Reina de la Muerte

chapter one

♕

vanessa

The only sound I can hear as I walk down a dimly-lit hall are my heels against the concrete. It's a calming sound. The repetitiveness and echoing with each step is almost enough to relax the millions of thoughts in my head.

What ruins my five seconds of peace are the screams that start to bounce off the walls. I close my eyes when every thought I have about today comes flying back to my head and another migraine starts to grow. I don't normally come down here because my men are more than capable of their jobs and they don't need someone to be babysitting their asses all day. I would sure as hell hope they didn't need one, at least. I've got too many things to do in a day to deal with having to watch over a bunch of grown fucking men.

Torturing is as easy as making a sandwich. All it takes is using the right tools and all these people that claim to be loyal snap, lose that shitty façade they hold—it's so pathetic it's almost funny. At the end of the day, it's all a game playing to see how long it will take for them to break, and it's so satisfying when they do. Some last a few hours, some can even last a couple of days, but they always give in in the end.

These people all worship their bosses like Gods—watching them cower in the presence of the first Goddess in this business is more than exhilarating.

I make a left turn and find two guards at the end of the hall, standing adjacent of the exact door where my favourite prisoner resides behind. One of the men trying to get something, anything, out of him isn't doing a good enough job and if I don't get answers faster, I'm going to be down forty million fucking dollars and a worker.

"Reina," the guards greeted, giving me a firm nod.

"What the hell has he been doing in there?" I ask them, rolling my eyes at the high-pitched scream that follows from the room. "It's been three fucking hours and I haven't gotten any updates on where my damn cargo plane went."

Right as the words leave my mouth, the door opens.

I glare dangerously at the idiot I assigned to get answers from, watching a smirk grow across his face in return. He takes another step towards me and shoves his hands in his pockets.

"What the fuck took you so long, Mateo?" I snap.

Mateo shrugs. "He was harder to crack than I predicted." He pulls a hand out of his pocket and extends a tape recorder to me.

"Did you even get any information from him or were you too busy failing to do your job?" I ask, snatching it from his hand.

"Oh, come on. Have I ever let you down, reina?"

Too many times to count.

"If you stopped fucking around and didn't go so easy on everyone I assigned you to, I would be getting what I need to know from them much faster."

I take a few steps away from the three men to listen to it alone. They may work for me but it doesn't mean I have to trust them. You never know if someone would use information to gain from another cartel, and I'm not about to take the risks because I decided to trust anyone with any information learned from a prisoner.

I lean against the wall and press play on the tape recorder. Mateo stands a few feet away, shoving his hands in his pockets as I listen. For awhile, it's just of Mateo asking questions and the prisoner's screams getting louder when he doesn't answer. Listening to it causes a smirk to twitch in amusement. I may have underestimated Mateo's skills.

"The man you work for managed to steal forty-million dollars worth of high-quality drugs without so much as a speck of trail left behind," Mateo's voice speaks over the pathetic sobs of the prisoner. "There are not a lot of men who can pull that off successful. But you already knew this, Ethan, didn't you? Otherwise why would you be working in this line of business?"