“Wow.”

“I suppose,” I said, absently running my hand over the bedding. “It seems so cliche to me, to go live in that city. She fell in love with some filmmaker and I guess he treats her well. I don’t know. She comes to visit Alana once in a while, but I am not sure if they are even close anymore.”

“Do you love them?”

I shot her a sharp look. “Of course I do. Why would you ask that?”

She didn’t say anything. I took the opportunity to turn the tables on her.

“Tell me about your parents.”

She gave me a wry smile. “Oh, I see how this works.”

“Give and take,” I said matter-of-factly. “You should know this by now.”

She nodded and her face crumpled a bit as she opened up. “My parents are lovely, loving people. Even though we grew up with nothing, they gave me everything they could. I wasn’t an unhappy child. You’re not unhappy when you have unconditional love. They made sure I had every opportunity that was available to me, and even though I knew how the other half lived, I didn’t want for much. Then,” she closed her eyes, “then my father started acting differently. My mother, she’s blind, you see, and my father was always able to work enough to support us all, even though I helped out when I could. But now he was forgetting things, slipping into trances. One day I forced him to a doctor and they told us he was developing Alzheimer’s.” She took a deep breath and turned slightly away from me. “It set in pretty fast. He is—or he was—getting worse by the day. I had plans for university, you know. I was hoping that the money from the pageant I had won and maybe a scholarship would get me to school. But I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t be that selfish.”

I shook my head vigorously, hating her selflessness. “Oh, but you should be, my darling.”

“But I’m not,” she said sharply. “So I forgot about that and decided to get a full-time job. I was lucky enough to work at Cabo Cocktails for three years. I was able to keep my job with a bit of … luck.” A flash of disgust came across her face then vanished. “I took care of my family. I paid for everything. I did everything I could for them, just so they could be happy. I think I made them happy. I pray I made them proud.”

I could feel the sadness leaking out from her heart. I couldn’t help but be tainted by it.

“And how was your job?” I asked.

She shrugged. “It was a job.”

“Was your boss nice?” I asked because I knew the types of men who ran those kinds of places, who hired women who looked as gorgeous as she did.

She pressed her lips together. “Bruno taught me that men were wicked and unkind.”

I swallowed a pit of hate. “Did he rape you?”

She shook her head. “No. He didn’t. But … he did other things. Not just to me, most of the other girls were … subjected to his advances. But he did seem to have a special fondness for me. I don’t know why. Perhaps because he figured I was a virgin.”

My blood started pumping hot, my face prickling with heat. “I’m going to bring you his head one day,” I told her with one hundred percent conviction.

She gave me a wry look. “It’s in the past. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

I rubbed the back of my neck, feeling the strain build up. “It matters. It all matters. Jesus. Luisa, your life has not been fair. Doesn’t that anger you?”

“No,” she said earnestly. “What’s the point of yelling at the sky, it’s not fair, it’s not fair? It doesn’t change anything.”

She didn’t seem to understand the power her rage could give her. “But if you get angry enough, it could change everything.” Our eyes held each other. “I think I’d like you if you were angry. Very angry.”

“Would you like me to start with you?”

I bit my lip, wanting her to unleash on me. It would be gorgeous. “Yes.”

She smiled stiffly. “Maybe some other time.” She got off the bed, rubbing her arms up and down. I couldn’t tell if she was cold or she was bringing life into her tired muscles.

“It’s been a long day,” I said, feeling strangely awkward. I got up too and adjusted my suit before gesturing to the door. “I’ll take you to your room.”

She complied and we didn’t say a word to each other as I took her by the arm and down the hall. Her eyes took in the photography of world landscapes that I had adorning the walls in gilded frames, noted the various closed doors that all led to guest and employee rooms.

Finally we came to her room, and I led her inside, flicking on the lights. It wasn’t exceedingly large, but it had a lovely en suite bathroom with a claw-foot tub and brass fixtures, walls with moldings, and a large four-poster bed, much like mine. An antique desk and chair were placed in front of the bay windows that overlooked the pool and hot tub in the gardens of the backyard. She’d be more impressed when the morning came and she saw the beauty around her more clearly.

I let her go and nodded to her clothes that were already hanging in her closet. I had called ahead and gotten the gardener, Carlos, to go out and fetch her some brand new ones as well, items that were properly fitted to her body. The man sure sounded embarrassed when I gave him his orders—I’d made him buy undergarments as well.

“If you need anything,” I said, walking toward the door, “the phone by your bed is a direct line to my room.”

She looked at me blankly, perhaps just overwhelmed. That couldn’t be helped. I put my hand on the knob, ready to turn it.

“Wait,” she said in a small voice.

I turned to look at her. “Yes?”

She glanced at the bed. “Do you think … do you think maybe you could sleep with me?” I frowned. “Or, or just stay until I fell asleep.”

I straightened my shoulders, not allowing myself weakness. “I would if I could.”

“But you can,” she said, taking a step toward me. “You can do anything. You’re the boss.”

And a boss still has to answer to himself.

“Goodnight, Luisa,” I told her, locking her in her new cell.

Javier

I was having a nightmare. I was on the fishing boat with my father, only I wasn’t a boy anymore. I was the way I was now, thirty-two and wearing a suit. My father looked old, far too old to be alive, and had a Panama hat on his head. Every fish he reeled in he injected with a syringe, some kind of red poison, and threw them back. Soon, the whole ocean was filled with floating, bloated, dead fish everywhere you could see.

He ended up catching something really big on his line, enough that the whole boat started to tip over. When he finally managed to reel it in, we saw it wasn’t a fish at all.

Luisa was hanging on the end of the line, her neck broken. The giant hook was through her throat and blood poured down from the wound, staining her body red. Her eyes were lifeless, like the dead fish that were slowly turning as red as she was.

“What part of her do you want to eat first?” my father asked me with a bloody smile.

I thought I woke up screaming. But it wasn’t my screams at all that I was hearing.

They were Luisa’s.

In a second I was in my pajama pants, a .38 Super in one hand, and I was running down the dim hallway toward the room I had put her in earlier. I kicked down the door, not even bothering to open it, and to my utter horror, I only saw Luisa’s legs on the floor, sticking out from alongside the other side of the bed. Franco’s beefy form was over her, his face grinning. I couldn’t see what he was doing, but I could guess.

Guesses were good enough for me.

I aimed the gun and shot him in the stomach, wanting the fucker alive. He howled, and before I knew what I was doing, I was running across the room and shoving him off of Luisa and tackling him to the ground. He tried to get up, but I head-butted him, breaking his nose. I pistol-whipped the same spot I did earlier, then quickly frisked the weapons off of him. I tossed them away and rolled his heavy, writhing body to the side. The rage, the living anger I had inside of me, was threatening to completely take over, something I rarely let it do, but I had to take care of Luisa first.