AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Felix gave me an affronted look for a second before he began to crawl as directed.I’m never going to hear the end of this, I thought as I followed, keeping my head low. Something — somebody—crashed into a table above us, and the table collapsed under the sudden weight. I yelped, jerking back in order not to get hit, and when I tried to find Felix again, he was gone.
Crawling as close to the fallen table as I could, I used it as a cover so that I could look around. I expected to see an attack, men against men, but instead, there was only one man. My body went cold. Omar Castillo.El Bestia, I thought.
He had a gun in each hand, and he was shooting into the crowd of people, completely ignorant of my various cousins and distant relatives attacking him with chairs and knives from the tables.Apá is going to be mad that Felix convinced him that the men couldn’t be armed today, I thought almost numbly as I watched Omar downing my relatives left and right, leaving them to choke on their own blood.
I had to get out of here. Matteo had gotten Apá out, just like he was supposed to as the family’s enforcer, but without Felix, I was relatively on my own unless I got the attention of the men who were currently fighting for their lives.I can do this, I told myself.Keep out of sight and keep moving.
My knees ached as I pulled myself along, cursing as I slipped on my dress again and again. I only made it a few feet when I heard a soft, pitiable whimper from beneath the table that I was ducking behind.
I should keep going. I needed to get to an exit and find my family and Felix. The sounds of the dying men behind me and the gunfire made my ears ring…but I couldn’t ignore that whimper. I lifted the tablecloth, and the two boys huddled beneath shrieked, holding each other all the tighter. “Ernesto,” I cooed, “Gabriel, are you okay?” The twins were the youngest of us, only seven years old, and while their father was already trying to make “men” out of them, they were the sweetest boys I’d ever met. I crawled under the table, letting the heavy swing of the tablecloth fall down behind me.
The boys threw themselves into my lap, shivering and whining. I shushed them and petted at their gel-slicked hair. “It’s okay,mi amors,” I whispered against their heads.
“Mama said to get down,” Ernesto sobbed gently. “She hasn’t come back.”
She had better be dead, I thought savagely. My cousin Yessica wasn’t Mother of the Year material, but I thought she was better than leaving her children to fend for themselves like this. “When it gets quiet,” I told them, “we’ll find her, okay? We just have to wait.”
“We’re going to die,” Gabriel cried, clutching me all the tighter.
“We’re not,” I insisted. Even the Castillo Beast knew better than to attack a woman and two children. He might mow down every man in that ballroom, but unless we were caught by a stray bullet, he wouldn’t touch us. “There’s rules about these things,” I said. “You know that.”
Gabriel shook his head. “He’s crazy,” he said and more tears fell from his eyes. “He shot Padre.”
I tightened my grip on them and rocked them back and forth, uttering soft, nonsensical comfort words, but fear was taking root in my stomach. We needed to get out of here. Even if he wouldn’t actually hurt us, there was only so much a child could see before they were harmed irreparably.
