Mondragón rarely deigned to visit Cortez. But from time to time—more times than Fernando would have liked—he summoned him to one of his many choice establishments in Saguero and beyond. Choicer than The Red Room, but always with a sordid edge to them, no matter how posh of a front they seemed. Mondragón was not a trafficker per se, but he was an associate of traffickers. He lectured Fernando in his patronizing, grandiloquent way that it was vain naïveté for a rich man in this place and time to be otherwise.

“Surely even your noble father has his dealings,” Mondragón said.

Fernando said nothing to this, as he drank the port that was served him.

Mondragón smiled his hawkish smile. “The young man is coy, or simply reserved, perhaps. This is how the upper crust are trained, is it not? You don’t speak of such crass things as money, or the cartels.”

“I thought your point was that such things go without saying.”

“Touché,” Mondragón said, topping him off from the decanter as he snapped his fingers for the busty nymph of a cocktail waitress to replenish it. “Because you are a gentleman’s bastard, Fernando, you have the rare privilege to be both direct and indirect. You have the best of both worlds, though the blue-bloods would never dare admit it. As the legitimate son of a pig farmer, I envy you.”

Fernando looked at Mondragón, his light eyes, his light smile. But Fernando wasn’t fooled. The best fronts had a semblance of truth, and in Mondragón’s case, more than a semblance. Fernando could see that beneath the patrón’s casual remark the man envied him a great deal. The depths of this envy were further revealed as the pretty waitress returned with a full decanter, which she set carefully on the table between them. She was preparing to withdraw when Mondragón snagged her by the hip.

“Hermosa,” he said, cutting his golden eyes between her and Fernando, “whose cock would you rather suck right now—mine or his?”

The young woman cast a fearful glance between them. It was only fearful because she knew the right answer, but felt otherwise.

“Yours, of course, patrón.”

“Is that so?”

Mondragón smiled sharply, savoring with obvious vindictiveness the panic she felt at being compelled to answer as she had. Fernando glared at him, already thinking how to save her before Mondragón sent her on her way with a smack to the ass.

“Good girl.”

She hastened from the table in clear relief. When Mondragón turned back to Fernando, he was still glaring. Mondragón chuckled.

“Now, joven, I think you are envious of me. But worry not, I will share my kingdom with you, more abundantly even than I already have. I like you, Fernando. I like you a great deal. When I look at you, I see the son I never had—by my own contrivance as much as God’s. You have your senator father, for whatever he is worth. But I will be your true father. You will see.”

Mondragón poured them both a fresh glass of port, cheering to him. Balefully, Fernando drank from his glass, remarking to himself that they would see all right.

Mondragón was no father of his. No blood of his, for that matter.

Mondragón was nothing to him.

Nothing at all.

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La Gorgona © CS Dark Fantasy