Vice(77)

I want to help him, to lash out with the axe, but it’s too f*cking dangerous. They’re both struggling so wildly that I could easily hit Plato instead of Fernando, and that would be disastrous. I can do nothing but watch as Plato beats the shit out of his master. With each strike he lands, I can see the victory in his eyes. He’s been waiting to do this for years.

Fernando drops both the gun and his hammer as he tries to defend himself. This is a big mistake on his part. Plato snatches for one of the weapons—I’m sure he’ll go for the gun, but instead he takes up the ball hammer, spinning it menacingly in front of Fernando’s face.

“This is for Persephone,” he growls. The hammer comes down, making contact with the side of Fernando’s head, and a shower of blood explodes everywhere, so much of it that it looks like some kind of Hollywood special effect. He hits him again and again, and Fernando makes a sickening, voiceless cry each time. It reminds me of a French film I saw once, where a man had his head caved in with a fire extinguisher. The camera didn’t pan away. Not even when the guy’s head cracked open, and pieces of skull and brains were flying everywhere. Unlike that camera, I could easily look away now, but I don’t. I watch with grim satisfaction as Fernando’s face is reduced to a bloody, meaty pulp.

It’s all over for the Villalobos cartel boss. It will be any second, anyway. But then out of nowhere Fernando’s rallying, thrusting his hips up and unseating Plato, who falls sideways onto his back. It all happens so quickly. Fernando leaps on him, fingernails scratching at his face as he tries to claw Plato’s eyes out.

I race forward, grabbing hold of Fernando, restraining him. He’s fighting with the strength of a man possessed, though. He’s hard to keep hold of. I stagger backward, and I am lost in the moment. The shed fades away. There is only the adrenalin firing through my veins, and my heart beating like a piston.

A loud, whirring, grinding noise cuts through the madness, and then Plato is in front of me, grabbing hold of Fernando by his shirt.

“You can’t kill me,” he howls. “I am the head of this family. I am your master!”

Plato spits in his face. “Not anymore, motherf*cker. Now, you’re red dust in the wind.” He drags him out of my arms, and then he’s trying to lift the other man off the ground. Plato’s strong, but not strong enough to heft a grown man directly over his head. I rush to his side, grabbing hold of Fernando’s thrashing feet, and then we’re lifting him, carrying him, throwing him…

…into the wood chipper.

This is the source of the loud whirring, grinding noise. Plato must have turned the thing on while I was grappling with Fernando. As Fernando’s body feeds into the machine, the grinding noise takes on a new, urgent high-pitched whine.

This. This is the moment. A few days ago, I couldn’t decide what the most violent, awful thing I’d ever seen was. But it’s this. This is it.

Fernando screams as he is consumed by the machine. Blood and pieces of flesh shoot into the air as he disappears, inch by inch. Plato’s prediction is proved right when the chipper begins to dispense with Fernando’s body parts out of the chute at the other end, sending gusts of red mist and blood cascading into the air.

“Holy…f*cking…shit.” This is a vision I’ll never be able to forget. Ever. I turn away as the machine draws close to finishing its task. Fernando has stopped screaming—he died a while ago—so there’s no point in seeing him fully consumed. Natalia is standing with her back against the wall, her eyes unfocused, her mouth hanging open. She’s covered in blood, soaked in the stuff, and her hair is hanging loose down past her shoulders again.

She’s in shock. She must be. No matter how much she hated him and wanted him to die, seeing her father being fed into a f*cking wood chipper is still going to f*ck up her head beyond belief. It’s f*cked up mine, and I know the bastard deserved it.

I take her into my arms, holding her close, stroking my hand up and down her back. “I have you, baby,” I tell her. “It’s okay. He can’t hurt you anymore. He can’t hurt you ever again.”

In the middle of the shed, Plato stands with his hands clenched into fists, staring at the wood chipper. He’s frozen to the spot, his chest rising and falling like an injured animal.

“Hey, man. Are you okay?” He doesn’t even seem to hear me. “Plato?”

Slowly, he turns around, the tension in his shoulders easing fractionally. He has that look to him now, that look I’ve seen on so many guys before: a shadow of darkness and pain lurking behind his eyes, that says he’s done something so messed up and so dark that he’ll never be the same again.

“Don’t call me that,” he says, looking me square in the eye. “I’m not Plato. My name is Freddie Arcane.”





CHAPTER EIGHTEEN





THE ROAD OUT OF HELL





“It can’t be true. It can’t be.” Natalia bursts into tears the second she sees Laura. During the violence and chaos of the past hour, I haven’t had chance to tell her about my sister. When Ocho and Laura walk out of the rainforest, cautiously creeping toward us, both Natalia and Plato look up disbelievingly. Plato sinks to the ground, simply unable to process what he’s seeing. Natalia runs to Laura, and the two women cling to each other for dear life. They’re both crying, sobbing, in fact, and neither one of them seems like they’re planning on ever letting go. I have no idea what trauma Laura went through here at the estate, but I know Natalia helped her through it. Or she tried as best she could. Their friendship is an obvious, tangible thing.