“Come on, there’s no need for that,” Emilio said.
“Pull up a chair and look at the wall,” the man ordered.
“What?”
While still holding on to Maite with one hand, the man took a gun out and pointed it at Emilio. “I said pull up a chair and look at the wall.”
Maite couldn’t move away, she couldn’t turn her head, not with him gripping her hair, but she heard the scraping of a chair against the floor as Emilio obeyed. The man released her and took a step back. His gun was pointed in Emilio’s direction, but his eyes were on her.
“My niece. I need you to tell me where she is.”
“You’re going to kill her,” Maite mumbled.
“I will killyouif you don’t talk.”
“I told you. I don’t know! I really don’t know!”
The man hit her on the head with the gun, and it hurt so badly. The other blows had hurt, but not like this. She was going to weep. Blood trickled down her forehead, staining her lips.
“I haven’t done anything,” she swore, but the gun came down again, making her scream.
She thought that she’d been wrong. That Leonora was not the maiden who would be offered as a sacrifice. It was her, it was Maite, who must have her heart carved out. From the very first page, the very first line, the very moment this began.
He pressed a hand against her mouth, as if to muffle her scream, and she responded, fueled simply by furious instinct, her teeth sinking into his fingers. He made a yelping sound, like a dog, before brutally punching her. She tumbled to the floor, clutching her stomach, tasting blood. She didn’t know if it belonged to her or to him.
“Stop that,” a man said.
Maite swallowed the blood and stared at the two strangers who had walked into the house.
29
THEY PARKED THEcar outside the little white house. Even in the dark he recognized the other car parked right ahead of them, by the house’s gate. He would have known it anywhere: El Mago’s vehicle. For a minute he stood there dumbly, in the rain, until the Russian coughed.
“What’s the matter?”
“I think my boss is here,” Elvis said.
“Nice. A reunion. You’ve got the keys to this place?”
“No, but I can pick the lock,” he said, and he plumbed the pocket of his jeans for the two little strips of metal. It wasn’t a difficult lock.
They walked into the house, followed the sound of voices. He heard screaming, and they picked up the pace, reaching a large room with a very long table and many pictures on the walls.
El Mago was beating the woman. Elvis had never harmed a woman in his life. That was for scum. For lowlifes. And Elvis was a thug, sure, but he wasn’t scum. It surprised him to see El Mago doing such a thing. He’d never imagined he could. So he spoke quickly, without thinking twice, using a tone of voice he had never dared to employ with El Mago until that day.
El Mago was his boss, after all. El Mago was their leader. El Mago was everything that Elvis ever wanted to be. El Mago was the King.
“Stop that,” he said roughly.
A man was sitting in a chair staring at the wall. He winced when they walked in, but he didn’t say anything, and when Elvis spoke he lowered his head and pressed his palms against his eyes.
“You’ve made it. Who is that with you?” El Mago asked.
The woman’s eyes were huge, and there was blood on her lips. Those were the eyes of Bluebeard’s wife when she opens the door and finds the chamber filled with corpses.
“It’s the Russian asshole,” Elvis said, looking away from the woman and at El Mago. El Mago’s eyes were calm. He’d done this, or something similar, something worse, many times before. Elvis thought El Mago was a gentleman, a cut above others, but he really was another little shit.
A shit like all the other shits Elvis had ever known. Somehow he’d never realized that. Even when El Mago scared him, even when El Mago exuded danger instead of mirth, always, absolutely always, Elvis felt he was in the presence of a superior species.
