My fear turned into anger. And when I woke up to Franco’s waning screams of agony, I let the anger wrap around me like a cloak.
Javier had asked why I wasn’t angry enough.
It was because I didn’t let myself be.
But now, it was a part of me. The coil had unraveled. And I wasn’t letting it go anywhere. Not anymore.
I was halfway through the cup of tropical green tea—judging by the excess amount of boxes in the cupboards, I gathered it was Javier’s favorite—when the Devil himself showed up, standing in the hallway.
Javier had never looked worse. His white dress shirt was stained with blood, as were his jeans. He had circles under his eyes, his hair was messy and damp, and his gaze was blank, as if he were sleepwalking, even though he was looking right at me.
“Luisa,” he said in a rough, strained voice. “Would you like to see what I’ve done to him?”
I stared right back at him.
“Yes,” I said without hesitation.
He looked taken aback for a moment—perhaps he wasn’t expecting me to want this. But I did. I wanted to see what justice looked like. I wanted to see what his anger was capable of.
He glanced briefly at Esteban and Juanito, perhaps delivering wordless orders. I got out of my chair and joined him at his side. We walked down the tiled hallway, past large rooms that held many secrets, until Javier opened the French doors out into the blinding brilliance of the backyard.
The gardens around the lawn and the pool area were absolutely beautiful and impeccably landscaped with the most exotic and colorful flowers you could imagine. There were bushes of red bougainvillea and white gardenia, pink plumeria, blue and purple orchids, magenta and yellow hibiscus, and birds of paradise, all of them expertly blending into the lush green grass and flowerbeds. Hummingbirds and butterflies filled the air, and dragonflies darted above a pond filled with koi fish and floating white lotus.
For a moment I was so stunned by their beauty and elegance, how tenderly cultivated and cared for they were, how seamlessly they seemed to thrive, that I forgot why we were outside. But beyond the dazzling blooms and shining heat of the morning sun, there were cries of pain and a man being tortured, and I was yanked back into reality.
I wanted to say something to Javier, ask about the garden, tell him how gorgeous it was, but now was not the time. As usual, I was caught between beauty and depravity.
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit fearful as we approached the cottage, the door wide open, beckoning us into the darkest places. Javier put his hand at my elbow and gently pulled me to a stop just outside.
“Are you sure you can handle this?” he asked, his eyes focusing on my bruises.
I raised my chin. “Yes. Don’t worry about me.”
He squinted at that, studying me, perhaps worrying after all.
“Very well,” he said. “Come on in.”
The first thing I noticed when we stepped inside was the strong smell of ammonia that burned the inside of my nostrils.
The second thing was how spotlessly clean the room was, considering the messy state Javier was in.
The third thing was what made me fall ever so slightly into Javier. His hands went to my shoulders, and he held me up, and I willed myself to stay conscious, to take it all in, even though it was all too horrible to take.
On a metal table in the middle of the doctor’s office, lay Franco. He was completely naked—but he wasn’t complete. His feet and hands were gone, bloody, cauterized stumps in their wake. His genitals had also been removed in a choppy, ragged manner. His torso was covered in hundreds of festering burn marks. Remarkably, he was alive. His head was propped up in a vise-like clamp that pressed down on his head and up on his jaw, his eyes staring at me, dull and milky.
The doctor was standing over him with a syringe poised at his heart, ready to inject him with the drug that would prevent him from losing consciousness. Judging from the amount of needle marks on his chest, this had been done many, many times.
The closest thing I had seen of torture myself was when Salvador was about to perform the “double saw” on an informant. It was enough to see the man, hung naked from his feet, upside down, with the saw positioned between his legs. I knew that was one of the most gruesome torture techniques, and I thanked my lucky stars I had gotten out of there before I saw any blood spill.
What Javier did didn’t seem that much better. And because Franco was still alive, I knew it wasn’t over yet.
“Take a good look at him,” Javier said in my ear. “Look at his face. Look at the monster that he is.”
I did. And I didn’t just see Franco. I saw Salvador too. I saw Salvador’s men. I saw Bruno. I saw all the men who ever wronged me, all the faceless cartel men out there who were wronging women left and right.
And I tried to imagine seeing Javier there, too. After all, he had kidnapped me, tortured me, humiliated me, and in the end, broke his promise to protect me.
But I just couldn’t. The man had a hold on me that I couldn’t even begin to understand.
“Franco,” the doctor said to him. “That over there is Luisa. Do you remember what you did to her? What you wanted to do to her? Javier warned you, did he not? You were a dumb fool for breaking the rules—all along you knew this was the price you’d have to pay.” The doctor looked at me, his voice chillingly glib. “Luisa, if you can perhaps give him a smile. It will be the last thing he sees.”
I wasn’t sure how it was possible, but I managed to plaster a smile on my face. It might have even reached my eyes.
“How beautiful,” the doctor commented. Then he reached over, and with two quick twists of a lever on top of the clamp, it tightened around his head. There was a crunch as all the teeth in Franco’s jaw shattered, blood pooling out of his mouth and onto his throat, then a faint, wet pop as his eyeballs fell out of his sockets, dangling by their optic nerves.
That was all I needed to see. I turned around, glancing up at Javier who was watching me with an unreadable expression.
“I’m ready to go now,” I said quietly.
Javier nodded and looked over me at the doctor. “Keep him alive for a bit longer. Then remove his head. With the knife, not the saw.”
“Yes, Javier,” the doctor said, a trace of awe in his voice.
I stepped out back into the sunshine and heat and the birds that called out their beautiful song from the nearby trees. Had all that just happened? How did so much ugliness co-exist with this?