Chapter Eleven

Zella Mills - Naguela

Two men stood outside the gates of the two-story building. On one side of the building was a closed convenience store. Beyond the gates were stairs that led upward into the building. Santino occupied the entire top level.

The two men had holsters around their shoulders and waist. One was gripping an SMG as if he was prepared for a war to pop off at any moment. Their eyes locked on Zella and Joe from the moment they got out of their car across the street. “Can I help you?” one man said. Zella couldn’t help but stare at the hooked tache above his lip.

“We’re here to see Santino for some business,” Joe said.

The man put a radio against his tache. “Name?”

Joe glanced at the man. “Tell him I’m interested in buying what Manuel has.”

The man spoke over the radio in a fast Spanish dialect that Zella had trouble following. After a brief response on the radio, the man let his arm fall and turned his attention to her. “Leave the guns in the car.”

Zella double-blinked at him. Joe chose to verbalize what she was thinking in a formal response. “We don’t leave our guns behind. You wanna follow us in, then be my guest.”

The man with the SMG aimed it at them and cursed. Zella didn’t know how, but she could always tell when a person wasn’t prepared to pull the trigger. Something in the eyes gave it away. Beyond the fear in his eyes, was something more telling that he wasn’t ready to kill. “Here, I’ll help you out,” Zella said. She reached quickly around the SMG and pulled the manual safety lock so the weapon was fire ready. “There you go,” Zella said, watching a crimson blush of humiliation form on his face.

“Just come. I’ll follow you inside,” said the man with the tache, saving his partner from his embarrassment.

They followed the guard through the gate and up the steps, entering a wide reception area. The room had two desks side by side with a logo mounted on the wall above both of them. The logo read Varela in a classic serif typeface. They walked to the right side of the wide room. Zella looked over her shoulder at the far-left side, where she saw a conference table, whiteboards, and projectors. The space looked as though it had once been two separate rooms until they knocked the walls down.

He led them into a connecting side room. Santino stepped behind his desk, where he conveniently had an assault rifle, pistols, and a bunch of ammunition laid out. Santino continued his conversation on the phone briefly, speaking animatedly, “I don’t know, Frankie, but I am Santino Varela. I always figure it out. I have a meeting now. Goodbye.” He ended the phone call and tossed the phone onto the table next to his arsenal of weapons.

“Hola,” Santino said. His eyes were on Zella, sizing her up. And then he shot a questioning glance at his guard. “Are you sure these are the ones who want to buy the farm?”

“Si, ask them yourself.” The guard said, before returning to his post.

Santino eyed Zella once more and laughed. “Bullshit! You are too young to see the value of such a thing. You must be spies.” Santino picked up a dart from his desk and tossed it between Zella and Joe. The dart landed between the eyes of Ruben Ladrón. It was a poster of the Estrean president that had been stuck on the wall with four strips of white sticky tape.

“If I was a spy, I’d come up with a more creative way to get in a room with you, Mister Varela,” Zella said. Joe shot her a look of confusion. She suddenly realized her words could appear seductive.

Santino’s eyes found her chest. “Is that right? And may I ask how old you are?”

Joe waved a hand in the air. “Cut the shit. We’re here to talk business. We want to buy Buenas Tierras de Naguela from you.”

A devious smile appeared on Santino’s face. “I’m sorry. Is she yours? I wasn’t trying to disrespect you.”

“I belong to no one,” Zella snapped. “And it doesn’t matter to you. What matters is that you have something we want to buy. Do us a favor and start there.”

Santino poured a shot of white rum into a glass and held it between his fingers. He turned his back to them and faced out the window. “I bet Manuel gave you the whole spiel about me extorting him. About me hiking up the interest in his debt after promising him I would look out for him.”

“He did,” Joe said. “It’s a crappy thing to do to an elder.”

Santino chuckled and downed the shot. He slammed the glass down onto the table in a smooth motion and looked them in the eye, one after the other. Santino’s presence was undeniable. He wore a loose-fitting, crisp white dress shirt that contrasted with the sapphire blue suit jacket folded on the back of his office chair. His shirt had the first three buttons undone, displaying the hefty chain of polished gold around his neck. A matching bracelet in the same style clasped his wrist. “Understand this, if I didn’t do what I did to my debtees, then this country would have fallen a long time ago. The amount of financial support I’ve given to President Secada is what’s helping Naguela have a leg to stand on in this war. So yes, I buy people’s debts for them, and then I make them pay me back double or triple what the cost was. But I can bet you I’m going to spend that money better than anyone else. Nobody else has the power to help those innocent kids and families that are being destroyed out there. But I can. In this world, nothing good comes without someone first suffering for it.”

“Fine,” Zella said. “I get it. You take someone else’s wealth and distribute it to the things you think matter the most. I won’t judge how you decide to spend your money. Just make us a fair offer so we can buy you out. We’ll all win. You get your money, we get our farm, and we treat Manuel and Teresa like equals.”

Santino chuckled. “You think it’s so easy, don’t you? Just wait until you find out the headaches that come with owning such assets. Alright, you want an offer?” Santino went into a compartment on his desk and retrieved a pair of augmented reality glasses. The glasses were stylistic enough to complement his sharp attire. The small round camera lenses in the top right and left corners of the frame gave away that they were AR glasses. Santino was silent for a moment. They assumed he was accessing his financial data. With the glasses still covering his eyes, he made an offer that was fifty percent over the entire debt that Manuel owed.

“That’s ridiculous,” Zella snapped. “The farm is nice, but it’s not worth that much. Let’s be reasonable.”

Santino removed the glasses and placed them back where he got them. “I don’t know you. I don’t owe you a better offer. You have no leverage, and you’re both young enough to work off the debt if you bought the farm on credit. To me, the offer is more than generous.”

Zella and Joe’s eyes met. They were not prepared to blow all of their savings on this. They also couldn’t afford the risk of putting themselves in so much debt. “You disappoint me,” Zella said.

The sound of an SMG dispersing came from below. Shots from several firearm types followed. Something was popping off downstairs. “Shit,” Santino yelled, grabbing the rifle from the desk. “Arm yourselves, kids. Looks like they picked today to come at me.”

Questions flooded Zella’s mind that she had no time to ask. She pulled the guns from her holster and flipped the safety off. Footsteps marched up the steps, and someone pounded on the front door. Zella and Joe took cover beside the office door frame, waiting for who was coming.

-Mere Immortal is written by Gary Swift. If you see this on another website under another name, then someone has plagiarised it. Visit mereimmortal.com for official chapters. Subscribe to the Substack paid tier to read further ahead in the story.

-This version of Mere Immortal is written in US English.