Do kill the messenger.

Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman once tried to bribe Mexican military brass with $10 million to avoid arrest — then ordered his go-between killed when the general refused the graft, the drug lord’s former secretary testified Tuesday.

Alex Cifuentes told jurors in the cocaine kingpin’s trial in Brooklyn federal court that his own personal assistant, Andrea Velez, ran a modeling agency on the side, and would bring “female friends” for the unnamed “general of the nation” at private parties.

Guzman asked her to offer the general the eye-popping payoff in exchange for leaving him “in peace” — but the general rejected the offer because he “hated Joaquin very much,” Cifuentes testified.

Chapo didn’t take the news well.

“He was angry and he said she was a liar, he ordered her killed,” said Cifuentes, who worked for Chapo from 2007 until his own arrest in 2013.

At the time, Chapo already had a contract out for a hit on a drug dealer in Canada, and suggested killing two birds with one stone.

“They can just kill the secretary as well because she’s a liar,” he recalled Guzman saying.

Cifuentes said he had some meetings with the Hells Angels about doing the job — but both Velez and the Canadian dealer are still alive today.

Meanwhile, Cifuentes wept on the stand on Tuesday while listening to a recording of a phone call between himself and his mother from 2012.

The call came after Chapo insisted on visiting Cifuentes in Cabo San Lucas, despite the secretary telling his boss his presence there would attract too much attention from law enforcement.

Cifuentes said Guzman “left a ruckus in the city” after he split, but the drug lord just advised him to hide in the sewers.

In the phone call, Cifuentes despaired to his mom that he was “alone, alone,” and she asked if he had anywhere to lie low.

The former cartel member wiped his eyes as he listened to his reply at the time: “They’re ransacking the whole city.”