19
Clue
I arrived home exhausted.
Everything was so tangled that my blood was boiling .
I spent several hours at the hospital, just like everyone else. The doctor told us that Romeo would stay a couple of days due to the burns. If they didn't get infected and he progressed well, he could go home, provided someone took care of his dressings.
R could barely speak, and we all were too eager to solve the mysteries flooding our minds. At Massimo's request, Julieta went to get a whiteboard and a marker, so my husband could communicate more easily.
That's how he told us what happened.
"What happened, Romeo?" his father asked, once he had the requested items on his lap.
He began to write. The painkillers he was being administered allowed him to do so without too much pain.
Dante had called me to discuss what was happening with Mentium, and what the police had said about the betting app. We heard a loud noise, came out of the office, and saw that Jonás had crashed his car into the club’s entrance door.
He showed us the whiteboard, and when we read the content, he erased it and continued writing.
He got out of the car with a lighter and a can of gasoline. I was nervous, but not overly concerned. There were two of us and only one of him. We could easily disarm him of his "threat." In my eyes, he was just a father who had just lost his son, so I tried to calm him down and reason with him.
He showed us what he had written again.
"You don't reason with a father in those circumstances," Massimo commented after finishing reading. R quickly erased the content and wrote again.
It was a mistake to underestimate him.
"One that you've paid dearly for," his father reproached him.
Romeo's expression tensed, and he began to write even more hurriedly than before.
We couldn't have known he had a second lighter in his pocket; if we had, we would have acted differently. He waited to block the exit with his body and then set himself on fire. The gasoline that had spilled in the club ignited, engulfing Dante. He was soaked in it because he had struggled on the ground with the journalist.
Romeo hit the whiteboard after showing it to us. What he was writing pained him, and it was evident.
He burned in front of my eyes. He roared in agony while I looked from side to side, searching for something to help him with.
His hand began to tremble.
I smelled his flesh, his hair, his bones wrapped in flames. He threw himself to the ground trying to extinguish the fire, but it was impossible. I ran for the damn fire extinguisher next to the bar. I unhooked it. The fire was spreading, engulfing everything... If I hadn't insisted on the interior of the club being made of wood, maybe...
I was sitting next to him and read it before anyone else.
"You can't blame yourself for that, you couldn't have known what was going to happen," I said to ease his distress. Romeo continued once everyone had read it.
The smoke was choking me; I could barely breathe. The car had caught fire, and I was afraid it would explode. I aimed the extinguisher at Dante and tried to put him out. The fire almost surrounded us, and with that small extinguisher, I couldn't put out the fire. I had to get him out of there before it was too late.
"Could you reach the emergency exit?" Julieta inquired. Romeo shook his head.
His dark eyes were so moist that I feared he might break down.
It was impossible, the flames were besieging it, I had to break through the glass window, it was the only way out considering I was carrying a hundred-kilo scorched man. When I picked him up, he screamed and fainted. The flesh was peeling off under my fingers. And the smell...
He couldn't continue writing. His body was shaking, and tears were falling on the whiteboard, soaking the letters. I felt terrible, really terrible. I placed a hand on his forearm to make him stop.
"That's enough, we can imagine how it ended," I intervened. "You don't need to go on." Even I felt the pain.
It could have been me there; after all, Mentium was a product of my pharmaceutical company. Jonás could have come after me instead of Romeo.
The marker began to move again.
It was my fault, I shouldn't have acted as I did, I should have been more cautious, immobilized Jonás, taken him to the office, and called the police. If I had done that, now Dante...
He dropped the marker and brought his hands to his face to start crying. We could all feel his frustration, his suffering, as if our own flesh was being torn open.
He was shattered, tormented inside, and undoubtedly uncomfortable being seen in such a state. Tears were often misinterpreted in a world like ours.
I asked everyone to leave us alone.
I pushed aside the bitter aftertaste of his betrayal as a husband and hugged him. I let him unload his pain on my shoulder, absorbing some of his anguish.
I couldn't imagine my brother taking such risks or crying like that for one of his men. And me? How would I have acted if it were one of my men? R interrupted my thoughts.
"It's impossible for him to survive, and if he does... he won't want to live in those conditions," he muttered, straining his throat.
"Now is not the time to think about that." I ran my hands gently through his hair. Romeo was devastated and it wouldn’t be easy for him to overcome what had happened. I didn’t even know what to say to him. Highly emotional situations weren’t my forte, nor was giving comfort. I felt uncomfortable not knowing what to say or do.
Romeo made a gesture with his hand and struggled to make room for me. I pursed my lips and stretched out. Was I doing the right thing?
His hand rested on my stomach, and I remained stiff.
"I love you," he blurted out, needing me to know. It tormented him to think that... he paused because it was enormously hard for him to keep talking... he was going to die without having told me. His voice was gone; I had to strain to understand him.
His confession hit me as if a bullet had struck me right in the solar plexus.
If I hadn't seen those images with Irene just a few hours earlier, I would have responded that I loved him too, that I didn’t know how it had happened, but that the suffocation I felt every time I saw him could only mean that, or that my heart was suffering a diabetic coma.
But now everything had changed, a gust of wind had turned my helm towards an unknown course.
I didn’t respond. If he hadn’t been in that hospital bed, suffering because Dante was hanging between life and death, I would have told him that before filling his mouth with "I love yous," he should clean it from his lover's drool.
I bit the inside of my cheek and managed to murmur:
"Go to sleep, you need to rest."
We fell silent, and after a while, his breathing became more relaxed. The medication had taken effect. Half an hour later, when I made sure he was sound asleep, I stepped out into the hallway.
Outside were Massimo and my mother.
Julieta had left with Irisha to take care of Adriano.
My father-in-law and I went down to the cafeteria while my mother watched over Romeo's sleep. I told him I would take charge of the Mentium issue, that it was my business, and I would find the bastard who had caused all this commotion.
The media would soon pick up on it, and it was going to be another weight on my shoulders.
I saw he was hesitant, I insisted, pulled out all my stops, and after a hard conversation, I managed to get him to hand over control. I was aware that I had succeeded because Romeo couldn't handle it and he was too busy planning the attack on Cheng.
"Alright, but you will pass me a report of all your progress every day, and I want you to rely on Romeo's men, not just your own. Are we clear?"
"Count on it."
We sealed the deal.
A couple of hours later, I headed to the police station. If anyone could give me information, it was Segarra. I wanted to see him and get him to talk, to find out what the police knew before I started poking around.
On the way, I called Yuri, needing to make sure he wasn't behind the marketing of Mentium to teenagers. I no longer trusted anything or anyone. My brain was like a damn Agatha Christie novel, where everyone seemed guilty until the last line.
As soon as I mentioned the reason for my call, he called me crazy. According to him, he had nothing to do with it. It could be a worker who had kept some of the product, or even a kid who had seen an opportunity and had gotten hold of boxes of pills at some point.
He offered to help me as much as he could and try to find the culprit. I didn't need him for that; I preferred to handle it myself, so I thanked him and told him it wasn't necessary, I would manage.
When I arrived at the station and asked to speak with Inspector Ramos, they asked who I was, made a call, and I was taken to a desk. At least they didn't send me to an interrogation room. I glanced around. I saw Segarra's silhouette by the coffee machine, so I got up and went over to him.
"Mind if I join you?" He almost dropped the one he had just picked up. He surely didn't expect me to show up at the station, though he wouldn't tell me that.
"It's pretty bad," he admitted.
"That's okay, I need caffeine." He offered me his steaming cup in a plastic glass.
"Sugar?"
"Sweet stuff makes me gag. We need to talk," I got straight to the point. He looked nervously around, everyone else was minding their own business.
"Not safe here," he commented, dropping another euro into the machine.
"Fine, then come to my house, no one will see us there, and the coffee is much better." I saw him hesitate, but he nodded.
"Alright. I finish at nine."
"Then, we'll have dinner together. Don't bring wine, a full report will suffice." We both knew what I meant. Segarra squinted his eyes.
"I'll see what I can do."
I took a sip of that dark brown concoction and decided not to keep drinking. I threw it in the trash.
"Thanks for the coffee, you were right, it's terrible."
I returned to the table and waited for Inspector Ramos and his inconvenient round of questions. Segarra disappeared, and I passed with flying colors, though I didn't miss the suspicious and desirous looks the inspector threw my way.
"May I go?" I asked an hour later.
"For now, but make sure to be reachable, with these things you never know when I'm going to need you." I stood up and leaned on the table to give him a little peek at my cleavage.
"If it's for you..." His gaze moved from my breasts to my face. "It will be a pleasure, I love collaborating with the police," I said flirtatiously. "Good afternoon, Inspector. See you soon."
At least, I had gathered some information and hoped Segarra would bring me the rest.
Just as I set foot on the staircase to go up to my room and change, Adriano peeked out to ask,
"What happened to my father?"