Jagger (Broken Doll 2)
I focused on Cat through the swelling around my eyes and gasped. She looked nothing like the girl I remembered from less than a year ago. Cat was horribly thin, dark eyes dull, hair brittle and frizzy, and her formerly gorgeous tan skin was a sickly shade of yellow.
She looked like me when my addiction tossed me off the cliff to hit rock bottom. I wanted to check her arms for track marks, but couldn’t. I was too weak, too beaten. I didn’t need a mirror to know I was covered in bruises from top to bottom. El Cuchillo beat me within an inch of my life, always hard enough to make me scream but never enough to actually break any bones, though I was sure he wouldn’t care if he did.
“Cat,” I croaked. “We need to get out of here.”
Jag
I ignored the sounds of the contractors working on my office. I wasn’t sure why I was bothering to fix shit up. If I didn’t get Miri back soon, I’d just tear it up again in another fit of rage.
My bruised knuckles pulsed in time with my heart and I rubbed my hands. When I watched the video sent by El Cuchillo… Shit. It hurt just to think about it.
My entire body began to tremble as I relived the fury all over again. My anger was so raw I had to close my eyes to rein in the violence that threatened to shove logic to the ground and piss on its remains. Waves of tension radiated up and down my spine, spreading to my extremities—begging, screaming for me to unleash on the nearest object.
Yesterday, Cuchillo sent a video of him and some dude named Raoul—a soon to be dead man whom I assumed was second in command. Raoul Quintero, a nasty son of a bitch with a sadistic streak that rivaled Milo’s, systematically beat and tortured Miri alongside Cuchillo. When the clip ended, I couldn’t see straight. Screaming, I hurled my laptop against the bulletproof windows. The glass held but the flimsy machine burst into a dozen pieces on impact. I didn’t stop there. No fucking way. It wasn’t nearly enough to extinguish the anger and hurt and guilt expanding inside my body until I felt as if I might explode from the pressure.
By the time my vision cleared and my mind snapped out of the murderous haze, whatever had been left in my office was torn to shreds. Every last item was either broken or damaged. Chest heaving and eyes stinging with unshed tears, I barely made it to the kitchen before I fell the fuck apart.
Too many feelings assaulted me at once: anger, fear, guilt, loss, fucking failure. Miri was embedded too deep in my heart for me to have any chance of keeping emotions out of the equation. Jag and Boss no longer existed as separate entities. The two men had merged into one—lover and criminal, fire and ice, passion and violence. They wove around each other, tangled until there was no way to tell where one man ended and the other began.
“Boss.” I spun wildly at the voice, fists ready to strike out at anything to quell the fury clawing at my insides. “Whoa!” Milo put his hands up in surrender. “It’s just me, Boss.”
I cracked my neck and inhaled deep several times until I was calm enough to hold some semblance of a conversation without ripping Milo’s throat out and stomping on his remains.
“Tell me your men found something, Milo.”
Milo didn’t have to speak. The uneasy look on his face and the fact that he took a step back said it all. I had every last man on my payroll—from dealers to restaurant managers, to the people who cut my heroin—out on the streets looking for members of Los Guerreros. Not a single one of those little fuckers could be found anywhere. They all just up and fucking vanished, every last one of them. Los Guerreros businesses and warehouses were abandoned. Their dealers vanished from street corners.
It was as if El Cuchillo and Los Guerreros never existed in San Antonio.
“Fuuuuuck!” I tore at my hair and let out a primal roar. I was about to grab a kitchen chair and hurl it across the room when Sarge came through the French doors from the backyard.
“Boss.” I turned to my head of security and dropped my arms to my sides, knowing what was coming just from the look on his face. “We got another email.”
* * *
Sarge and Milo followed me into the backyard to the pool house that served as headquarters for security. Every step toward the small structure was like moving closer and closer to the gates of hell. My feet were lead bricks, my heart slamming against my ribcage. Sweat beaded my brow and the back of my neck, soaking my shirt, but right now I could give a fuck about my clothes. When we entered the main room, Sarge indicated I should take the seat in front of the wall of monitors.
Oh fuck. I wasn’t sure I could do this again. My muscles locked in place.
“No. I’ll stand.”
No way could I sit through whatever sick shit I was about to see. I’d be lucky if I made it to the end of the video, period. Bracing myself, I gripped the back of the chair for support while Sarge tapped on the keyboard. The center screen lit up with an email attachment. The little arrow moved over the paper clip symbol.
Click, click.
The attachment opened and filled the screen. An hourglass spun an excruciatingly long time, and a video began to play. Oh fuck. Bile gurgled in my stomach.
Miri. My sweet, tiny, precious doll. Bound to the same chair as yesterday.
My throat constricted and my hands tightened on the headrest of the leather chair. My fingers pressed deep into the cushion and I wished I had claws so I could tear the fucking thing apart. Miri’s gorgeous green eyes were reduced to reddened slits, the swollen skin around them a hideous shade of black and blue. Miri’s soft, pink lips were dry and cracked. Split by crusted scabs. Her creamy throat was an angry reddish-purple where Cuchillo choked her on camera.
“I’m going to kill that motherfucker!”
“Want me to stop it, Boss?” Sarge’s finger hovered over the pause button, waiting for my command.
“No. If Miri had to suffer through the torture and beating, I owe it to her to suffer by watching.”
The video was much the same as the previous one. The two men would slap, choke, and abuse my poor Miri. Tears dripped down her cheeks and muffled cries escaped around the cloth in her mouth. I focused on her face and held my breath. There. In her eyes. I caught a glimpse of my little fighter. The bastards hadn’t broken her, not yet. After each blow, my doll held her chin up high, and from what I could see of her puffy eyes, they still had that fiery spark I loved so much.