“That other gown was becoming too stuffy,” Lo answered simply.
Mayté’s eyebrows knit and her eyes slowly grew as if she were looking at Lo for the first time.
Lo’s stomach sank.Mayté was making her nervous.Why was she acting like that?It was almost as if she were frightened.
Did she know what Lo had done?She couldn’t have, and yet …
Ding.
The elevator doors opened.Lo waited for Mayté to step inside, but she didn’t.“What’s the matter?”Lo asked.
Mayté slowly backed away.Each tiny step chipped further and further into Lo’s already wounded heart.“I should probably change out of my nightgown.You go on without me.”She wouldn’t meet her eyes.
A part of Lo wanted to tell her no, but another part of her, the part that was numb, wanted to just leave without her.That was the part she listened to.Without a word, she turned away and stepped into the elevator to head to the second to last round of Fortune’s Kiss.
She should have been scared.Terrified, even, yet her pounding heart calmed.It didn’t matter.Mayté talked about El Beso de la Fortuna.She said getting that would help her win.It was a card.Lo felt it in her gut.She would get it, and bringing the house down would be her winning wish.
And she wasn’t going to let any worthless people get in her way.
TWENTY-ONEMayté
Mayté was supposed to return to the suite and change out of her nightgown and robe.But now she found herself stuck.So many thoughts bounced through her head and competed for her full attention.The discovery of the El Beso de la Fortuna card.Knowing exactly what she had to do to free everyone from the house.The brief taste of Alejandro’s lips against hers.But, most of all, her thoughts kept returning to Lo.
Lo had seemed so strange.As if she were a completely different person.Not the dearest friend Mayté had grown up with.There was something odd about her demeanor.She looked beautiful in her black gown.But all the gowns in their suite had been bright and colorful.Not the color of shadows in the night.
When she had looked at Lo, she’d felt something off, but she couldn’t figure outwhyorwhatit could be.
“Mayté?What are you doing in your nightgown?”
Carlos approached her in front of the elevator, clad in a suit.His dark eyes squinted with exhaustion.
Mayté clutched her satchel tighter.Inside was her father’s framed photo and calavera.This was the moment she most dreaded.She pushed the button to call the elevator if only to buy her an extra second to pull herself together.“I need to tell you something.”
“What is it?”
The elevator doors opened, they got in, and Mayté looked to the ceiling, blinking back tears.She had never noticed that it was painted to match the night sky: stars winked and glistened like gems floating in a sea of ink.
“Mayté, what happened?”
She took a shaky breath.“F-fa—” She snapped her mouth shut before her voice could completely shatter.If she dared speak, she would completely break down, and that wouldn’t help anything.She needed to collect herself, so, instead, she pulled out the photograph and calavera and forced them into her brother’s hands.
“Wha—?”Carlos flinched as he studied the photograph.“Where did you get this?”
“Father gambled here,” she blurted out.It was painful and her vision blurred, but there was also a relief.Just like ripping out a splinter.“This …” She took a shaky breath as a hot tear crawled down her cheek.“This is what happened to our family’s fortune.”
Carlos didn’t say a word.Instead, he just stood there, mouth agape.But soon his eyes twitched and his lips curled.He hurled the calavera at the wall.It shattered into thousands of pieces, leaving a spatter of brown.He shouted a string of curses.Mayté felt every vile word because the exact same thing had gone through her head.“Why?”His shouting and anger morphed into tears.“He hadeverything.So why?”The frame slipped from his fingers and landed with a thud.“Why would he come here?”
“I have no idea.”Mayté knelt to pick up the photograph.A long crack stretched along the glass.She changed her mind andinstead hugged her brother.The two stood like that for several moments as the elevator ascended.Just silence, and the tears dripping down their faces.She finally broke that silence.“We’re here because of him, and if we lose …”
“We’ll either die a gruesome death or live to become just like him,” Carlos croaked.
Their father had destroyed their future.Becoming like him was a fate worse than death.“The only way to avoid that is to win,” Mayté said.“And I know exactly how to do it; I know a way that we canallescape from here.”
Carlos’s eyebrows rose.
“So, please.”She wiped her tears.“You have to trust me and make sure you keep surviving.Okay?”Now she was more determined than ever to save everyone.
“I should have trusted you from the very beginning,” Carlos said as the doors opened.
