The sound of her childhood nickname was foreign to us both, and the shock of it showed in her face. But still, she didn’t break our connection. Not this time.
“I was thinking about that old saying about anger and forgiveness,” she said. “How holding a grudge is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.”
I hadn’t been expecting such a dark turn, but I shouldn’t have been surprised. All evidence pointed to the fact that I’d nearly died in the warehouse that night. It made sense that my sister would be thinking about all the unsaid, unsettled things left between us—things we’d ignored for two decades. Hell, I couldn’t be certain, but as I lay on that concrete floor, blood leaking out of my organs, I was pretty sure my own stockpile of regrets had flashed through my mind.
“For so many years,” she continued, “I pretended you didn’t exist. Did you know that?”
I shook my head. How could I know? The last thing she’d ever said to me was “Leave me, and don’t ever come back,” a broken whisper from a broken woman whom I would’ve done anything to make whole again. Until I’d called her about the Landes murder and Jonathan’s connections in Raven’s Cape, we hadn’t spoken a word to each other in two decades.
“It’s true,” she said. “It was the only way I could let go of even afractionof the rage I felt toward you.” She closed her eyes and shook her head, pressing her lips together so tightly, they turned white. “Whenever anyone asked about my family, my home, I told them I’d been an only child, adopted by a couple in America when I was very young.”
I sighed, my heart breaking. My for-public-consumption backstory had been similarly constructed, similarly terrible.
The only person I’d ever told about Elena was Ronan, and even he didn’t know the whole story.
“That night at the warehouse,” she continued, her face going a few shades paler, “seeing you on the floor like that, the blood… I thought I’d lost you, Emilio Alejandro Alvarez. I thought I’d have to see that name carved into a tombstone. And for the first time in twenty years, I realized youhadn’tstopped existing for me. You never will.”
Tears glazed her eyes, her pain so raw and real I had to look away. “We share the same blood, Elena. That alone connects us, even if we’d never spoken again.”
“No, it’s more than that.” She wiped her eyes. “I spent so long wishing you’d never existed, and then I almost got my wish the other night. I was a monster, I realized. A fool. All that hatred, all that wasted time and energy, none of it ever brought my baby back. And now I was going to lose my brother on top of it all. When I got home that night, I went to my room and prayed. I prayed toJesúsandMadre María. I prayed to the saints. I prayed to the ghosts of Mamá and Papá and my husband and daughter. I prayed to every goddess I could name, and when I ran out of goddesses, I moved onto the gods, and then the universe, and then the stars, and anyone or anything else that would listen. Because in that moment, when I looked down and saw your blood covering my hands, I knew in the depths of my soul that I didn’t want to lose you. Not again. No matter what happened in the past.”
The force of her emotions hit me like a wave, and I closed my eyes, nearly drowning in the guilt I’d kept at bay for so many years. It was a constant force, and now it surged, as dense and heavy and dangerous as a black hole, threatening to drag me under for the last time.
“Emilio,” she said softly, her hand against my cheek, and I opened my eyes to find her face streaked with fresh tears. “I don’t want to waste any more time pretending I don’t have a brother. We’ve lost so many years already.”
“So many I’ve almost lost count.” I swallowed the thickness in my throat. “I’m sorry, Elena. I’m so sorry. I was sorry then, and I’ve never stopped wishing for a time machine to go back and do it all differently. I never meant…”
I trailed off. She’d heard variations of this apology many times, and it hadn’t changed anything.
I almost expected her to turn her back again. To order me out of her life, out of Raven’s Cape, never to return. I wouldn’t have blamed her.
If it weren’t for me, her family might still be alive.
But instead, she looked at me, the look in her eyes more vulnerable and hopeful than I’d ever seen, and said, “I want to let you back in. I just… I just don’t know how. All that time, all that anger, still so many questions that I know you don’t have answers for… There’s a wall around my heart when it comes to you, and I can’t find a way to crack it. Not yet.”
I took her hand in both of mine and held it close, grateful beyond words that she’d shared that with me. For so long, I thought she was lost to me, and I’d tried to make my peace with that, though I’d never succeeded.
And now, she’d given me new hope, no matter how fragile. No matter how distant.
“So what do I do, Meelo?” she asked, her voice cracking on my old nickname. “Let you in, even after everything?”
“I can’t answer that for you, Lainey.” I pressed a kiss to her hand. “But I’m glad you want to try.”
“But where do we go from here?”
“Nowhere. We just stay here. Right here. Take it day by day. Maybe one of those days, we’ll find the first crack in the wall.” I smiled, reaching up to smooth away the last of her tears. “Or maybe you’ll get tired of me and decide to add some more bricks, make it even stronger, add some turrets and battlements on the top, a couple of armed guards, a canon, a cauldron of boiling oil…”
“Okay, okay, I get it.” She rolled her big brown eyes, a faint smile touching her lips. “You watched too much American TV as a child. I tried to warn Mamá, but she never listened.”
“Day by day,” I repeated, my tone serious again. “Fair enough?”
She tucked her hair behind her ears and nodded, her smile growing a fraction wider. “Day by day. Yes, I think I can manage that,” she said, and the heaviness that had descended between us dissipated in an instant, burned away like fog in the morning sun.
“He’s awake?” A familiar voice called out from the doorway, and I turned to find mybrujita, tears filling her eyes as she clasped her hand over her mouth, just like my sister had done. It made me smile.
“And doing much better now that you’re here,” Elena teased. “Hmm. Look at that color in his cheeks! It’s like someone just flipped him over and gave him a shot of adrenaline right in the—”
“Arm,” I finished for her.
