Spiders in the Grove (In the Company of Killers #7)(27)
The encouraging smile fades from her face, and she glances down into her hands in her lap.
“I used to be one of them,” she confesses, looking toward Sabine. “I was eleven when my mother and father sold me for fifty thousand pesos”—she looks dejected for only a moment—“It was a long time ago, but it’ll always feel like yesterday. And I will always hate them for it.”
“You were never sold?” I raise up fully now, and give her all of my attention.
She shakes her head. “No,” she answers, “but it wasn’t because I wasn’t good enough—someone else wanted me instead.” Her eyes stray, and I get the distinct feeling the person she speaks of she may have loved once upon a time.
“Who was he?” I reach out and lay my hand on her thigh for comfort. “Or she?”
She pauses, and then decides she wants to talk about it, after all.
“His name was Javier; he was Joaquin’s older brother.”
The muscles in my stomach tense; I keep a straight face, but underneath the mask lies a pain-filled expression. It isn’t unusual, or a coincidence, that Cesara and I share this part of our lives—Javier had relationships with many of the slave girls before me, and probably after me, too—but hearing his name on her lips, looking into the eyes of a woman who once shared Javier’s bed, just as I did, is a shock to my system, nonetheless.
“Javier used to own all of the Ruiz compounds,” she says. “He took an interest in me; took me away from the dirt-floor rooms, and the repulsive governesses, and from his sister’s cruel punishments, and he treated me like…a person. I thought he loved me, but one day he just tossed me aside.” She takes a deep breath. “Not that I can complain, really; he could’ve done much worse; he could’ve sold me, or threw me back in with the other girls, but he gave me to Joaquin, and Joaquin gave me a job. That’s how I became a trainer—been doing it ever since.”
“And this, ‘Javier’, never gave you a reason?” I ask, consoling her. “For giving you to Joaquin?”
She shakes her blonde head. “Javier never gave anybody reasons for anything he did, and no one ever questioned him—well, except maybe his sister, Izel. She was a heartless bitch, that woman. I celebrated when I found out she’d been killed.” A grin pushes through an otherwise heavyhearted face.
You and me both, Cesara…you and me both.
The grin fades, replaced by something indicative of resentment. She stares off toward the blue sky; infuriating possibilities running through her mind, it appears. “But there were rumors,” she says, still looking forward. “And around here, rumors are almost always true.”
“What kind of rumors?”
She looks over at me and smirks; shakes her head and turns back to the blue sky.
“And I knew they were true because even Izel talked about it with such hatred and vengeance; it was the only reason I wished Izel had never been killed—she wanted to kill that girl, and she would’ve eventually.”
She breaks away from the scenery, and looks at me. “Everybody said she was Javier’s downfall. And she was.”
Izel?
“There was a slave girl,” Cesara goes on, “in a different compound. Javier fell for her. Not like I thought he did with me, or the way he did with the other girls; no, this one was different, and they were right when they said she’d be the death of him. But he pushed everyone else aside for her; he lost his way…and his life.”
My heart is in my throat; I try to swallow it down, but it’s just stuck there, choking me, beating in my ears. Am I keeping a calm face? I wish I had a mirror.
“They called her his princess,” Cesara says, venom in her voice, “the little viper; the flower with poisoned petals. The great Javier Ruiz, known for his unshakable leadership, merciless heart, and barbaric tactics, wasn’t so unshakable, after all. The giant was taken down by a girl, reduced to nothing more than a fading memory.”
He’s more than that to you, Cesara, or you wouldn’t talk about him with such resentment.
I take another deep breath, and try to curb my need to ask her more about…me. “How did he die?” I ask instead, picturing the night at Samantha’s house in Texas.
“An assassin took him out,” she says. “Some say the girl killed him, but I don’t believe that—one of the rumors that aren’t true—no way a slave girl could pull that off. Javier may’ve been blinded by that little bitch, but I know she wasn’t good enough to kill him.”
Now I’m the one looking at the blue sky and sunshine, but seeing none of it.
I shake it off. And I grin at her. “You sound jealous, Cesara.” I move over closer, brush her hair away from her neck with the back of my hand. “Should I be worried?” I ask seductively, dragging the tip of my tongue along her throat.
She pulls me onto her naked lap, and I straddle her. “No, Lydia,” she whispers, flicking her tongue against my nipple, my breast cupped within her hand. “You’ve done things to me, to my…my heart…that Javier could never do.”
“Tell me more,” I say, breathily, grinding myself against her lap. “Tell me what I’ve done to your heart.”
Her mouth finds mine, and we kiss with feverish intensity; my eyes flutter when I feel the movement of her fingers between my legs.