Is it worth controlling the animal?Gorya asked.
No,Maya replied sharply.She is guilty of so many deaths. Women and young girls dying in hideous ways. Her leopard contributed.
Gorya had heard and felt Maya in many moods. This one was new. This was full assassin.
“We came to Panama specifically to speak with you,” Gorya conceded. “We asked Connor to arrange the meeting.”
Jaoa looked pleased. He glanced at Carolina. She hadn’t taken her malevolent gaze from Maya. Jaoa cleared his throat as if that might get her attention. When it didn’t, he scowled. “Carolina.” His voice was extremely harsh, making his wife jump.
Carolina paled and turned her attention to him immediately. He gave her a benevolent smile. “Send for refreshments for our guests.”
“Yes, of course. Merida, that should have been taken care of already.” Carolina glared at the young woman who had allowed them entry into the house. Merida disappeared into another section of the house.
Jaoa turned his attention back to Gorya and his cousins. “This is a visit to discuss business, then. I had hoped for such an alliance between us.”
“I’m afraid not,” Gorya said. “I’ve come in person to bring you news. I’m the newpakhanof the Atchafalaya River Basin. I don’t deal in human trafficking, and the firstorder I gave was to clean it up. When I give an order, I enforce it. I also uphold every law of the shifters. All of them. I hold them sacred.”
Gorya maintained eye contact with Jaoa. A small part of his attention, as always, remained lodged in Maya’s mind. She was locked on to Carolina. Gorya trusted his cousins and the security force to handle everyone else in the room.
Jaoa’s mind worked, trying to puzzle out where Gorya was going with his line of thought. Gorya didn’t make him wait.
“Your son Raul was visiting with Derk Malcom, a friend from college. The two men were caught kidnapping, torturing and raping a fifteen-year-old child. We have the proof recorded straight from their leopards as well as eyewitness accounts. We have the photographic evidence of what was done to the child, all to present to the elders.”
Jaoa sat up very straight. “What are you saying?” His voice was low.
Gorya could see knowledge working behind his eyes. “Shifter law is very clear. Rape is not tolerated in our society.”
Carolina shrieked. She leapt to her feet, her face twisted into a mask of hatred. She was built in the way many female shifters were, with curves and muscles and gleaming hair. She looked like she was extremely strong. “My son was born with a legacy. He has therightto any woman he desires. He can do whatever he wishes with her. No one can touch him.No one.”
Maya stood slowly. She looked as if she were a tiny doll in comparison to Carolina. She met the other woman’s yellow gaze with her cool frost-blue eyes. “I was born with a legacy as well. I am the executioner of the depraved, disgusting monsters who have no business being alive. Icaught Derk and Raul with that child between them, and I killed them both.”
Carolina screamed again, tearing at her dark hair, her eyes going completely cat as she hurled her body at Maya, hands contorting into hooked claws. No one moved or made a sound. It seemed as if time stood still. Maya waited until the last possible moment. With blurring speed, she stepped to one side, avoiding the charge, one hand moving fast—up, down—she spun, and the other hand did the same on Carolina’s other side. Blood spurted like a fountain from Carolina’s neck and under her arms. She staggered. Teetered. Coughed. Maya slammed her knife into the base of Carolina’s skull and then shoved her foot into the small of her back. Carolina crumpled to the floor.
Jaoa stared at his dead wife with a kind of macabre fascination. He looked up at his security force. They lay on the ground in a pool of blood. Every one of them. He hadn’t even seen or heard them go down.
Jaoa swallowed his pride and forced himself to sit back in his chair. “She was out of her mind. She went insane a long time ago.”
“I understand now,” Connor said. “You took her when she was just a child and shaped her the way you wanted her. You were the one to convince her she was your mate.”
Jaoa smiled at him, a false, shark’s smile. “She was easy enough to manipulate. I wanted sons.”
“And you fed her the bullshit of cruelty and hatred until she was so twisted, she did exactly what you wanted,” Connor continued.
“She was an asset at first, although she began to grow so crazy. I knew that sooner or later I was going to have to dispose of her. I was discussing it with Roque just the other day. I wanted him to get used to the idea that she had to go.” He sounded matter-of-fact. As if he were still in control of the situation. “Where is Tonio?”
“Tonio? The one you sent to New Orleans to be with Mercier?” Gorya asked. “I’m afraid Tonio and Mercier met the same fate as Raul and Derk. They had more company. The Mouton brothers and a few others. In Houston, the Anwars are gone. In Russia, the Krylovs.”
Jaoa shook his head. “You don’t know what you’ve done. I built this empire from the ground up. What are these whores? They’d be nothing anyway. We’re organized. We pour money into the neighborhoods that need it. These women serve men the way they should.”
Gorya was sick to death of the same rhetoric. He stood up, walked across the room, pulled out his gun and shot the man three times. Once was enough, but he couldn’t stop pulling the trigger.
“We’ll find Roque, his oldest,” Connor said. “And finish the mop-up. Let’s get you and Maya to the cabin.”
Gorya was more than happy to take his woman away from the smell of depravity, blood and death.
•••
The“cabin” was actually a small structure built high in the branches of a tree. A porch with an overhang and low railing gave added space. They had no time to inspect. The shower was on the ground, below the tree, and Wraith didn’t wait. The moment the cleansing water poured over Maya, her body began to burn.
