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M: Javier’s not here, but we have time. Guerra will meet with the other cartels to determine a punis
hment.
T: No he won’t. GET OUT OF THE HOUSE! It wasn’t Torrente Cartel money I used. It was Guerra’s. Get out of there.
Oh, my God . . . What have I done?
Worried they’ll return to the house, I send Marco a text, telling him to take my parents and Javier to meet me and Tug at Café Infinito immediately. I don’t know how much time I have until Guerra’s men storm the house, so I leave everything and sprint toward the foyer.
Before I reach the front door, Eduardo grabs me around the waist. “Where are you going in such a hurry?”
“I thought I heard my father’s car. I was going to see Javier.”
There’s no hiding my fear and my lie isn’t believable. Eduardo sneers as he pulls me close. “Really, and here I thought you were leaving me for dead.”
His fingertips dig into my arm as he drags me to his office. My heart lodges in my throat. Eduardo knows. Shit . . . the cameras. He must have been watching. My skin hums with fear as he shoves me into a chair in front of his desk. He points a gun at me, his eyes dark as night, and any love I ever saw in them has long vanished. Pure hatred reflects back at me.
“There’s only one way for you to live through this, my dear wife.”
“How?” I grip the sides of the chair for support, allowing myself a moment for my thoughts to settle so I can think of a way to escape. There’s one door and he’s armed. I’ll never make it, so I try and turn the tables on him. “What’s done is done. You should run and hide before Guerra’s men find you.”
“No. You will tell Mr. Guerra that it was your father who transferred the money. That he wanted to set me up so he could have the cartel back.”
“They’ll kill him!” I scream, bolting from the chair. He commands me with the gun to sit back down. I do because I know he’ll kill me.
“Yes, they will, but Guadalupe and the kids will be safe. You have my word.”
As if his word means anything to me. His heart is pure evil. He’ll never concern himself with the safety of my father’s family.
“And if I don’t,” I say, challenging him. I have nothing left to lose and I refuse to be submissive.
“Then Javier will be an orphan.”
“No,” I protest. “It’s you they want. Not me. Not Javier.”
His sinister laugh sends a shiver down my spine. “So naïve. Do you think when Guerra’s men get here they’ll spare anyone? Don’t you know better by now? When they come, Maria, they’ll execute everyone in this house, including you.”
“Then you have to let me go. Do the right thing for once in your life. You can’t do this to our son.” Pleading for Javier is my only option, but his face remains angry and I know our son is not a strong enough bargaining chip.
“I’m not doing this to Javier. The choice is yours. Our son or your father?” He holds out a cell phone. I shake my head unable to take it.
How foolish I am to believe for a second Eduardo loves Javier enough to let me go. His ego won’t allow him to release a procession. One thing’s for sure; I have a choice, and I choose both my father and my son. I won’t let my father pay for Eduardo’s mistakes and I won’t allow Eduardo to turn my son into a miniature version of himself. He thinks I’m desperate enough to kill my own father, but he’s wrong. My father is a changed man and devoted father and grandfather. I love him and I can’t be the one to betray him.
Eduardo lifts the gun and points it directly at my head. I’m not afraid. I’ve been ready to die since the moment I met him. “You make the call or so help me, Maria, I’ll kill you. Don’t make me do this. Our son needs his mother.”
There’s the little flaw in his threats I had been waiting for. His losing his mother young nags at him as he tries to pretend he’ll do anything to save his skin.
“No my son needs his freedom to grow up in a world other than this one, even if it’s without me.” While the pain in my chest is heavy, I will do what I should have done when Eduardo confronted me in the lobby at Tug’s. “You’re going to have to kill me because, I won’t murder my father to save you. You did this the day you raped me all those years ago. You deserve whatever Guerra has planned.”
Rage flashes in his eyes as his skin turns a blistering shade of red. “You would die to protect a man who left your mother? Who abandoned you?”
Fate has caught up to me, but also to Eduardo. There is no escape. I close my eyes as the cold steel presses into my forehead.
The first time I met Eduardo, he swept me off my feet, but it was only days later that I knew he’d eventually kill me.
Maybe this is God’s plan. While my prediction is coming to fruition later than expected, there’s nowhere left to run or hide from the inevitable.
Dying is the only way to protect the people I love. It always has been. I’d been delusional to believe there was another way. That I could forget where I came from. Or was I? The thing with the hustle that Tug missed and I’d forgotten, is when it fails you have to be quick with another one.
