I can’t say I’m not enjoying this. Surprisingly, I’ve missed this. Probably too much.
“What was last Thursday?” His voice is raspy, warm, as it flows through my hair.
“August 22nd. Your 31st birthday.”
“You remembered.” It’s a statement, not a question.
“After that tragic birthday breakfast story you told me, it’s impossible to forget that date.”
“Hmm.” His chuckle rumbles in his chest.
“How will you celebrate?”
“By killing Yessica.”
I look up into his eyes. When I see them, I realize how serious he is. I sit up on an elbow. “You need to do something, Draco. Drink, breathe, relax—something.”
“I’ll do all of that after I handle what needs to be done.” His lips press for a moment. “A man like me can never truly relax. I will always want to be wanted, taken down. Killed.”
I sigh, feeling my chest squeeze tighter. “Promise me something?”
“What?”
“Promise me that when we find her and end this, we’ll take some time off alone to celebrate properly—your birthday, and getting rid of her.”
He smirks, the candlelight making him seem calmer, kinder.
“Maybe, niñita.”
I stroke the hair on his chin, letting the silence sweep over us, thinking for a moment. “Those flowers,” I murmur. “Death by Indigo. What if I hadn’t read the note before getting close to them?”
“Then you would have died,” he says, almost nonchalantly, but his grip tightens around me.
“How do you know about those? Are they in a garden somewhere too?”
“No. Those are too risky for any of my men to be around. I had them imported.”
“Why’d you send them to me?”
He’s quiet for a second, mulling it over. “I wanted you to see that even beneath their beauty, they are still deadly. Much deadlier than the Blue Betrayals.” He pauses again. “I had to research the Indigos once.”
“When?”
“Few years back.”
“Why?”
“They were delivered to me personally. They were beautiful, but beauty can be deceiving as fuck.” He swallows hard, adjusting his head, eyes focused on something across the room. “I never keep them out in the open. Only use them to intimidate. If you touch even a petal, and any of its gloss gets on your fingers, it can cripple those fingers, make them numb. But if you bring those same fingers to your mouth, say, after eating, and ingest it, your entire body will freeze up on you. Not right away, no, but every single part of you will turn black inside after only an hour. It will paralyze you to the core, but you can still feel and see everything. Death by Indigo.” He blows a heavy breath. “What makes them so fascinating is that beneath the beauty, there is poison. And that poison makes it one of the most powerful, most vicious plants on this earth. Poison ivy doesn’t have shit on them.”
That makes me laugh, just a little.
He continues. “They are banned in the United States and even here, in Mexico. They can only be bought on the black market.” He pauses. “When I first saw them, they were a gift from a woman I didn’t know. It only took a few hours for me to learn she was the mother of a man I had ordered to be killed. So, before letting the delivery into my factory, I did my research. Found out all about them.
“And just as I found out all I could about them, the guard that delivered them dropped the vase, couldn’t even move. Couldn’t speak or respond to me as he laid there on the floor, but I could tell he was trying. It was so rapid—so swift. He seemed perfectly fine one minute, but in the short span of thirty minutes, his lips were shriveled and blue, his skin pale and chalky. His eyes, blood shot red. She was trying to kill me. So…” He sighs, like shards of glass are trapped in his lungs now. “I killed her.”
I look up at him, but his eyes are still ahead, focused on anything but me. “She was a threat, and I’m certain she would have tried again if I’d shown her mercy. It’s like she wanted me to know it was her. She didn’t try to hide it. It was almost like she wanted me to kill her.”
“Wow.” I drop my head, focusing on the crucifix resting on his chest.
“I am not proud of the things I have to do, Gianna. It does not please me to kill women. Children are my weakness. No harm has ever been inflicted on a child because of me. Ever. Even during this war, I do my best to make sure there are none around before taking action. But sometimes…I can’t help it. Sometimes, it just happens, and there is nothing I can do about it.”
We’re both quiet for a minute, absorbing the story, letting it sink in.
“You know if we do this,” he says, shifting sideways, “we’ll be making even more enemies. We are exposing ourselves. More people will die, and our lives will really be at risk. One of us might die, Gianna.”