Total pages in book: 140
Estimated words: 140940 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 705(@200wpm)___ 564(@250wpm)___ 470(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 140940 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 705(@200wpm)___ 564(@250wpm)___ 470(@300wpm)
If this Cartel continues to piss me off, then they will be destroyed.
It wasn’t a matter of if, but of how.
I watched Emily begin to paint.
Many options played out in my mind like a macabre ballet—bombs, flames, poison, sniper bullets. Each method had its own artistry, a lethal elegance that required as much finesse as Emily applied to her canvas.
It doesn’t matter what the Cartel tries, no one can defeat me or my mouse.
Now that she wasn’t pregnant, we would be an even deadlier team.
I studied Emily, curved my lips into a smile, and swore the air between us charged with an electric current.
Danger and desire.
That was us.
It was all as intoxicating as the bourbon I nursed.
Fuck the Cartel. Fuck any of our enemies. You will all become corpses. Stand. The fuck. Down.
The very air I breathed was thick with the tension of Emily’s unspoken words and the weight of my decisions yet to be made.
But, it was in these moments that I found myself most alive.
Emily painted, lost in her world of colors and forms, and I watched her with a mix of admiration and longing.
She was a light in my dark life of shadows, a reminder of the humanity I fought so hard to keep buried.
As the night deepened, the shadows in the room grew longer, and my resolve hardened like the ice clinking against the crystal tumbler in my hand.
The Cartel, no matter their resources or cunning, would find in me an adversary unlike any they’d faced. The delivery of their fallen was just the beginning, a chess move in a game where I intended to be the victor. My family’s safety was paramount, the cornerstone of every decision I’d make from here on out.
In the quiet of the suite, with Emily near, I knew the path ahead would be fraught with danger.
But I also knew something the Cartel didn’t.
I had something worth fighting for, something worth protecting at all costs. My love for Emily and our sons was a weapon no one could anticipate, a force that would drive me to outthink, outmaneuver, and outfight anyone who dared threaten our peace.
I finished the bourbon and set the glass on the table.
Emily slathered black paint onto the bottom of the canvas, in thick strokes that mimicked the texture of sand under a moonless night. Each sweep of her brush added depth and darkness to the foundation of her emerging world.
What is she painting?
Someone knocked.
Then, the door opened.
Maxwell stepped in with a lit joint. “Where are the boys?”
I pointed toward the area of our bedrooms. “Further back in the suite and sleeping.”
“Damn. They didn’t get to say goodnight to Uncle Max.” He shook his head. “Some would call that child abuse.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Oh well.” He signaled to his joint. “Can I still smoke in here?”
“Open the windows and make sure it all goes out there.” I gazed back at my mouse.
She had finished with the black sanded bottom. Now, she mixed grey with white and began to paint a storming sky.
Maxwell blew smoke out of the window and then turned my way. “Tisha said the Cartel are sniffing around us.”
Emily stopped painting and turned to me.
“I had to kill the Alligator Don due to him not only playing games, but his raping a woman in front of me. He was backed by the Cartel. They are probably pissed, but what would you have wanted me to do in that moment?”
Emily nodded and returned to painting.
Maxwell flicked joint ash outside of the window. “But, will the Cartel be a problem?”
“Tisha is on it.”
“Shit.” Maxwell frowned. “I would have felt better if you said King David is on it.”
“Tisha will show his worth.”
“He better.” Maxwell took a hit from his joint. “I don’t want a repeat of Italy.”
“Nothing will ever be as bad as Italy.”
“Let’s hope so.”
“More men are on their way along with more weapons.”
“Man, you can’t bomb New Orleans.” Maxwell tilted his head to the side. “You know that right?”
“There will be no need for bombs as long as the Cartel behaves.”
“Yo, New Orleans looks like it is still trying to get right after Hurricane Katrina, and that was years ago. Don’t bomb this motherfucker.”
“Tisha is handling it.”
“Eh, Mexicans don’t play. In the Americas, you’re in the wild, wild west. Fucking Europe is about traditions, culture, and shit. Meanwhile, the States, Mexico, and even South America. . .” He took a hit of the joint and then blew out smoke. “Shoot. We are about that life.”
“These continents are toddlers to us, and all your little dangerous criminal groups are babies, sucking on bottles that we, ourselves, put into their begging tiny mouths.” I put my view back on Emily.
She’d finished with the grey sky and black sandy ground.
Now she worked on what I assumed to be the centerpiece—a huge building that rose from the middle of the canvas. Its brown outlines were sharp against the odd background.