AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I opened my mouth to acknowledge what he’d said, but then shut it again. The man carried me through the door.Pay attention!It was the first lesson Lili had taught me in our self-defense sessions.Take in everything around you, any information that could be useful.
I peeked up at the security cameras; they were all off. Angel wouldn’t have done this; he wouldn’t have wasted the energy of cutting off the cameras. Whoever this man was, he had connections on the inside, but he didn’t want Angel to find out about it. Why else would he need to sneak through the compound like this?
At the end of the hallway was a body and a lot of blood.Angel. Bile rose in my throat again.Don’t panic. That was the second lesson Lili taught me.Figure out what’s going on before you lose your head. I forced myself to breathe and look at the man sprawled across the white marble floor.
Immediately I could tell that it wasn’t Angel. He was too broad, but he wasn’t tall enough to be Omar. We were getting farther away, but before we turned the corner, I realized that it was David.Was he alive or dead?Dread spread through my body, dark and thick and viscous.
The man opened a side door, and I got my first breath of fresh air in days…and then I noticed the car idling.Being taken to a secondary location means you won’t make it back. Fight as hard as you can.But there was no fighting with a blade already sticking into the soft skin of my belly. I tried to angle away from it as best as I could, worried that he would slip, and then that precious life that had taken root would be snubbed out.
The man pressed a button, and the trunk of the car popped open. He tossed me, and the moment I landed, grunting with the force of it, I started screaming, loud and ragged, until the lid came down on my head, casting me into darkness.
CHAPTER27
Angel
“Let’s have Lara fix an early supper tonight,” Padre said as we came through the garage into the house. He hadn’t said a word since we left the hospital with the envelope of his latest scans and his oncologist’s formal recommendations, which matched the verbal ones he gave us not too long ago: there was nothing to be done. The cancer was quick and aggressive, and the treatment was only making him feel worse. I was surprised when he didn’t mention the folder as we left; he didn’t make me get rid of it like the last time.
“I’m not hungry, Padre.”
My father gave me a flat look. “Dinner,mijo,” he said. “We need to talk.”
I sighed and agreed. “Si, Padre. I’ll go and speak with Lara. Any requests?”
His face, sallow and thinning, turned even grayer. “Something bland,” he said, “but tell her whatever it is, I want fried plantains.”
I nodded again, and I went to the kitchen to speak with Lara and relay my father’s requests. “Padre would like something simple tonight. Maybe chicken and rice? With fried plantains.”
Lara didn’t bother looking at me. “Si, jefe,” she said.
“Lara.”
The older woman refused to look at me. “She’s miserable,” she said. “You’ve made her miserable…just like your father made your mother.”
Her words were a punch to the gut. I thought about Emma’s eyes after I pulled away from her, how the light had dimmed in them. The sobs that followed me down the hallway had been worse than when I initially locked her in.
But, still, we’d come to the same conclusion in that room: we didn’t trust one another.
“I can’t trust her,” I said. “Not now.”
Lara’s shoulders slumped. “If you can’t trust your wife, who can you trust?”
It was on the tip of my tongue to say that I trusted my family, but that wasn’t the entire truth. I trusted Omar and Liliana; I trusted Manny. But on the whole? My family, on the whole, would rather see me dead than take Padre’s place. “Keep the spices to a minimum,” I said, ignoring her question entirely. “Padre…isn’t feeling well.”
“He’s dying,” Lara said, crossing to open the refrigerator. “Dying is not a comfortable process.”
I watched her unload chicken from the fridge; it was a whole hen that she would break down. I’d asked her when I was younger why she didn’t just get the pre-cut, packaged chicken when she went on her grocery runs, and she’d scoffed at the very idea. She didn’t like taking what she saw as the easy way out.
“How did you know?” I asked, and out of everything,thatwas what got her to finally look at me. It was the same look she’d give me as a kid when she thought I’d said or done something utterly stupid.
“The man is turning more yellow every day,” she said. “Everyone knows; everyonesees, but no one will say anything to him. We know that thejefehas his pride, and we wouldn’t take it from him.”
We locked eyes for a moment, and I gave her a grateful nod. “Thank you,” I said.
Lara sighed. “You can thank me by bringing Emma to the dining room tonight,” she said. “That would be thanks enough.”
I shook my head. “No,” I said. “Not…not tonight.”
She peeked at me. “Soon?”
