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JOÃO
With my foot on the accelerator, I sped right through a motherfucking Stop sign to those goons’ home. I had fucking trusted them to keep my mother safe and bury her because Redwood would fail me yet again with that, but they obviously couldn’t do shit without me directing their every fucking move.
Which meant that I would have to kill them.
They had let my mother get into the wrong hands. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if Akio’s family had offered them a bunch of dirty money to hand over my mother to them, so they could fuck with us, to fuck with me.
Kai sat in the passenger seat, directing me toward their home. I tightened my hand on the steering wheel, pulled up to the side of the road, nearly hitting three cars, and slammed on my brakes. I swore to fucking God, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on them.
The lights were off in the house, but I didn’t give a fuck. I stormed up to the front door, banged three times without answer, then barged right into the home. It reeked of beer and three-day-old pizza that hadn’t been refrigerated.
Behind me, Kai shut the door and turned on the lights. With food, alcohol, and shit fucking everywhere, it looked like these guys hadn’t been home in a couple days. If they had skipped town, I would track them the fuck down tonight.
After searching every inch of this small place and not finding anything, I hurled my fist through the nearest wall. The drywall broke to pieces, bloodying my knuckles. But I didn’t give a shit. I hit the wall again and again because how fucking dare Akio’s parents!
Mom was already dead. Why tarnish her more?
I couldn’t stop myself from slamming my fist into the wall. I refused to stop.
Kai grabbed my shoulders and threw me backward into their kitchen table. “Get a grip, João. They’re not here, and you’re not going to fix anything by tearing their house to pieces. We need to find your mother.”
I glared at him, loving the feeling of the pain shooting from my knuckles to up my arm. I felt like I fucking deserved it because I had fucked up so much in life. I had kept Ana away from our mother, then lied to her that Mom was coming back. I hadn’t stopped Mom from slipping into drugs. And I had almost lost Imani because I had been so fucking rude to her.
“I want the pain,” I said through gritted teeth, trying to get around him to slam my fist into the wall again. “I want all the fucking pain.”
But Kai caught me yet again and pushed me out the front door and back toward my car. After he forced me into the passenger seat, he grabbed the keys from me and started the car himself. I glared out the window and punched the dashboard as he drove toward my house.
I hated my life here. I hated Redwood so much.
I … I … I missed Mom.
I fucking missed her.
When Kai pulled up to my place, I glared through the windshield at the house. “Why the fuck are we here?”
“We have to start somewhere,” Kai said.
So, I got out of the car with him and dragged my fucking feet all the way to the front door. I pulled out my keys and thrust it into the lock, but the door creaked open without me having to even turn the key.
As soon as I opened the fucking door, I saw Mom. She hung from the ceiling by a thick, coarse rope, her feet inches off the ground and her body lifeless. So many emotions flooded through me. I almost couldn’t keep myself together. It was like finding her dead all over again.
I hurried over to her and took her in my arms. After pulling Mom down from the rope, I laid her down on the couch and grabbed a shovel from the front door that we used for the snow. Tonight, I would bury her myself. We couldn’t trust anyone other than ourselves now.
“Well,” Kai said, standing at the back door with his arms crossed over his chest, “I found the two goons.”
They both lay at the back door with their throats cut and all their fingers cut off too. They were scattered around the back lawn in the sanguine-colored snow, sticking up like flowers would in the summer. Akio’s family fucking disgusted me.
Once I stepped over the two guys, I walked into my backyard. It might’ve been small, but Mom had loved gardening in the summer. So, I found where her favorite flowers bloomed in the spring and started to dig a hole six feet deep.
The dirt was frozen solid, but I slammed the shovel into the ground three times and broke it slightly. I used all of my strength in each slam, the frigid air burning my cheeks and numbing my fingers. But I continued for hours.
Sweat covered my back. I pulled off my jacket and wiped a bead from my forehead, then threw some dirt behind me. I stepped into the three-foot hole and shoveled more and more and more, the dirt piling up behind me and the sweat pouring off me now.
It was almost immediately freezing in the cold wind, but I didn’t care.
“João,” Kai called after he took care of the goons’ bodies.
I ignored him and continued digging for another hour—or however the fuck it took to hit six feet deep. Then, I threw the shovel on the ground and pulled myself out of the hole, walking back to the house.
Kai stood quietly in the living room, watching over my mother’s body. I knelt by her side and kissed her forehead, pushing some hair off her pale face and holding her close one last time for good.
“I miss you already,” I whispered. “But I’ll do anything to keep Ana safe. I know that’s what you would’ve wanted.”
After picking her up, I walked into my backyard and gently placed her down into the hole. Once I placed her cut-off finger down in her makeshift grave too, I grabbed my shovel. I refused to let any tears fall as I stared down at her from above, her pale face and tiny frame.
With my throat dry and my chest tight, I let the first shovel full of dirt spread over her body. I continued to fill the hole with dirt, holding back the tears, until only her face was left visible to me. As I picked up another batch of dirt, a tear streamed down my cheek.
“I love you, Mama. I love you so much.”
Then, I covered her face and never saw her again.
