“Shut up!” Salvador roared in my ear. “I will kill you, but then he’s next. He doesn’t even have his gun out. Fucking pussy.”
The gunfire in the background had started to die down. The helicopter that we had seen in the distance was now long gone. I wondered what side was winning now. I wondered if they’d come and find us only after it was too late. I could only hope that if Javier and I were dead, the DEA would ensure that Salvador suffered, that he would never get out of jail alive, that our deaths wouldn’t be for nothing.
“So what do you want, Salvador?” Javier asked, raising his hands. “Why are you doing this? Just shoot her now if that’s what you want.”
“You’re as fucking crazy as she is,” Salvador said, sneering. “Don’t the two of you have any respect for death? You of all people, Javier, should know the importance of making a show of it. Of making it last. The true torture doesn’t come during death—it comes in the moments before. When you know it’s about to happen, but you don’t quite know when. Just like now.”
Javier’s chest heaved. I could see his wicked brain working on overdrive, trying to come up with a way to at least save me if not himself. I could also see he had no options to go on. For all the fury he was carrying, I caught the sorrow on his brow. I saw the soft way he was coming to terms with the end.
But that didn’t mean I had nothing. Even if it meant us getting shot, I at least had to try for the both of us. I welcomed the end more than he did. I had nothing to lose.
I held Javier’s eyes with mine and then slid my gaze over to the partly-healed gash on Salvador’s forearm where I had driven in the piece of glass last week. I couldn’t reach around with my own arms and touch it, but that didn’t mean I was powerless.
When I saw the nearly invisible hint of recognition in Javier’s eyes, I knew it was time. I drew upon my reserves of anger, of injustice, of pure unadulterated rage that I had coiling deep inside me. I let those feelings, those hot, swirling, pulsing emotions wrap me up into an uncontrollable tornado that had nowhere else to go. Then I gave it permission to fuel me, to become my strength.
I screamed, a raw, brutal sound that ripped out of my gut and my throat, and used all my power to twist Salvador’s forearm toward me. I bit straight into his wound, tasting the blood, loving the blood, relishing the feeling of my teeth plunging in deeper and deeper, tearing through muscle and nerve and causing so much pain.
The next thing I knew Salvador was screaming, caught off-guard by my violence, and Javier took that moment to whip out his gun and shoot.
He aimed for Salvador’s shoulder. He got it.
Salvador spun back, out of my teeth and grasp, but not before he took his own gun and fired it at Javier as he fell.
I thought Salvador’s aim would be off.
But it wasn’t.
He shot Javier right in the head.
I screamed as Javier stumbled slightly then pitched forward off the roof and facedown onto the balcony, the glass bouncing around us from his impact.
With what strength I had, I kicked Salvador’s gun off the balcony, then scampered over to Javier, crying, screaming, feeling like my own heart was bleeding, my breath pulled from me. The pain in my chest was so incredibly great, I wasn’t sure how I was going to survive it. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to.
I fell to my knees beside Javier, afraid to touch, afraid to roll him over. I wouldn’t be able to handle what I so deeply feared to see.
But before I could reach out and touch him, he started to stir.
Alive.
“Javier!” I sobbed, my hands going for his head. I brushed away his hair and saw the wound, a long trail of blood on his temple. His eye opened and fixed on me.
“Fuck,” he groaned. “Did he get me?”
I burst into the biggest smile and nearly laughed at the intense amount of relief flowing through me. “Get you? I think you were just shot in the head!”
He reached up and gingerly touched the wound. “Oh.” He smiled weakly. “It just grazed me. How is my hair?”
I wasn’t sure whether to punch him or kiss him.
But before I could do either, I was suddenly picked up by my shoulders from behind and thrown to the side. My head smacked against the floor, making everything spin and swirl nauseatingly, blackness teasing my vision and keeping me down.
I stared helplessly as Salvador launched himself on top of Javier, trying to choke him. Even with his one arm useless, he was a big man, stronger than Javier, and he was able to squeeze his throat tight with just his one hand.
“Look at you,” Salvador sneered at him, saliva dripping down into Javier’s face. Javier gasped for breath, his skin turning white. “A traitor to Mexico. You brought in the Americans just to take this whore back. You’re a pussy. You’re soft over a woman. A girl. You’ll be known as the drug lord who became oh so good for no good reason.”
“I am not good!” Javier managed to roar, the fight coming back in his face. With all he had left, he managed to kick up under Salvador and get his knife free from his boot. He raised the knife above his head, and just as Salvador looked up in surprise, Javier swiftly drove the knife between Salvador’s eyes, plunging it all the way in to the handle. “I am just not as bad as you,” he spat out.
Salvador froze up, the knife stuck into his brain. It instantly killed him, and Javier quickly rolled out from under his crushing body. He rapidly crawled over to me and felt along the side of my head. “Are you okay?” he asked, his voice cracking.
I swallowed and tried to talk but couldn’t. I burst into tears instead.
“Shhhh, Luisa,” Javier said soothingly. “I’m alive, you’re alive. The fucker is dead. We’re okay.” He sat down beside me and pulled me into his lap, cradling me while I let everything loose. Anger, pain, shock, sorrow. He let me cry for as long as I needed. And when my tears started to dry, he said something that made me cry more, only from happiness.
“You should know that I have your parents,” he whispered into the top of my head. “They’re safe with my sister in Puerto Vallarta.”
Even though Javier had never told me he loved me, I still had never known such love. I couldn’t thank him enough, couldn’t get over how absolutely selfless he had been, and all for me.
We sat like that together, me gathering strength in his arms, until a few DEA agents burst onto the balcony with their guns blazing. One of them I didn’t even know was a woman until she took off her helmet and shook out her hair. She stared down at Salvador’s body in dismay.
“Honestly, it was self-defense,” Javier protested at her disapproving glare before she could say anything.
“But I bet you still enjoyed every moment of it,” she said.
He smiled. “Of course I did.”
And I did too.
I could tell Javier was nervous though, about what the DEA might do with him since Salvador was dead and he’d broken the one condition. But by the time the medics arrived by helicopter and had treated his head wound and splintered up my broken fingers and applied antibiotic creams to my body, we were told we’d be free to go anyway.
“He may not be alive,” the woman, whom I learned was Lillian Berrellez, said, “but at least we were able to dismantle the Sinaloa Cartel. That’s not too shabby.”
No, it certainly wasn’t. Even though there was a cartel that was ready to take its place: Javier’s.
The DEA knew that, too. But for now, we were shaking hands and agreeing to walk away from each other.
I knew Berrellez would be back though. And if I was still by Javier’s side at that time, I’d be making sure she didn’t get far.
In this business, you didn’t build empires by being good. And though I’d never truly be able to forget the person I was and could never fully eradicate my morals, I was looking forward to being bad.