‘Of course,’ I replied. ‘This couldn’t wait. Something’s happened. A man told me my parents have been taken into witness protection. Is that true?’ I closed my eyes and leaned against the cool refrigerator door. My legs shook as I waited for Miguel’s response.
He let out a long sigh, and I immediately knew something was very wrong. ‘Bambina,’ he said, ‘I am so sorry.’
Oh God. ‘What?’ I whispered.
I heard the flick of a lighter and a sharp inhale as he smoked.
‘Miguel!’ I insisted.
‘They’re dead, bambina.’
I almost choked on my own tongue. ‘What?’
Not Luis. Not my baby, please God, not my baby. ‘Where is my son?’ I asked through gritted teeth, opening my eyes wide and praying like fuck. Not my boy. Not my boy.
Miguel coughed. ‘Luis is safe, Mariana. He’s alive. But your papa. Your mama. Karina and Pablo. They’re gone. Dead.’
I covered my mouth with a shaking hand and pressed my palm into my teeth to stifle the scream that was coming from my chest. I couldn’t stop it; the rage and the grief threatened to split me open. And the relief. Luis was alive. He mattered the most. He was just a child.
‘It’s worse. They’re looking for Luis. A man was here, a DEA agent. He offered the children at school pesos for his whereabouts. I’ve got him somewhere safe, but it’s only temporary, Ana. There is nothing left for you there. There is no reason for you to stay. You’re collateral for a debt that has been revoked.’
Even if Emilio did inform me of my family’s murder, he’d still never let me go. There are few things in life that are certainties, but this was one of them.
‘How?’ I asked, feeling like every piece of air had been sucked out of my body. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. This had to be some terrible fucking nightmare that I was going to wake up from any minute. I felt my breath coming faster and faster as panic rose in my chest, suffocating me from within.
I heard Miguel clear his throat. ‘Julian’s men stormed the house, tied them up and poured gasoline on them,’ he said quietly.
Julian’s men were Emilio’s men. Emilio’s younger brother oversaw the Colombian operations in his absence, but there was no disputing who the boss of the Il Sangue Cartel was.
‘And then?’
A long silence. ‘And then they lit a match, Ana.’
I retched once. Dropped the phone onto the kitchen counter and swallowed hard. Get your shit together. I took a deep breath, stood straight again. I suddenly had an overwhelming urge to drink something strong, something that would wash away the shock, or at least dull it.
‘Mariana!?’ Miguel’s voice sang up from the cellphone. I picked it up and held it to my ear again, not sure I wanted to hear anything else he had to say. They’d burned. They’d burned alive.
‘I’m here,’ I said, using my free hand to open the freezer and take out a bottle of vodka. I unscrewed the cap and tipped a good amount down my throat, the cold liquid punching my senses awake.
Murphy had been playing a cruel trick on me, and it had almost worked. I thought of my gentle brother and my beautiful sister, and imagined the flesh melting from their faces, their agonised screams, as fire consumed them.
I took another drink. It was making my stomach flip, drinking straight vodka so quickly, but I didn’t care. I needed something.
‘Luis?’ I asked.
‘I have him, Ana. But you need to figure something out. You can’t come here – they’ll kill you both. He’s safe. But we need money, passports. You need to help me get him out of Colombia.’
Relief flooded my weary bones, flowing all the way down to my toes along with the last of the vodka in my bloodstream. It was an unfamiliar feeling, to be so terribly sad yet so relieved at the same time. My son was alive. But how long could he survive if the likes of Murphy were looking for him?
I had to do something.
‘Are you sure?’ I asked. Maybe it was all a misunderstanding. Maybe it was all a bad dream.
He coughed. ‘There were witnesses, Ana. People saw. People saw them storm the house, and people saw it burn afterwards. People heard them screaming.’
Oh Jesus. I wished I hadn’t asked.
‘Keep him safe,’ I whispered. ‘Please, Miguel, keep him safe for me.’
Miguel’s voice cracked. ‘He looks like my brother, but he has your eyes, bambina. He asks for you.’
‘He knows about me?’
It was almost too much to bear.
‘Of course he does, Ana. He has a photo of you – remember your senior dance?’
I did remember. The milk hadn’t even stopped leaking from my breasts in the aftermath of Luis’ birth and adoption, but Mama had insisted I go to the dance, get back to normal life. Este had borrowed a suit that was too big and presented me with a corsage I knew his mother had stayed up late the night before making. I’d spent the entire night sobbing in the dark outside the dance hall, as Este held me and promised to find a way to get our baby back. I remembered the photo my mother had taken, just as we were leaving the house. My mother had done my make-up for me. I remembered thinking how odd it was that she was acting so normal, especially when my father refused to even look at me, much less engage in a conversation. In fact, he only said one thing to me that night. He appeared as I was getting ready to leave, slapped me across the face hard enough that I tasted blood in my mouth, and told me, ‘Keep your legs closed, you little slut.’
I remember holding my cheek, in shock. I wasn’t going to have sex. I’d given birth to a baby a week earlier. I was barely walking, let alone the rest of it. And my father was calling me a slut. My mother had pulled me outside and snapped a photo of Este and me. He was squinting at the sun and I was still reeling from shock, a reactionary smile plastered across my face. Karina had a Polaroid camera she’d found at a market, and she snapped a photograph, too, let it spit out of the front of the camera, and gave it to me.
It seemed that Polaroid photo had survived and ended up in my son’s hands.
‘Mariana?’
I snapped back to the present as Miguel’s voice cut through blurry memories of days long gone, feeling the flour dust sticking between my clammy fingers. It was hot in the apartment all of a sudden and I desperately needed some fresh air.
‘I’ll get money. I’ll call you again tomorrow,’ I said to Miguel in a monotone voice. I ended the call abruptly, switching the phone off and returning it to the ziplock bag and finally back into the canister of flour. After I’d done that, I took the dining chair that I’d wedged beneath the front door knob and carried it back to the dining table, staring at the surface where Dornan and I had fucked. I loved him. I loved him so fucking much, and I didn’t want to hurt him. Nausea rolled through me and I swallowed back bile.
Rushing over to the sliding door, I wrenched it open, stepping onto the patio as ocean air hit me. The cold greeted me with a slap that made my skin sting. I breathed deeply, tasting salt on my tongue, wiping floury hands on my skirt. The sea was torrid tonight, churning. It was going to rain. It hardly ever rained in Los Angeles, barren wasteland that it was, but it smelled like the heavens were going to open and dump water any second.
I wondered if anyone had organised a funeral for my family, if there had been anything left to bury. Fire had a nasty way of reducing fully formed people to bones and ash, inconsequential piles of what used to be flesh and blood.
I thought it odd that I wasn’t crying. Maybe the relief of knowing Luis had been spared was making the deaths of my parents and siblings less traumatic.
More likely, I was in shock.
Everything Murphy had said to me, about witness protection and getting out of this place? It had all seemed so good, so of course it was a lie. I felt like a fucking idiot for even daring to consider what he’d fed me as truth. He was a shark, and he’d just tried to convince me he wasn’t so he could take me by surprise and eat me alive while I wasn’t looking. He’d tried to make me tru
st him.
When something seems too good to be true, it usually is.
I’d never believed that until now.
My parents, my brother, my sister – they weren’t going to be saved. They were already dead. And Christopher Murphy had been in Colombia looking for my son.
I was never getting out.
Murphy’s deception unleashed something primal inside me. He had poked a sleeping beast that been lying dormant for nine years, curled deep in my belly.
I ran into the bathroom and reached the toilet just in time to throw up the contents of my stomach. Wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, I caught sight of myself in the mirror, and I saw something alight in the recesses of my dark blue eyes.
A thirst for payback. A yearning for vengeance.
My entire body hummed with the desire to inflict suffering upon Emilio Ross and his minions as I washed my mouth out with cold water. For the first time in a very long time, I felt renewed, invincible.
I was hungry for blood.
The front door slammed shut. Sneakers squeaked on tile and I breathed out in relief. Guillermo. I flushed the toilet, washed my hands, and made my way out to the kitchen.
Guillermo was facing away from me, digging in the refrigerator when I saw him pause.
‘Did you go out tonight?’ he asked, his tone aiming for casual but hitting suspicious.
‘No,’ I replied honestly. ‘I’ve been here all night.’
He closed the refrigerator, Murphy’s Chinese in his hands. ‘I didn’t know these guys delivered,’ he said, slinging the rest of the lo mein into the microwave and hitting start. The thing lit up, heating the food as two eyes stared accusingly at me.
‘Murphy dropped it off,’ I said. ‘He must’ve heard about the plans for the club ride at your meeting. He was in here five minutes after you left.’
Guillermo nodded. We shared a mutual hatred of Murphy, something that had actually made me relieved in some small way to have Guillermo around, even in the early days.
‘What did he want?’ Guillermo asked, staring at the microwave as it counted down.
I shrugged. ‘What does he ever want?’
Guillermo nodded, taking the lo mein out of the microwave and placing it on the counter. He stood across from me, fork poised in the air above the steaming container.
‘He hurt you?’
I shook my head.
Guillermo stabbed his fork into the food. ‘We telling Dornan about this?’
I held his gaze. ‘Whatever you think.’
‘Is there anything I need to deal with?’
I shook my head. ‘Just the usual shit. You know what he’s like.’
The silence between us was thick, and it smelled like Chinese food.
‘If he comes back again, tell me,’ Guillermo said. ‘He needs to know his fucking place around here.’
I nodded.
‘Hey, Guillermo,’ I said, watching him eat. ‘Can I ask you something?’
He nodded, his dark eyes watching me in anticipation.
‘What did it feel like? When you decided to blow up that house?’
He stopped chewing, his eyes darting around the apartment as he swallowed audibly.
‘Why do you ask?’
I chewed on the inside of my lip. ‘I’ve wanted to ask you for years. Guess I finally feel like you won’t get mad at me if I do.’
He stared at me some more.
‘Forget it,’ I said, circling the counter and brushing past him to get to the vodka in the freezer. He turned, grabbing my arm and leaning in close to me.
‘It felt good,’ he said, the ghost of a smile playing on his lips. ‘I knew they’d catch me. I knew I’d go to prison. It was still worth it to me, the risk that I’d be in prison until I died.’
His fingers digging into my arm were hurting, but I ignored the pain.
‘You don’t regret it? Even now?’
He grinned. ‘Never.’
‘That’s what I thought.’
He dropped the smile. ‘Is there something I should know, Mariana?’
Now I smiled. ‘No. I was just thinking if I kill Murphy one day, maybe I’ll call you first.’
He looked uneasy. Very uneasy. ‘Don’t get involved in shit above your paygrade, cholita. Leave it to the boys. I swear to you, one day Murphy will lose relevance, and on that day your boy Dornan’ll be first in line to end that piece of shit.’
‘You called me cholita again.’
He dropped my arm and turned back to his food. ‘You’re talking like a tough girl. Seemed appropriate.’
I stared at the back of his head and smiled.
Tuesday morning greeted me with no sign of rain, but with humidity and lazy grey clouds, heavy and swollen with a need for release as they crawled across the Californian sky.
It was a religious holiday. Normally I’d be expected to work anyway, but this particular day was some big deal for Emilio since he was a good, church-going Catholic. The entire Ross family would be there, including the wives and children, which meant I was spared the indignation of having to sit beside Emilio as a priest talked about God and faith and forgiveness. Guillermo had woken me in the night, frantic. His mother was sick, and he needed to get to the hospital in Mexico. Guillermo’s absence meant that I had an entire day ahead of me and nothing to do, something that almost never happened.
So when someone knocked at the door, I already had my gun firmly in hand.
‘Get your purse,’ the man at the door said.
I was sporting sweatpants and unbrushed hair at 3 p.m., with a scowl to match.
‘Excuse me?’
John smiled, flashing a mouthful of shiny teeth, his hands jammed into his jeans pockets. Those shiny teeth were at odds with the rest of him – rough stubble, perpetually messed up hair, those bright blue eyes that turned down slightly at the outer corners, giving him the appearance of melancholy even when he was smiling.
And he was smiling right now.
‘Get dressed,’ he said. ‘We’re taking you out.’ He tilted his head to the side, his grin fading slightly. ‘And maybe do something with that bird’s nest.’
I raised my eyebrows, but I wasn’t offended. Honestly, I was just happy to see another human being that wasn’t Murphy.
John shifted slightly and I saw his daughter, Juliette, standing behind him, eyes closed as she nodded her head to music nobody else could hear. The headphones covering her ears looked much too big for her delicate head.
‘Come in,’ I said, holding the door open and gesturing for them to follow, shoving my gun into my pocket. The photos of Luis were hidden inside a slit in my mattress until I could find a better place for them. It made my stomach twist to think that the safest thing to do was burn them.
John and Juliette followed me inside, the apartment cooler than the muggy heat outside. My mind was still reeling from Murphy’s visit the night before, and from the phone call I’d made to Miguel.
I hadn’t cried yet. I was definitely still in shock. I’d spent the day sitting on the floor of my living room, staring into space, trying not to throw up.
‘What’s the occasion?’ I asked John as he headed straight for the pot of coffee I’d just brewed. ‘You’re not Catholic, are you?’
He shrugged, looking pleased with himself. ‘Nope. Still get the day off, though. Thank you, Jesus.’ He held his mug of steaming black coffee up and clinked it against another imaginary one.
I put my hands on my hips, amused. ‘What’s going on, John?’ And then my smile faded and I felt my entire body go cold.
Was he here to check up on me? Had Murphy sent him? No, that was impossible. He hated Murphy.
‘Hey, Earth to Mariana,’ John said, stepping forward and clicking his fingers in front of my face. I blinked, pushing my suspicions away as I glanced at Juliette, who was currently sprawled in one of my dining chairs, her blonde hair fanned out around her head on the glass table top.
‘She can’t hear a damn thing with that
iPod in her ears,’ John said, taking a swig of coffee. He made a face, set the coffee down, and opened the pantry, searching. ‘You got sugar in here?’
He pulled a canister out and set it down on the counter.
The fucking flour canister. Where I hid my phone. I mean, I knew he’d been the one to give me the phone, but did that mean I could trust him? It had been eight-and-a-half years since we’d had that conversation. To be honest, I was very surprised the phone still worked after almost nine years. I guess because I barely used it.
I reached over and grabbed the canister just as he was going to open it. ‘That’s flour,’ I said quickly, holding the canister to my chest. ‘The sugar is in the smaller one. And since when do you take sugar?’
He was perceptive. He studied me and the flour canister for a few seconds, before shrugging and returning to the pantry shelf. He grabbed the sugar and dumped several heaped spoonfuls of the stuff into his mug.
‘I need the extra energy today. You want some?’ he asked, holding the sugar out to me.
I shook my head. ‘I’m sweet enough.’
He chuckled, returning the sugar and closing the pantry, the flour seemingly forgotten. ‘What does that make me, bitter?’
I smiled. ‘Something like that. But seriously . . .’ I glanced at Juliette again, who seemed to be in a world of her own. I envied the casual way she could be so happily absorbed in the soundtrack on her iPod, the only thing she needed to entertain herself. ‘. . . what are you doing here?’ I asked.
John downed the rest of his coffee and rinsed his empty mug out, setting it on the drainer. ‘Taking you two out. It’s a holiday. We should take advantage of it while we can.’ He looked beyond me to Juliette. ‘And Dornan called me and asked me to.’
‘Oh.’ I deflated a little. Of course. My knight in shining armour was with his wife and kids and his reprehensible fucking father at Mass. Dornan had just placed a call to his bestie to occupy me so I didn’t get up to anything risky while I was left to my own devices for one whole day.