Blood Debt
"His brother owes the cartel boss everything. She takes him as payment instead."
They bring me to her on my knees.
The warehouse is cold, industrial, smelling of rust and old blood. Cartel territory—the kind of place where people disappear and no one asks questions. My wrists are zip-tied, my face is bruised from the "collection" process, and somewhere across the city, my brother is hiding in a hole hoping I can clean up his mess.
Thirty million credits.
That's what Lucas owes. Thirty million credits worth of product that went up in flames when his cook house exploded. An amount so staggering that when I offered to work it off, the lieutenant just laughed.
"Work it off? That would take you three hundred years, pendejo."
But then he made a call. Spoke in rapid Spanish I couldn't follow. And when he hung up, he was smiling in a way that made my blood freeze.
"La Señora wants to see you."
She sits on a throne made of shipping crates.
La Señora. Camila Reyes. Fifty years old, undisputed queen of the Neo-Havana cartel, rumored to have personally executed her own brother when he tried to challenge her authority.
I expected someone hard. Angular. The kind of lean, predatory figure that crime bosses in the feeds always seem to have.
She's not that.
She's massive. Not tall—maybe five foot five—but wide, heavy, a wall of woman dressed in white linen that strains across curves upon curves. Her skin is bronze, her hair a cascade of black and silver, her face round and beautiful and terrifying.
She looks like someone's abuela.
She also looks like she could order my death without blinking.
"So," she says, her voice a low purr that echoes through the warehouse. "You're the brother."
"I'm here to make things right."
"With what? Your charm?" She gestures at me—bruised, bound, pathetic. "You have no money. No skills. No connections. What could you possibly offer me that's worth thirty million credits?"
I don't have an answer. I came here to beg, to bargain, to do whatever it took to save Lucas's worthless life. I didn't actually have a plan.
She sees it in my face. Laughs.
"You're loyal. That's something, at least. Standing between your brother and his consequences even when you know it's hopeless." She rises from her throne, and the motion makes her body shift in ways I can't help noticing—even here, even now.
She crosses to me. Her guards fall back, giving us space.
"Tell me, m'ijo." She cups my chin, tilts my face up. Her hand is soft, her grip iron. "Are you loyal only to your brother? Or is there room for other... allegiances?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean you're pretty." She traces her thumb across my split lip. "Young. Strong. The kind of toy I haven't had in a very long time."
My stomach drops. "I'm not—"
"Not what? Not for sale?" Her smile is dangerous. "Everything is for sale, boy. The only question is the price."
The terms are simple.
My brother's debt is erased. He lives, walks free, never has to look over his shoulder again. In exchange, I belong to her. Completely. Exclusively. For as long as she wants me.
"What does 'belong' mean?" I ask.
"It means what I want it to mean." She's circling me now, predator evaluating prey. "You'll live in my compound. Eat my food. Wear my clothes. And when I call for you—" She stops in front of me, her body so close I can feel her heat. "—you'll come."
"As a servant?"
"As mine." Her eyes are dark, unreadable. "You'll work, yes. But not in the fields. Not in the warehouses. You'll work for me. Personally."
I understand what she's not saying. What kind of work she means.
"And if I refuse?"
"Then your brother dies, you die, and I find someone else to amuse me." She shrugs, her massive breasts shifting under white linen. "I've made this offer three times in my life, m'ijo. The first two refused."
"What happened to them?"
"What do you think?" She smiles. "I'm La Señora. I don't make threats. I make promises."
I look at her—this woman who could end my entire family with a word, this mountain of flesh and power who's offering me survival at the cost of my body.
There's no choice. There never was.
"I'll do it."
"I know you will." She snaps her fingers. A guard steps forward, cuts my zip-ties. "Welcome to your new life, querido. I do hope you're a quick learner."
The compound is a fortress.
Built on a private island off the coast, it's a maze of courtyards and gardens and armed checkpoints. La Señora's personal quarters occupy the top floor of the main house—an entire level dedicated to her comfort.
My room is adjacent to hers. Connected by a door that only locks from her side.
For the first week, she doesn't call for me. I eat meals alone, explore the grounds under the watchful eyes of guards, try to understand the rhythm of this new prison.
And I watch her.
She rules her empire from a sunlit office, taking calls, giving orders, making decisions that shape the lives of thousands. She's brutal when she needs to be—I hear screaming from the basement some nights—but she's also oddly fair. When she promises something, she delivers. When she threatens, she follows through.
The guards worship her. The staff adores her. Even the hardened killers who run her street operations defer to her with something like love.
And when she catches me watching, she smiles—slow, knowing—like she can see everything I'm thinking.
The summons comes on a Friday night.
A knock on the connecting door. A guard's voice: "La Señora requests your presence."
I go.
Her bedroom is opulent—silks and satins, candles flickering, the smell of jasmine and something earthier. She's reclining on a bed the size of my old apartment, wearing a silk robe that's barely tied, her body a landscape of curves and shadows.
"Come here."
I approach. Stop at the edge of the bed.
"Closer."
I climb onto the mattress. Kneel before her like she's a queen and I'm a supplicant—which, I realize, is exactly what we are.
"Are you afraid of me?"
The question catches me off guard. "Yes."
"Good. Fear is healthy." She reaches out, traces a finger down my chest. "But fear isn't what I want from you. Not tonight."
"What do you want?"
"I want you to look at me." She sits up, lets the robe fall open. "Really look. At this body that I've worn for fifty years. At every pound, every curve, every inch of flesh that men have told me to be ashamed of."
I look.
She's extraordinary. Breasts that spill heavy and full, dark nipples hardening in the candlelight. A belly that's soft and round, marked with silver stretch marks. Hips that could hold the world, thighs that could crush it.
"What do you see?"
"Power," I say. "I see power."
Something flickers in her eyes. Surprise, maybe. Or hunger.
"And what else?"
"Beauty." I reach out, slowly, giving her time to stop me. My hand lands on her hip—warm, soft, yielding. "I see something beautiful."
She inhales sharply.
"You don't have to lie, querido. I own you regardless."
"I'm not lying." I lean forward, press my lips to the curve of her belly. She gasps. "I've been watching you for a week. Seeing how you move, how you command, how every person in this compound looks at you like you're the sun. You're the most magnetic woman I've ever seen. And I'm not saying that because I'm scared."
"Then why?"
I look up at her, this woman who could destroy me, who owns me, who holds my brother's life and mine in her hands.
"Because I want you," I say simply. "And I never thought I would. But I do."
She breaks open beneath me like a dam letting go.
All that control, all that power, all that armored composure—it cracks when I touch her. When I kiss my way down her body, worshipping every inch, every roll, every soft and heavy piece of her that she's spent fifty years being told to hide.
She's not gentle. Can't be—she's been in charge too long to know how to surrender completely. But she lets me. Lets me bury my face between her thick thighs, lets me taste her until she's shaking, lets me fuck her slow and deep until her carefully maintained control shreds into gasps and curses and my name—
Rafael. God, Rafael—
Nobody's called her m'ija in thirty years. Nobody's held her like she's precious instead of dangerous. Nobody's wanted the woman beneath the crown.
Until me.
"Why me?" she asks afterward.
We're tangled in her sheets, her weight half on top of me, pinning me to the mattress in a way that should feel trapped and instead feels safe.
"What do you mean?"
"I've offered this deal before. Young men, handsome, desperate—they all hated me for it. Served their time and fled the moment they were free." She traces patterns on my chest. "You're different. You don't look at me like I'm a monster."
"Because you're not." I tilt her face up. "You're hard, yes. Brutal when you have to be. But you're also fair. You keep your word. You take care of your people. And you're—" I kiss her forehead. "You're lonely. I can see it. All that power, and no one to share it with."
Her eyes glisten. Fifty years of armor, and I've found a crack.
"My husband was killed twelve years ago," she says quietly. "Shot by a rival cartel. I rebuilt everything, made myself into something no one could hurt. But in the process..."
"You forgot how to let anyone in?"
"Something like that."
I pull her closer. "I'm not going anywhere, Camila. Not because you own me. Because I want to be here. With you."
"Even knowing what I am?"
"Especially knowing what you are." I kiss her—soft, slow, meaning it. "You're La Señora. You're a queen. And I'm choosing to kneel because I want to, not because I have to."
Months pass.
My brother is released, relocated, given a new identity somewhere far from his mistakes. I could leave too—she offers, more than once. Says the debt is paid, I'm free to go, she won't stop me.
I stay.
Not as property. As partner. She gives me responsibilities, teaches me the business, lets me stand beside her when she meets with lieutenants and rivals. I learn who she is beneath the legend—the woman who cries for her dead husband on the anniversary of his death, who secretly funds orphanages in the Undercity, who quotes poetry in bed and screams profanity during business calls.
I love her.
I tell her on a Tuesday night, unprompted, while she's reviewing shipping manifests at her desk.
"I love you."
She looks up. Her pen stills.
"You don't have to say that."
"I know." I cross to her, lean down, kiss her like I mean it—because I do. "I'm saying it because it's true. I love you, Camila. All of you. The queen and the woman underneath."
She stares at me for a long moment.
Then she pulls me into her lap—no small feat, given our size difference—and buries her face in my neck.
"Te amo también," she whispers. "More than I ever thought I could."
Outside, the Caribbean stretches endless and blue.
And in a fortress built on blood and power, two people who shouldn't fit together find a way to make it work anyway.
Because love doesn't care about debts, or age, or what the world says we should want.
It just is.
And sometimes, that's enough.