The Vargas Cartel Trilogy (Vargas Cartel #1-3)(164)

“Do you have anything to tell me now?” Rever yelled.

“I paid the Alvarez whore to ride your dick. Did she tell you that? She f*cks any guy who shows interest, but I had to pay her to f*ck you,” Emanuel sneered. “How does that make you feel?”

Rever lurched forward, slamming his fist into Emanuel’s jaw. His head pitched backward, and blood mixed with spittle showered the front of Rever’s shirt.

“You’re pathetic,” Emanuel growled. Blood dripped down his chin from the corner of his mouth. “No wonder Ignacio begged Ryker to help him. You’re so easy to manipulate.”

Rever jabbed the tip of his knife into Emanuel’s neck. “I should kill you right now.”

Emanuel lifted his chin, his dark eyes sizzling with undisguised anger. “Do it. I dare you.”

I clamped my hand around Rever’s wrist. His muscles coiled under my fingers and his eyes glittered. The coppery scent of blood settled in the air like a heavy mist, clogging my throat and clinging to my skin.

“Don’t let him get to you,” I hissed. “He’s trying to rattle you. He wants you to kill him quickly because he knows it’s better than the alternative.”

Rever closed his eyes and inhaled, his nostrils flaring. His right eyelid twitched and the muscles in his forearms corded. The seconds ticked like hours. Then, he nodded and yanked his wrist from my hold.

“What do you think, Ryker? Another toenail or should I start cutting off fingers?” He waved his knife back and forth between Emanuel’s hands and feet like a music conductor.

I shifted my weight as I pretended to consider the question. “Finish the toenails on that foot, then move to his hand on the opposite of his body,” I said.

Rever laughed. “I like how you think, Ryker.”

I’d roughed people up in the past, but I’d never crossed the line into the world of torture. I should’ve been revolted and horrified, but the longer I watched Rever, the more immune I became to Emanuel’s pain. With every toenail that flicked across the room, the pain lining Emanuel’s face bothered me less and less. Black and white no longer existed. Everything was colored in shades of gray.

Maybe I’d regret this later, but for now, I felt vindicated and refreshed. Emanuel had manipulated Ignacio, Rever, Juan Alvarez, and me to some extent. This was the price of his arrogance. My stomach clenched at the thought. How much longer until I embraced Ignacio’s philosophy of killing and torturing traitors to the fullest extent? How much longer until I was a mirror image of my father?

“Okay. Okay. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know,” Emanuel yelled, interrupting my train of thought. His entire body shivered and red lines mapped the whites of his eyes. “Just stop. I can’t take any more.”

Rever had removed five toenails and one fingernail. Blood seeped out of Emanuel’s foot in a slow trickle. Cuts and bruises covered his face. He’d lost consciousness once, but I had dumped a bucket of ice water on his head and Rever kept going.

“Start talking,” I said as I paced back on forth, my hands shoved deep into my pockets.

“Can you take off the handcuffs?”

“No,” I said.

Emanuel closed his eyes and for a minute I thought I’d need to pour ice water on him again. “It started two years ago. I had a gambling debt, and I needed extra money.”

“Why didn’t you ask Ignacio for the money?”

“I did. I didn’t tell him why I wanted it. I said I wanted to invest in a condominium project south of Playa del Carmen. Ignacio refused to advance me the money. Juan Alvarez was happy to. I tried to pay him back, but he didn’t want money. He wanted information.”

“What kind of information?” Rever asked, scratching a few specks of dry blood off his neck.

Emanuel’s gaze drifted to the ceiling, and he cleared his throat. “Different stuff. Some of it was inconsequential. Some of it wasn’t.”

I tunneled my hands into my hair. “We need to know the details. Dates. Times. The information exchanged.”

Emanuel dropped his chin to his chest. “I don’t remember everything.”

Rever slapped him across his cheek. “Stop procrastinating. Tell us what you remember.”

“It started small. He wanted names of government officials who were open to bribes. Next, he wanted names of people within the Vargas Cartel who had issues with Ignacio.”

“Wait.” I sliced my hand through the air. “You were working with Dario, weren’t you?” I asked, referring to the man I killed when Hattie escaped from the Vargas Compound. Dario and three other men had surrounded us in the jungle. We killed them all and Ignacio killed Dario’s son as payback. Then, the war between the Alvarez and Vargas Cartels exploded, making news throughout Mexico and the US.

Emanuel licked his lower lip. “I facilitated the introduction. I wasn’t working with him.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “What else?”

He shrugged. “I persuaded Juan Alvarez to use Anna to manipulate Rever.”

“How the f*ck would that help you?” Rever yelled.

“She got you out of the picture.”

“So?” Rever spat.

“When Ignacio’s successor abandoned him, it made him look incompetent. People were nervous about the future, which made it easy to find someone to kill Ignacio, but he survived.”