Page 75 of No Sweeter Poison

“Wrong answer. Try again.”

“Please,” the man sobs. “I…I have children.”

“No,” Alejandro replies, with acute indifference. “You don’t.”

The Frenchman’s eyes widen and he sputters for a response. “One day, I could.”

Another blink of the eye and a knife is plunged into the man’s second hand. He cries out in pain and Alejandro flicks a finger in his direction and wanders away, back toward the table with the strange handles and hidden blades. The three other men in the room take turns giving the Frenchman a beating and I have to turn away as bile rises in my throat. Instead, I focus on Alejandro.

He examines the tools in front of him with the same disinterest one might regard cutlery in their drawer. The corners of his mouth are slightly downturned, jaw tight, shoulders pushed back but at ease. He sighs with something like impatience and when he turns, eyes glazing over the glass wall between us, I hold my breath. Fearing he can see me while knowing there’s no way he can.

“Tsk.” He quirks his head to the side and the men let up their beating, clearing a path for Alejandro to reach the Frenchman. “Let’s start over.”

Where before a bloody lip was his only injury, both of his eyes are practically swollen shut and his nose is almost certainly broken. I think a few of his teeth may be missing, lost in the mess of blood on his shirt, but I can’t tell. Nor do I want to know.

“That car was brand new—not even two weeks old when I drove it for the first time. Until then, it was in a locked garage which means the only person who could’ve planted that tracking device…”

He trails off and the pieces click together. The car…that’s how those men found us. Or rather, Alejandro. Merely a few of very many men who want to kill him. The Frenchman must be the one who sold it to him.

“Who paid you to do it?”

The blond frantically shakes his head. “I can’t…I can’t!”

Alejandro leans forward. Everyone in the room stills, including me.

“Those hitmen your buddy sent put two bullets through a very good friend of mine and laid their hands on the woman I was with. One of them got their neck snapped. Another, their skull beaten in.” He whispers so quietly I hold my breath to hear. “And those were just sicarios. Now what do you think I’d do to someone whose nifty little tracking device put in danger the lives of people I care about?”

I should be thinking about the man who’s at death’s door. Instead, my heart seizes.

“I want names.”

“I can’t…” he rasps. “I can’t. He’ll kill me. He’ll kill me.”

Alejandro tells him, “You’re already dead.”

The length of a long, sharp blade catches the light as Alejandro shoves his right hand against the man’s side and in one, clean, powerful movement, drags it across the length of the Frenchman’s body. It completely guts him from left to right and blood splatters everywhere, including the glass. I smack my hands against my mouth and muffle a scream as little droplets fly in my direction but hit the window instead.

Just when I think it’s over, Alejandro reaches into the man’s wound while he’s still alive, drawing out his intestines, and this time I gag, so close to vomiting that the only thing keeping me back is the sound I’d make if I do.

The man screams, howls, the sound like wind in the midst of a winter storm and I know I’ll never forget this moment for as long as I live.

I’m not sure what kills him first: the blood loss, being gutted, or the total sum of his injuries, but the Frenchman eventually slumps to the side, his life coming to an end in this cold, dark room surrounded by strangers.

And I can’t help but wonder if a similar fate would await me if I ever cross the man on the other side of the glass.

THE TWELVE APOSTLES

Alejandro

“Y ou didn’t have to gut him.” Lettie crosses her arms over her chest. “That seemed excessive.”

I suck my teeth as I wash the blood off my hands. “I was out of practice.”

“How did you figure it out?” Diego asks, typing away on his phone.

“Figure what out?”

He lifts his head. “That it was Sandro and not the Irish.”