Chapter 19 - The Absolute Zero
A violent crack shattered the silence of the salon.
The double doors behind Ricardo burst open with concussive force as six federal SWAT operators poured into the room, their laser sights painting red constellations across his chest and head.
"Federal police! Drop the weapon! Drop the weapon now!"
Ricardo let out a strangled, animal shriek. In his blind, panicking terror, he pulled the trigger.
*BANG.*
The gunshot was deafening. The nine-millimeter slug struck the transparent ballistic shield six inches in front of Victoria's face. The bullet flattened instantly against the poly-carbonate with a dull *thunk*, leaving a white, spiderweb fracture in the outer layer before dropping harmlessly onto the marble floor.
Victoria didn't even blink. Her eyes remained locked onto his, completely unmoving, cold as deep space.
Before Ricardo could rack another round, two flashbangs detonated behind him with blinding, thunderous fury. The shockwave threw him violently against the limestone pillar. Three tactical officers tackled him to the floor, driving their knees into his spine, twisting his arm back until the bone audibly popped at the shoulder socket.
"Aggghhh!" Ricardo screamed into the cold stone, tears, saliva, and blood smearing against the floor. "Victoria! Victoria, please! Don't do this! I'm your husband! I'm your husband!"
The officers wrenched his hands behind his back, clicking heavy steel cuffs around his wrists with brutal finality.
The SWAT commander stepped forward, looking through the shield at Victoria. "Target is secured, Señora Vance. Perimeter is clear."
Victoria stood up. She smoothed the front of her white suit, walked around the side of the ballistic partition, and stepped out onto the open floor where Ricardo lay pinned beneath the boots of two armed men.
She looked down at him.
He was weeping hysterically, his nose broken, blood pooling on the pristine white stone he had once claimed as his ancestral right.
"Why?" he sobbed, looking up at her through swollen, blackened eyes. "Why did you have to destroy me completely? Why couldn't you just let me go?"
"Because you were never an equal, Ricardo," Victoria said, her voice dropping to a whisper that only he could hear over the rain drumming against the glass. "You were an ornament. And when an ornament chips, it gets thrown into the furnace. You wanted to know what happens when you cross me? This is it. You will spend the next twenty-five years in the maximum-security penitentiary at Almoloya. You will eat slop, you will sleep on concrete, and you will die an old, forgotten felon."
She turned her back on him.
"Take this trash out of my sight," she told the commander.
May you like
As the officers dragged Ricardo out through the rain, his pathetic, wailing screams faded into the storm, swallowed by the cold darkness of the Las Lomas night.
***
