The Beasts of Juarez, R.B. Schow [books to read for self improvement .txt] 📗

Maybe even a week, if we stall. So here is my offer, the one you will convey to your husband. If he brings me the money I request in the time that I request it, your children will survive this with their fingers, their toes, and their adorable little eyes. But if your husband involves the authorities, if he tries to be a hero, the clock on your kids’ lives will run out.”

“We aren’t rich people,” she said.

“Nor are we greedy people. But the men who will soon bid on your three daughters…well now, they have both money and desire.”

“We don’t have ten million.”

“If your husband fails to counter with some reasonable offer inside of our time frame, your girls will be sold to the highest bidders and then carted off to the farthest parts of the world where men who are not as nice as me—men who like little girls—will do unspeakable things to them. And then, if your stupid husband still doesn’t cooperate, I will mail him pieces of you for years to come, that last piece being your heart because no man truly deserves the heart of a woman unless he earns it, right?”

She sat there quaking, her soul shrinking so far inside of her that it almost seemed to have forsaken her.

Santiago slapped her across the face so hard she lost her equilibrium, and then he screamed at the top of his lungs, “AM I RIGHT?”

Holding her face where she’d been hit, she slowly nodded in reply. “Yes, Santiago. You’re right.”

With that one slap, with the cumulative amount of contempt Santiago and Jose had shown her and her family, Sydney vowed that no matter what happened, no matter who survived, she was going to kill these two men.

Chapter Twelve

LEOPOLD WENTWORTH

Leopold told Stacy and Emily to play with each other a little while longer while he made some business calls. Looking at the two twenty-somethings, he started feeling like a parent telling a friend’s daughters to behave. This left him with an awkward feeling inside. The girls were of legal age, of course, but they were also a welcome distraction. He hadn’t run but two smaller ops in the last few months, which meant he was bogged down in the doldrums of his old life dealing with block-chain cryptography. The money was good but the work he did was about as passionless as making toast or clipping your toenails.

“Every man who reaches an elevated state of earnings finds himself in the same conundrum,” a New York socialite had told him on a date they’d gone on maybe a month or two ago. “They need a big house, a handful of fast cars, and a pretty woman on their arm. I want to be that pretty woman for you, Leopold.”

“A fashionable man doesn’t have just one pretty woman on his arm,” Leopold countered playfully. “If he wants more than one, he has them. But maybe what he wants is peace and quiet, a little solitude. In that case, having a woman will not suit him. I suppose it depends on his ambitions at the time. Surely you understand that.”

“Of course,” she had said, eating her steak and savoring every bite. “But you don’t strike me as a man who likes to go to bed alone. At least that’s what I’ve heard. Aren’t you at the age where having some permanence seems attractive?”

“Not really, but maybe? I won’t really know until I meet the right woman.”

“That’s interesting,” she had said as she sipped her wine.

“There is no way to determine who will be the right woman, or how that special connection will form. It either will or it won’t. I pray, for my own sake, that I make such a connection sooner rather than later. If it doesn’t happen, I have other interests.”

“You sound both hopeful and cynical,” she’d said, reaching across the table to take his hand. The way she looked at him, her sapphire eyes hypnotic and the skin of her hand so soft, he nearly fell prey to her gravitational pull. “After this, we should do coke together and fuck.”

And that had done it. All the hope he had garnered with her suddenly felt pointless. Was true love even possible anymore? Were the days of romantics gone, swallowed whole by this weird, completely unrecognizable new society? After he and the socialite had a great two weeks together, they parted ways. He tried not to rule out the possibility of true love somewhere down the road, but then this morning happened and he wondered if the age of addicts had replaced the age of romantics. Dear God, what a dismal feeling!

Then again, he couldn’t be too judgmental when he had woken up in bed with a stranger he was sure he had sex with who was now swimming naked in his pool with the girl he did remember bringing home so he could have sex with her.

Perhaps he was just as soulless as everyone else.

Outside, Stacy got out of the pool, her glistening body dripping wet. “Leopold, is it okay if I sit here?” The suggestive way she said it did a number on him. He nodded his head in approval. In reality, she didn’t need an answer, she just wanted his attention.

Emily got out of the pool next, parted her friend’s legs, then moved in and put on a show for him.

“You need to come join us, Leopold,” Stacy said before throwing her head back and letting out the most satisfied sigh.

And this is the last time I get involved with girls in their twenties, he told himself. Turning his back to them, he dialed Estella.

“Yeah,” Esty said after answering on the first ring.

“I need you,” Leopold replied.

“Thank freaking Christ,” she replied. “I’ve