Dirty Souls by Karina Halle
“Are you going to go back with them?”
I nod. “I don’t want to leave her. Not yet.”
“It won’t be easy to establish things while you’re gone,” he says, stretching his long legs out in front of him.
“I know. But right now I have to be there for her. Just until things get back to normal.”
He nods. “Okay. I’ll do what I can. But you know, eventually, you’ll have to live in Mexico. She’ll have to come with you.”
“She will. One day.”
“Okay. You sure she wants this life?”
“I don’t know,” I say slowly. It’s something I think about often. “But I know she’s born for it. Made for it.”
“And her parents? They’ll let this happen after everything they just went through?”
“Any enemy of their enemy is their friend.”
La Mueca grunts, has a long gulp of his beer. “That is a popular saying but it’s not as cut and dry as you would think.”
“Yeah. But what fucking is? Everything is grey. There is no black or white.”
“No good guys or bad guys.”
“No, there isn’t. There are just people.”
“Ah,” La Mueca remarks. “Shame I hate people then.”
“As long as you like me, brother, I don’t care,” I tell him. “Where are you going to go after this?”
“Well I’m not going back to your father, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’ll lay low. See if I can get some funds. Shouldn’t be hard. Take what’s mine, what’s owed. Make sure to pass it on to you. You’ll need it, I know. Then I’ll head to Juarez. Start watching. Start talking. We start small Vicente. You understand?”
“I understand.”
“Rome wasn’t built in a day. Neither was Mexico City. But we do things with patience and we’ll get there.”
I take that as my sign to leave. I slap money on the table. “Call me if you need to,” I tell him. “Take care of yourself, Oscar.”
“You take care of yourself, Vicente,” he calls out after me as I walk away. “And take care of her.”
I smile to myself as I leave the bar and into the hot sun.
Head back to the hospital.
To take care of my mirlo.
Epilogue
Two Years Later
Violet - Puerto Vallarta
I stand on the rocks high above the shore, closing my eyes, my arms held out to the side, letting the wind wash over me. I breathe in deep, the salt, the sun, casting over me, making me feel so beautifully alive.
I smile.
Open my eyes, stare into the dark blue, the endless ocean as it stretches between here and infinity.
Behind me, beyond the pool, the mountains rise with jungles and waterfalls and tropical flowers. It’s a hot land, steamy and unforgiving.
And one day it will be all mine.
“What are you thinking, mirlo?” Vicente asks me. “Trying to fly?”
I look to my husband at my side, leaning against the stone railing of the patio.
Husband.
It still doesn’t feel real.
Still seems like a dream.
That he is mine and I am his.
Forever.
We’ve only been married a week, though, so I’m sure it will sink in at some point.
But if it never does, it’s only because I can’t believe my luck.
And I never want to lose that feeling.
We got married up in San Francisco, the official ceremony with my parents and family. Honestly, it’s something that I never thought would happen.
Not that I didn’t think we’d get married. Vicente proposed to me nearly one year ago, while we were having dinner in Mexico City. Got down on one knee as the restaurant dimmed the lights. Slid the biggest rock I’d ever seen on my finger. Diamond and amethyst. Violet colors that shine under even the dimmest lights.
I would have been happy with a private ceremony on the beach – and we had that too, just outside of here, in Puerto Vallarta, with only us, a minister, and La Mueca – but my parents were adamant that I get married like everyone else. Properly, with a lavish a wedding, an open bar, a gorgeous dress and hundreds of guests I didn’t know.
And that’s what surprised me. The fact that my parents not only supported our engagement but wanted to be involved in our wedding. I’d never thought my mom would get so excited about me as a bride, but she literally shoved everything in her life aside and devoted herself to it one hundred per cent. And of course, she took the pictures.
As one can imagine, though, the last two years with Vicente haven’t been easy, especially when it comes to my family. They haven’t warmed up to him yet – I think both my parents still see Javier when they look at him. I can’t blame them. They see the faint scars on my cheek and they’re reminded of who did that to me. They see my leg and they think the same. Only now there’s a tattoo on my calf over those scars that my father did of Santa Muerta, a flock of blackbirds flying out from her hair. The very tattoo that Vicente once wanted, I got instead.
It’s probably a little morbid to have Our Lady of the Holy Death tattooed on you. But Santa Muerta isn’t just about death. She’s a saint you pray to for love, prosperity and for protection, particularly if you’re a drug trafficker or involved in any criminal activity. You need protection against violent death or gun violence, well I have a saint for you.
And, well, there’s no point in pretending that this isn’t the life Vicente and I are leading.
Another reason why there’s tension from my family.
My parents don’t exactly approve of my new lifestyle with Vicente but they also know now I’m a changed woman and there isn’t much they can do about it.
After the showdown at the Bernal’s, after mom and dad were dispersed from the hospital, Vicente came back with us to San Francisco for a while. He laid low, got us a house with some of the money he and La Mueca were able to siphon, and started making plans. Over the next two years, he did a lot of traveling between California and Mexico. While La Mueca stayed on that side of the border, he’d accompany him to Juarez, Veracruz, Tijuana, even Culiacan on occasion.
He never saw his father again.
He never spoke to his father again.
The minute we left him, covered in my mother’s blood, was the minute Vicente decided that Javier Bernal was his enemy and he would spend his whole life trying to ruin him. And ruin him the best way he knew how.
By taking over a rival cartel and making it bigger and better than his father’s.
Violence and death were one thing, but it didn’t get his father where it really hurt – his pride.
And while Vicente isn’t quite there yet, he’s moving up quickly. Or I should say, we are, since Vicente tries to involve me in everything. We’re now affiliated with the Zetas, while making nice with the Juarez cartel. There are double dealings upon double dealings that I’m sometimes kept in the dark about, sometimes not. Sometimes it’s just too much for me. Regardless, we have an asset that they don’t: La Mueca. With his, well, “help,” we’ve been able to keep ascending.
There will come a point when La Mueca, Vicente and I will be at the top and will look down on Javier and that’s when we’ll know it will be worth it.
For Vicente, anyway.
La Mueca doesn’t care one way or the other. If you’re his chance to the top, he will take it and he’s believed in Vicente from the start. Seen the fight in him, the cunningness and the drive. It takes a lot of fucking nerve to stab your father with a knife in these parts, especially when your father is Javier Bernal. After that, Vicente was known around the cartels as the “King Slayer.” A poor Game of Thrones reference that’s lost in translation because Vicente didn’t exactly slay his father and in the books Aerys Targaryen wasn’t Jaime Lannister’s father, but the point is well taken.
Vicente Bernal is a man you don’t dare mess with.
In a country where family and blood mean everything, Vicente proves to
But to me, he’s just mine. My man, my lover, my husband. Someone who looks at me with all the love in the world, a man who fucks me to oblivion and back on the daily, a man I hope will soon be the father of my children.
Despite all that was done to me, revenge and the thirst for power isn’t my top priority. I’m not saying it doesn’t entice me, the thought of being queen of the land one day, of having a country at my fingertips and fear in the eyes of many.
But it’s not who I am. I just want to be with Vicente, to be there for him as he navigates these waters. I want him to live up to his full potential. I’m not sure that Javier ever broke the boy that was Vicente but he certainly did make the man.
And what a man.
I smile at him and gesture to his arms. “Come on, you can fly too. Put your arms out.”
He gives me a look, like that’s the last thing he wants to do.
“Come on. I’m your wife. I get to boss you around now.”
Now he’s laughing. “Violet, you’ve been bossing me around since day one.”
“Not true. Since day one, you’re the one who has had me bound up with ropes and blindfolds.”
“That’s true. Speaking of, we’ve been married for a week, we’re on our honeymoon and we haven’t done any of that yet. I’m disappointed in our lack of kink.”
I bite my lip, feeling the heat between my legs. “It’s a real travesty. I’ll tell you what. Pretend to fly with me and you can tie me up all you want after.”
“Fuck,” he growls. “How about I tie you up and make you fly with my fucking cock.”
My cheeks go red. “Come on. Arms out.”
He stares at me for a moment and I can see he’s trying to keep his lust in check.
“All right,” he finally relents. He turns so he’s facing the ocean, pressed up against the low rock wall, and raises his arms, holding them out like wings. Beneath us is the rest of the private house, one of our properties, then the rocks and the crashing waves.
“Close your eyes.” I tell him.
He does so.
“Now arch your back, tip your face to the wind and sun. And that’s it.”
“That’s it?”
“Just do it, Vicente.”
“Yes, my wife.”
I grin like a fucking fool at that term – wife! – and watch as he does it.
And watch I do.
With his neck arched slightly, showing off the strong curve of this throat, his tanned skin looking extra dark and golden in the sun, he looks like a fucking Aztec god. His muscles are taught and sculpted, a sheen of sweat on his bare chest from the heat. I have to fight the urge to not tackle him right here, pull down shorts and suck his cock.
At least I fight it for a minute.
Until I see a small smile appear on his gorgeous lips.
“Do you feel it?” I ask him softly. “The freedom? The air, the ocean? The world? Do you feel like you’re one with it all?”
He nods, licks his lips. “I do. I feel everything.” He pauses and tilts his head to look at me. “So this is what it’s like to be you.”
I shrug. “A hint of it.”
He lowers his arms and steps over to me, putting his hand around my waist and pulling me to him, his finger slipping under the string of my bikini bottom. “And what does it feel like when I touch you?”
“Like it’s as natural as breathing.”
“What if I kiss you?” he murmurs, lowering his head and placing his lips at the hollow of my throat.
I let my eyes fall shut. “It feels like I’m coming alive.”
“And if I do this?” he asks softly.
I groan as he slips his hand between my legs, finding my clit. I’m already wet for him and his fingers slip over and into me with delicious ease.
“It feels like if I don’t get your cock inside me, I might just die.”
“Mmmm,” he grunts into my neck as his fingers play and swirl until I’m swollen and slick with maddening need. “I was hoping that’s what it might feel like. But, my dear wife, I don’t see any ropes or blindfolds here.”
“Fuck it, we’ll use them later,” I tell him, grabbing his head and pulling it up to meet my lips, enveloping him in a hot, wet, messy kiss, while he pushes my bikini bottom down my legs. Then he grabs me by the waist and props me up on the low wall.
I’m acutely aware that there’s nothing behind my back except empty air and a drop to the house below. I’m also aware that we’re up on the pool deck and I’m pretty sure the maid is puttering around in the pool house. With those big glass windows, she could see everything.
“I’ve got you, don’t worry,” he tells me with lust-glazed eyes, pulling his thick dick out of his swim trunks and positioning it.
“And the maid?”
“You know I don’t mind if anyone watches,” he says, voice raspy, a sly grin on his lips that folds into an O the moment he pushes into me.
Fuck.
Me.
He feels so good.
So good.
My husband.
My man that owns me inside and out.
I grab onto the back of his warm neck and his rounded taught shoulder and hold him close as he thrusts in and out, wasting no time in getting me to the space I need to be in.
All thoughts leave my head.
All worries left behind.
Just the two of us as it always was and always will be.
Flying together.
“Oh, mirlo,” he says through a moan. “I’m close.”
And I’m closer.
I come hard, my body convulsing in violent shudders that take me by force.
I come so hard that I don’t even know where I am for a moment, or what’s happening to me. I’m almost scared, hurtling through hot, dark space.
And then I moan, the noise ripping out of me as I hold onto Vicente’s back, sinking my nails in, holding on to this man and his big dark love for all it’s worth.
Eventually, the world comes into focus again, as does Vicente, his seed spilling down my legs as he helps me off the wall. He watches it go in milky streams, then glances up at me. “Here’s hoping some of that stayed put.”
I think the best part of the honeymoon is that we’ll only try again later, just for the hell of it. The moment Vicente told me he wanted to make a baby, is the moment we were rarely seen with clothes on.
But it’s still early in the day and we have a later lunch date at the marina with La Mueca. He’s actually pretty good company, considering our past and the fact that my wrist aches when it’s raining. He doesn’t say much, which means he knows when to shut up. And when Vicente and I start making out, he knows when to leave the table.
I pull up my bikini bottom as Vicente brushes my hair off my face. He grabs my hand and kisses the back of it. “Let’s go, my wife. The world is our oyster.”
That it fucking is.
Ellie - San Francisco
“Mom, do you have to fucking take a photo now?”
Ellie lowers the lens and looks at Ben quizzically.
What is it with her children hating having their photo taken?
She glances at Camden who just gives her a subtle shake of his head.
She sighs and lowers the camera.
She supposes it’s not the most appropriate time for her portraits.
Especially just before Ben is supposed to step into the ring at his fight.
Ben goes off to talk to his coach anyway so Ellie and Camden tell him good luck and they go sit down at their seats. Gus and Mimi aren’t there – fighting is too violent for them, which is kind of ironic.
Ever since that trip to Mexico, Ben’s been putting more time and effort into his competition, regularly competing with the top fighters in the country and often winning. He’s rising, slowly but steadily, to the top.
Ellie also wonders if he’s been doing the same with his hacking career since she doesn’t quite buy that he works as a lowly tech support guy. Fir
But she would never ask. Let sleeping dogs lie.
The same goes for her and Violet.
She still hates to this day that Violet doesn’t live in San Francisco, or even America, but she understands why Violet chooses to live in Mexico. She understands that she loves her husband – god, that’s still so fucking weird – and wants to be where he is.
And she sadly understands that her husband is a drug lord.
That apple really didn’t fall far from the tree.
But she doesn’t let that hurt her relationship with her daughter. She still texts her every day, they talk every week and Violet flies home a lot to visit, often with Vicente in tow.
The one good thing about this though is that Violet kept her last name. She’s not a Bernal. She’s still a McQueen. And Vicente was completely okay with that. He doesn’t want to be a Bernal either.
In fact, Vicente has been completely okay with a lot of things.
It eases Ellie’s heart to know that he’s good for her. That he’ll do anything and everything for her. And that in their relationship, Violet is pretty much the boss. It was hard for both Ellie and Camden to admit that Vicente could have some good in him, that he’s not like his father. As a result, she doesn’t worry when she’s with him, living this new life.
Much.
Of course she worries a bit.
As mother’s do.
But the McQueens are a special breed and as Camden and Ellie know, they aren’t like most families. The rules don’t apply.
Camden puts his arm around his wife and holds her closely, the two of them nervous for Ben’s fight, as usual, but excited too.
He grins at her. “Have I ever told you, Ellie McQueen, that you’re looking especially ravishing tonight?”
She rolls her eyes, and presses her head into his chest. “Have I ever told you that you need to get your eyes checked?”