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I set my jaw too. How long have we been friends? How much have we been through together? His darkness I know. The violence that killed his father and brother. That ultimately took his mother. That claimed pieces of him. I was there for him through it all.
But my darkness? The truth that lurks inside me? He has never seen my rage, my beast. I have never allowed it. What kind of friend am I? One-sided. He doesn’t know me. Doesn’t know what I’m capable of. If he did, he certainly wouldn’t allow me to marry his sister. He wouldn’t ever have let me near her.
“Do you fucking hear me?” he demands of me.
My heart races, a fresh coat of sweat breaks out over my forehead, and I'm transported back to the punishment room, where I stand watching as my grandfather rages. As he tears into the skin of my mother’s back while his beast roars, all teeth and hate and savagery. And I am paralyzed in the face of his fury.
What did I feel then? Anything? Fear? For myself or her? Fear of him. Fear that I am like him.
I can't keep Mercedes. Because keeping her will inevitably lead her to that place. To stand where my mother stood and bear the consequence of my beast. No. I have to let her go. It’s the only right thing to do, yet I'm not strong enough to do it. It’s why she’s been here so long. Why I’ve kept her even though I’ve known all along it was only a matter of time. I need Santiago to take her away knowing what it means for our friendship, the scraps left of it.
“I can’t do that,” I say, my voice steady but different. Hoarse and with an edge. “But I will take responsibility for the child—”
He eats the space between us, and Mercedes sets her hand at my back when he and I stand nose to nose.
“You will not ruin her.”
What can I say to that? I already have. More than he can know, I think. I feel it in the burning touch of her hand, hear it in her quiet breaths at my back. I’ve seen it on her face too. In her eyes. I was her first. The damage I did goes far deeper than the eye can see.
She is thoroughly and irrevocably ruined.
I have done that.
Is it any comfort that I, too, am destroyed?
I will stand with her, but I can’t take her hand. I can’t do what he asks of me and have her hate me more than she already does. Already should, at least. But that’s the thing with Mercedes. She is so much more fragile, more tenderhearted than anyone knows.
“Judge—”
“I am sorry, Santiago. I cannot.”
He looks at me like he doesn’t believe me. Like he doesn’t know me. And he knows I mean what I’m saying. I see it in the slight slumping of his shoulders. In the crease between his brows. As if my betrayal is slicing deeper still, and he doesn’t understand why.
“Marco. Take my sister to the car.”
Mercedes’s hand trembles at my back, but before Marco takes a step forward, she clears her throat and walks around me. Santiago’s eyes burn into me as I watch her walk away, head held high.
Marco follows her. I look at the closed door, the emptiness, the finality. But it’s not time for that just yet. This isn’t finished yet. And so, I turn to face my best friend. A man I love like a brother. But that’s what brothers do, isn’t it? Mine put a literal knife in my back. What I've done to Santiago is no different.
“Now I understand Vicarius,” he says quietly.
“Do not punish her, Santiago. The fault is mine. Entirely.”
“Your betrayal wounds me like nothing ever has.”
I swallow the lump in my throat and try to breathe.
“I would have welcomed the union of our families. But you choose to shame my sister and, in turn, me. Your punishment will be the severing of our friendship. And you alone are responsible for it. Know that, Judge. You chose this. And may you suffer the consequence of your weakness for the rest of your life.”
10
Judge
A gloom different from the one of the last weeks settles over the house once Mercedes is gone. The staff is quieter than before, tiptoeing around me. Santiago’s curse seeps into every aspect of my existence, snuffing out any light, any air.
And I deserve it.
Over the next week, Lois packs Mercedes’s things. Santiago sends a driver to pick them up. I hope for some news of her, but the driver, a stranger to me, doesn’t say a word to any of us. Simply loads the van with her things and is gone.
