Manipulate (Deliver 6)

Sometimes she was assigned a job, small tasks, such as eavesdropping on a conversation, delivering a verbal message, or overseeing a drug trade.

Hector never made her enter another area in the prison, touch an illegal substance, or take a life. But she was part of his criminal operation, contributing to its corruption.

Violence was necessary to maintain order in the cartel. She’d grown numb to it, started to justify it, because it was for the common good of Area Three.

Pulling in a breath, she followed Garra into the corridor. She didn’t have to ask why this meeting had been called.

The González Cartel was recruiting people, convincing them that La Rocha Cartel was losing power. Every person who stepped foot in Area Three was under the microscope, even if it was just a short visit.

Most of the men who came in wanted to join this side and vocally declared their allegiance. Others weren’t as transparent about their intentions.

The two American prisoners had shared nothing about themselves. No one knew their cartel affiliations or their reasons for coming to this side of Jaulaso.

Were they recruiters for the González Cartel? Spies from one of the gangs? Or random nobodies like her, just looking for a safer place to sleep?

They were the reason Hector had called this meeting.

Their fate was about to be decided.The meeting began with updates on business outside of the prison. Tula stood with her back to the room and thumbed through Hector’s vinyl record collection, half-listening to the cadence of deep voices.

Behind her, Hector sat at the table with his closest advisers—Garra, Luis, and a loudmouth, heavy-set vato named Simone. Hector’s eclectic taste in music fascinated her far more than Simone’s complaints about a missing shipment of heroin.

As they argued back and forth, she dug to the bottom of the record stack. His collection included everything from Renaissance composers to Latin American pop, but the majority of the albums covered the breadth of 1960’s British bands.

She flipped quickly through the ones she’d seen before. The Beatles, The Who, The Kinks, The Rolling Stones…

Wait.

She jumped back to the previous record and slid it from the pile.

On the sleeve, a blond lady with bouffant hair smiled beneath the title, Petula Clark’s Greatest Hits.

Who was Petula Clark?

“The new arrivals are Martin Lockwood and Ricardo Saldivar.” Hector’s soft melodious Spanish drew her gaze over her shoulder. “They were booked on drug trafficking charges.”

“Are they cartel?” Garra rested his forearms on the table. “Did González plant them?”

She abandoned the records and drifted toward the conversation, her attention piqued.

“I don’t know.” Hector met her eyes and gave her a gentle smile before shifting his gaze back to the group. “We don’t have anything on them.”

That was always the case. The moment a convict was booked into Jaulaso, the prison guards notified Hector. He was given a name and little else.

Funny how La Rocha Cartel knew their shit when it came to drug peddling and illegal firearms, but when they needed to investigate a guy, they were at a loss.

So they did what they did best. They resorted to violence.

“I don’t care who they are.” Simone ran a finger along his thick mustache. “We need to get rid of them.”

He wasn’t talking about eviction. They rarely kicked a man out of Area Three. The rejection wouldn’t just send a prisoner away mad. It would incite him to join sides with the enemy.

La Rocha needed to grow its numbers, not send potential members to the other side.

“Remember what happened the last time we killed a new arrival?” Garra arched a black eyebrow. “We can’t risk another riot.”

Her thoughts exactly. When they made inmates disappear without justification, it caused unrest in Area Three. The inmates started questioning their own longevity within the structure, wondering if and when they were next. That kind of uncertainty bred low morale and weakened loyalties, which often led to an uprising.

After narrowly surviving three riots in two years, she shuddered at the thought of another one.

She paced behind Hector until he pulled out the chair beside him and motioned for her to sit.

“Thank you.” She lowered into the seat.

“We need to take them out without anyone knowing it’s us.” Simone drummed his chubby fingers against his thigh.

“Check this out.” Luis leaned in, eyes glimmering. “We’ll have a big party. Once the two gabachos are drunk out of their minds and everyone else is passed out, I’ll go in there and beat them to death.”

Everyone laughed but her.

These guys loved to party. A lot of women, cocaine, and alcohol. More than that, they loved to spill blood.

“I’ll make it look like one of the inmates did it.” Luis smiled proudly. “It’s a good idea, yeah?”

More laughter. Several head nods. Everyone seemed on board.

Brawls between inmates were accepted as the norm. Broken bones and knife wounds determined pecking orders and gave the caged animals an outlet to burn off steam. While infighting didn’t usually result in death, sometimes it happened.