Oh, my God. I had no words. None. His own sister? To teach a lesson? To demonstrate power and control? How fucking demented.
"I scarfed it all down for Mamá, avoiding her eyes the whole time, and with a gun pointed at the back of my skull. Thiago ate some of it with me to help. Manuel didn't seem to care that he did. He was too busy enjoying the fact that he was fucking his own damn relative," he ground through clenched teeth. "Mamá wouldn't stop crying, and I could tell she wanted to turn and destroy him, but I could also tell she was taking it and not fighting back for my sake. She always endured the worst for me, but I think this was the worst she’d gotten because of my mouth. I was impulsive and could never shut up, and she always paid the price for it.
“I was getting fuller and fuller by the second. I threw up once, right in my own lap, but I started right back up and kept eating, stuffing myself until every plate was clean. And when I was done, he finally stopped, walked over to me, and came on me. He came . . . on me. Like I was his whore. Some fell on my cheek, my chest, and my pants. I’ll never forget what he said to me. He said, 'Remember that the next time you try to defy me. I'll fuck your mother right in front of you and use the cum her pussy milked out of me just to squirt it all in your ugly fucking face.'"
The room is dead silent. I can hear my ears ringing from it—a shrill ring of both terror and truth that nearly deafens me.
Draco finally releases his clenched fists and walks to the painting, nostrils flaring, scowling.
"I think he drew out a side of me that I never wanted to conjure up. A side of me that I always knew was there, but didn’t think I’d have to use until I was a little older. I'd seen it before, around my father, around Lion, even from some of the guards. It’s a darkness that sweeps over, a shadow that you can’t get rid of. It claims your soul for life. I wasn't blind to that sort of darkness, but I never thought I would become the man I did. Something inside me broke that day. It snapped—" he snaps his fingers"—just like that. No warning. No signal. Something just went off inside me, like my internal clock on patience and values had finally run out.
“That very same night, I shot the guard he paid to put the gun to my head, for betraying me. I shot him when he took a smoke break out by the beach, with the first pistol my father ever gave to me. I wanted to wait to kill him. I could come back for him. He was alone, so I hid him by that brown shed, left him injured, making him think he’d die slowly by bleeding out. And afterwards, I went up to Manuel's room—this very room right here—and stabbed him in his sleep. Right in the stomach. He thought I was weak, that I was too afraid of repercussions to retaliate. He was a fucking idiot to ever let his guard down while I was still around. He didn’t scare me. He only fueled the rage I had trapped inside me, giving me more than enough reason to unleash my aggressions.” His jaw pulses, face as hard as stone.
“I stabbed him one good time, just so he could bleed out and suffer, but still feel everything else I did to him. I stuffed his mouth with his own dirty, cum-stained underwear. I cuffed him to the bed with the chains I grabbed from the brown shed. I wanted him to see my face as I tortured him—as I sliced his face open, gash by slow gash. I wanted him to feel it when I gouged out his eyeballs and then slit his throat, bit by bit, relishing his agony. I wanted to watch him bleed and suffer. I wanted him to know that he was paying the price for every moment I sat at that table for breakfast. It wasn’t a quick death. Trust me on that. It was slow and painful. I’m certain he felt everything, and I took immense satisfaction in that.”
That sounds familiar. Too familiar. It’s the same thing I wanted for Bain. Slow and painful. Not the easy way out.
“He was my first kill, and I don't regret a damn thing about it,” he goes on. “In fact, I recall enjoying it rather immensely. I sometimes wish I could do it over and over again, the same way he plunged in and out of my mother, over and over again, knowing he was hurting her. Knowing he had shamed her and abused her trust and taken advantage of her when she was so vulnerable.” He turns to look at me. “So, when he was gone, I really became the king. I made new rules to abide by. I fired the guards I didn’t trust, and then had someone go out to exterminate them so they couldn’t say a word about who was in charge and running Mexico now. Me. El Jefe.