Chapter 1
Alejandro Valdez Escobar was a hard man. He was cold and ruthless. He was a killer of killers, and no one ever made the mistake of underestimating him twice. Escobar was flamboyant, and untouchable. The way he saw it, he was born to sit on the throne of the Mexican Drug Empire he had created. He had dark chocolate eyes below thick black brows and brown skin that seemed to glow when he smiled. His jet black hair was flat and covered his forehead. The only sign of a possible imperfection was a small mole just to the left of his perfect nose, only a finger’s width above his thin mustache. Escobar complained bitterly about it, mostly to his wife, but the truth was that he actually felt it gave his face a little extra character, and he liked it. Over the span of some fourteen years, Escobar had amassed an untold fortune. The drug trade had been good to him. His biggest issues now were: not knowing who to trust and what he wanted next, since he had everything money could buy right at his fingertips. Even though, somehow, those issues had taken a back seat to something else that was sucking the life out of him. Escobar pushed himself away from the oak desk in his home office. He reached out and pulled the top right hand drawer open. His hand brought back a .45 caliber Smith and Wesson. His eyes didn’t notice the golden inlayed cobras on both sides of the handle, even though he knew they were there. He dropped the clip out into his left hand and laid the pistol down on the desktop. His right hand was back inside the drawer retrieving a box of shells. Escobar filled the clip with bullets and dropped the box back inside the drawer. Then he popped the clip in the pistol and sat it on the desk again. Escobar played with his mustache, pulling at it with his thumb and forefinger, moving left to right across it and then back. In his mind he could not believe it had come to this. Early in his life he had clawed and scratched. He had crawled when he had needed to, ran when he had to, and stood facing the devil himself when there was nowhere to hide. Achieving the success he had dreamed of wasn’t easy. There had been sweat from his brow and the brows of others. There were blood sacrifices from strangers and even best friends. Along the road to fulfillment much was lost, but without any one of those necessary evils, the life he had created would not be defined as it was. He put both hands behind his head and massaged his enormously thick neck. Most people thought his nickname of El Toro came from his appearance, the thick neck and wide shoulders, but he was called The Bull because of the speed in which he rolled over those standing in his way. A friend, dead now, once told him that those in opposition were left bleeding and suffering in the dust. Escobar disagreed. There was no suffering, because he did not leave them alive. Escobar opened the bottom drawer on the left hand side of the desk and pulled out a $38,000 bottle of Macallan 1926 Whisky and a small glass. It had never occurred to him that such a treasure should be under lock and key. After all, visitation to his office was by invitation only. It was a commandment that no one wanted to break. He sat the bottle and the glass down on the desk. When he had made the purchase, his intentions were to use it in celebration of the birth of his first born. A year of effort in that direction had yielded no results, so Escobar called the doctor out to his home. After an exam, the doctor determined that Maria, Escobar’s wife, was unable to conceive. With the rage of ten thousand wild bulls, El Toro shot the doctor to death with the very pistol that now lay on his desk. With two pieces of a four piece puzzle in place, Escobar slid the middle drawer of his desk open and took out a $1,150 Gurkha Black Dragon Cigar. Only five hand carved camel bone chests housing a hundred cigars had been made, and one of those chests was in Escobar’s mansion. He trimmed the end, grabbed a lighter from the still open drawer, and fired up the Black Dragon. He took long deep drags on the tobacco, drawing it in and holding it before letting it out slow. For a moment his troubles were gone, and he found himself thinking of his father. He was a man of vision, a man of action, and a truly loving father. The man had an answer for every problem that arose. The pistol on the desk drew Escobar’s attention. He wondered what advice his father would give him if he were still alive. This was one problem that seemed to lack any reasonable solution. Escobar held the Black Dragon with his teeth. He used his hands to open the whiskey bottle and pour some into the glass. He sat the open bottle down on the desk, pulled the cigar out, and held it with his right hand. His left snatched up the glass of whiskey. He brought it up slowly to his lips and breathed it in. It smelled nice. He let it roll out of the glass into his mouth, and it burned down his throat until it was all gone. With empty eyes, he plugged the cigar back in his mouth, took another long drag, and poured another glass of whiskey, exhaling smoke around the cigar wedged tightly in his mouth. He drained the alcohol and crushed out the Black Dragon, dropping the remains into the glass. Escobar, feeling the whiskey now, reached over and picked up the Smith and Wesson.
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