Chapter 28
Chapter 28
I sat in the cathedral, gripping my a rosary in my hand, the solitude
and sacred silence offered me the peace I hadn't been able to feel in weeks.
Tragedy was falling on my family like a relentless plague. Julian was gone, leaving my uncle in a catatonic state as the bricks of our legacy burned down to the ground in ashes.
I sat quietly with one hand on my stomach, the sour nausea churning more and more lately. Not eating or sleeping, my fatigue was beginning to show under my eyes, and not even my mother's remedies could soothe the nightmares that were haunting my dreams.
Hazy dreams where the air was thick with smoke and fire, Meroveo’s voice called out from the dark. The flames morphed into a snake with golden, knowing eyes, watching me as it wrapped its thick black coils around Julian's lifeless body.I would wake with a silent scream on my lips. Struggling to breathe, clawing at my neck, covered in a cold, damp sweat, running to the bathroom to vomit, shaking, and too afraid to go back to sleep.
Meroveo had something to do with Julian's murder. I could feel it in my blood. The "inconclusive results" of the start of the fire had his shadowy imprint on it.He didn't come to the funeral. He sent his condolences with the cold and unfeeling Hector as his representative. The only sparring glance I did see him give was towards Samara, leaving before the last amen was said.
The whispers amongst my own family members were becoming loud, along with the disgusted glares and accusatory eyes at the funeral. Many aunts and cousins blatantly ignored me. They acted as if this was my fault, as if they were innocent - like they didn't stand by and watch me be sold with smiles on their faces. It was as if they didn't watch me walk down the aisle. Green filled their pockets, and words of congratulations left their lips.
The Solomon financial dilemma was finally solved, and the family's social standing was elevated even higher in elite circles, leaving me to fend for myself against the devil.The hypocrisy was almost comical. Julian's blood was just as much on their hands. My mother barred any of Meroveo's men from stepping anywhere on the property. Basking in what little freedom I had tasted for the moment, I took time to myself away from Meroveo's invisible eyes. I felt guilty, knowing that Julian was cold and lifeless on the ground.
The quiet groaning of the wooden pew of someone sitting beside me snapped me out of my torrid contemplation."It has been the most difficult thing to get you alone, Missus De Los Santos," the low voice of the woman sitting a few spaces over me. She wore a black lace veil on her head, similar to my own, that seemed somewhat out of place.
"I'm sorry, but have we met?" I asked, skipping through the artificiality of politeness and looking at the mysterious woman, who was immediately on guard.
There were few people around, some tourists quietly snapping pictures of the gilded ceilings, a pregnant mother lighting candles, and an old man praying in front of our lady's altar.
"We have never met officially. I was at your wedding reception as a server. I don't think I've ever seen a sadder bride," she said, turning to face me with a friendly smile, but her eyes were distant and measured.The flash of her face replayed in my memory.
"You were also at the birthday party," I said, watching her nod in confirmation. She looked to be in her early forties, with copper-brown skin and a hint of tired sadness in her eyes.
"My name is Agent Aethra," she introduced herself. I was weary about who she was and what she wanted from me, and I was still determining if I believed her.
She continued to face forward, taking something out of her pocket and sliding it discreetly towards me and out of view. It was a badge.
Aethra was DEA."We have to be very careful how we proceed with this conversation," she said, sitting and opening a Bible, making it seem like she was quietly praying and reading. I remained composed beside her.
"Are you here about what happened to Julian?" I was hopeful for any updated information.
"My condolences, but I'm not here about Julian. I'm here about your husband," she made the sign of the cross. "How much do you really know about your husband?" she questioned.
"If you're here to ask me about Meroveo's business, you probably know more about it than I do. I doubt there is anything I can do to help you." I replied curtly, my thoughts racing.
"I know," she replied sympathetically. You're another victim of his—the sheltered wife who was groomed to believe that her husband is a wealthy businessman with a philanthropic heart. " She finished, turning to look at me with a pity that burned me.
"I wasn't groomed, Agent Aethra. I was never given a choice." I met her eyes. She nodded, turning back to the front.
"Meroveo De Los Santos is a sociopath and the leader of one of the world's most dangerous organized crime syndicates. Pluto is what my superiors like to call him," she finished with a caustic smile."If it were up to the United States government, he would be dead."She went silent, lowering her head as a person strolled past, oblivious to our conversation. My blood went cold as I tried to grasp her words.
"You don't seem surprised." She paused, looking at me before her eyes moved to the hanging bronze Christ looking down above us from the altar.
"Did he kill Julian?" I asked, swallowing the lump in my throat. Something inside me instinctively held my stomach, and my heart dropped with the question.
"I don't know. The politics of the underworld are tricky, but I do know that the fire that burned down your family's distillery was not accidental."
I said nothing as I struggled to maintain deep and silent breaths. My chest was sinking into emptiness.
"I don't have much time to explain things in detail now. It's not long before your tail comes looking for you." She looked around inconspicuously, pulling off the act of a praying patron perfectly.
"Take this." Her hand pushed a black bible my way, leaving it in the gap between us.
"We can help each other," she offered, bowing her head, pretending to finish a prayer."You stick that jump drive into any laptop that belongs to Meroevo, his work laptop, anything, and I can guarantee you a way out. I will give you the choice you were never given, Dove."She left quickly as a large group of tourists entered the church, giving her the perfect cover to escape unnoticed.
My hands shook violently as I grasped the bible. I could hear my own breathing getting louder as I opened it, my throat burning with the words I couldn't speak.
I found a simple white business card with a phone number in black ink.
A jump drive was hidden in the thirteenth chapter of the Book of Judith. I stared down at the highlighted verse. It read: "Then she struck his neck twice with all her might and cut off his head."
I was sitting in my mother's living room. The fresh smell of the sea, mixed with the herbs of her garden carried in the wind, soothed my anxiety, if only for a moment.
Mami didn't want to continue being around the family, especially with the hostility toward me. Samara's mother verbally attacked Mami, blaming her curse on Tio Franco for Julian's death, and refused to let Samara come over to our house.
The windows were all open, and the afternoon sun's glow warmed my skin as I curled up on the couch with one of my mother's old books, rereading the material absentmindedly.
No car would move from outside my mother's house, no matter how many times Mami threatened Meroveo's men. They wouldn't leave, and she gave up after a few days. She yelled at them that they would crawl like snakes on their bellies if they entered her yard.
I wasn't ready to go back to Castillo. I needed a place to think and plan my next steps. My mind was muddled with absent truths and confused emotions.
"The leader of one of the world's most dangerous organized crime syndicates."
It had been four days since Agent Aethra approached me, and I had not told anyone about the interaction. I couldn't live with myself if something happened to them because of me.The anger terrified me the most. Anger filled my soul with the deception of his smile.
The fresh smell of the fish stew made my stomach sick, and I ran to the bathroom, barely making it to the toilet. I heard the soft knock on the door, my mother's teary eyes meeting my own as she shook her head in pained, quiet disbelief.
"What?" I said to her breathlessly on the floor, the lump in my throat burning as the walls of the bathroom began to feel too small. I never finished making the new capsules.
"Estás llena?" she smiled sadly at me, helping me up from the floor and putting her hand on my belly.
"No," I could barely get a single word out. My head was spinning, and I did not want to believe it. I was desperate for it to be anything else.
I couldn't have his baby.
"Dove," my mother called softly to me again, holding my cheek like she did when I was a girl. No more confirmation was needed as we looked at each other."You're pregnant, nena." Tears fell from her eyes, a disappointed smile on her face.
"I can't be," I choked out. Not now, not ever, not for him," I said, holding back the sobs. I should have read the signs everywhere. My mother's earlier joke about the sudden spring of all the baby lizards in her garden meant someone in the family was expecting, an old wives tale that had always proven to be true.Everything I've ever known was torn open, changing again, leaving a gaping hole I didn't know how to fill. I laughed deliriously. My mother tried to soothe me, but I was losing myself under the emotion of the thought of a little innocent life growing in me.
Knowing I didn't want it, knowing Meroveo was the father.
How could I have his baby? A child created under his forceful lust and my anguish, his sin spilling inside of me, blooming into something new.
This baby wasn't created in love.
"There are ways, Dove," my mother said when I finally calmed down enough for her to walk me to my room. Poor Tia Carmen was in the hall murmuring about the shadows in the garden again."You know I can give you something to make this go away, but it would have to be your decision, something your soul will have to carry," she whispered, an old haunted pain reflecting in her eyes.
I knew my mother had her ways. She could make a potent tea of herbs, grinding together black cohosh root, safflower, the peacock flower, pennyroyal, and angelica sinensis. The powerful combination would make me bleed out, ending the pregnancy.I had seen her make it in secret for wives who didn't want any more children or for young girls who found themselves in situations with no one else to turn to for help.
"Make it," I said softly, weak but determined to not let myself think. The more I thought, the more of me that would be ripped open, bleeding in places no one would ever see.
"Dove," my mother tried to reason."Wait until the morning. Sleep it over. This is not something you just do," she tried to persuade me.
"You don't understand, you don't understand," I repeated desperately, trying to hold on to something before I collapsed."I'll just do it myself, mami," I said honestly.
She stared at me for what seemed like ages. I hated the sadness and pained conflict raging in her eyes."Come to the kitchen in an hour," she said solemnly, closing the door and leaving me with my decision.
I held the cup filled with the murky dark brew, the overpowering smell of herbs and roots filtering into my nose. My feet in the cool ocean water under the night sky. The full moon was the only witness to my act.
There was no one else on the beach. I insisted on going alone, and my mother relented. It was just me and my prayers to Our Lady of the Sea, begging for forgiveness, with the rim of the cup on my lips.
My hands trembled as I blocked out the thought of ten toes and fingers wiggling, stopping me from thinking about the hallowed cry of a new life taking its first breath. Ignoring the thought piercing my heart of the sweet, heavenly smell of a baby I would never hold.
My baby.
A baby that was half of him and half of me.
A baby, I couldn't be subject to this kind of fate, to Meroveo's violent world, a legacy of death and corruption. Cibeles' own story was in the back of my mind.
With the last bit of resolution, I brought the cup closer to my lips, knowing that the moment I swallowed, I would never know the little soul I carried. I felt the dark liquid moving closer to my lips, the wind suddenly growing stronger, whipping around me as I wept bitter tears.
Just before I took a sip, I heard it.
The soft, beautiful sound of a woman's calming voice echoed in the dark waters before me. A melody that I had never heard but that sounded so familiar. Chills ran up and down my body, but I was never afraid.
The air was alive with the sublime. The sacred surrounded me. Something ethereal shared in my despair within the call of the ocean's wind.I stood shaking, trembling as the woman's gentle voice continued swirling around, gently drying my tears.
"I hear you," I whispered back, smiling. I emptied the tea into the ocean water as I cupped my stomach.
The overwhelming feeling of love filled my soul. I knew at that moment that I wanted my baby.
I would do anything and everything to protect my child.