared like a warning. Stop. Stop! His screams took on an anguish that fisted into my heart.
To my horror, a rush of power surged through my veins. Power. I held this man’s life in my hands. I was a god.
I hated myself for feeling it.
Don’t lie, Roman. You love the power. You are a Tyrell. Give in to it. Take it.
I was becoming everything I feared. Everything I had fought so long not to become.
A fury rose out of me. It had nowhere to go except towards the man before me. You fool. Why did you have to steal from my family? Why did you have to make me do this? The anguish released from me in the frenzied furious slashing of my whip.
Crack. Crack. Crack.
He screamed louder, his voice echoing across the wide sky like the pained cries of the jungle birds, cries that would later rouse me from my bed. Between screams I could hear the muffled sobs and whispers of the workers behind me. Monster. Monster. Monster. They would chase me from wake to sleep like my shadow.
Then it stopped. All the noise ended in a collective hushed gasp. Even my brother, who had been laughing, had fallen into silent horror.
All the noise except for the bark of my whip. Crack. Crack.
Someone grabbed my forearm poised above me and the whip coiled at my feet like an obedient snake.
My father stared at me with gravity. “That’s enough, son.”
That’s enough.
I turned around slowly. I caught the look on my brother’s face: fear. Then Abel’s: respect.
My eyes came to rest upon what was left of the man who was screaming no more. I had torn him to ribbons. A mess of flesh stripped off bloody bones remained wrapped around the tree.
Later that night in my brother’s den, as we all sat our well-fed selves in armchairs so soft it was like sitting in the lap of angels, I heard the whispers of the devil. Yo no fui, he taunted. Ayúdame.
Through the nameless ghost of the man I had whipped to death, my father raised his glass to me. “I’m proud of you, son.”