Chapter 35 Marfil
“I started out on the streets. We had nothing, and selling weed was the easiest way to get money. I lived in a neighborhood where drugs were common currency, and I did what I had to do to help take care of myself and the other kids who lived with me.”
I listened to him without moving a muscle. He didn’t come over to me, and I didn’t want him to either.
“I started out at fourteen. Samara knew, and she hated me for it, but the money I brought home from selling drugs helped to feed her.” The look in his eyes as he spoke told me that it pained him to remember those times.
“Once you get into that world, it’s very hard to get out.
The gangs control everything: who you talk to, who you hang out with, who you sell to…
and if you squeal or try to leave, they’ll kill you.
” He stepped closer to me and stretched out his tattooed arm.
“I was an addict at age sixteen,” he admitted. “Heroin.”
I closed my eyes as I felt them fill with tears.
“Your father came across me,” he then said, and I looked back at him.
“He was the one who helped me get clean. He saw potential in me, a potential that no one else had ever seen; everyone had always treated me like scum. He paid off the drug boss I worked for, and he advised me to enlist in the military. He sent me a little extra money every month, and when I finished my service at the top of my class, he paid to train me in everything I know. I was good, Marfil, the best.”
I wanted to plug my ears. I didn’t want to know more. I didn’t want to find out things that would make me hate him.
“For the first time in my life, there was something I was good at. I had found my place… Your father offered to let me work for him. It was nothing like my previous experience, selling drugs on the streets. Your father controls one of the largest drug routes in the country. Your uncle is the head of one of the most important cartels in Colombia.”
“Stop,” I said, wishing he would shut up.
He didn’t stop speaking, but he remained at a distance.
“A few months ago, a branch of the Russian mafia in Miami tried to take one of your father’s routes from him.
We planned an operation to intervene. I was the one in charge of carrying it out, strategy being my strong suit, but everything went horribly wrong.
We didn’t know who we were up against, and the son of one of the most powerful Russian drug bosses in the world ended up being killed in the shootout.
That was a few weeks before you were kidnapped.
We can’t even be sure that it was one of our bullets or one of theirs, but from that moment, all they’ve wanted is to get revenge on your father. ”
An eye for an eye. Now I understood.
“That’s why they want to kill me.”
He nodded silently and took two steps toward me.
I raised a hand to stop him. “Don’t come any closer.”
Sebastian seemed prepared for my rejection, but even so, I could tell my words pained him.
“So they’re the ones who kidnapped me?” I asked, although it didn’t make sense. “They could’ve easily killed me.”
I caught a glint of something in his eyes, but he quickly hid it.
“We still don’t understand the kidnapping. We’ve even considered the notion that it was someone else. But it’s obvious that you are in real danger, and that’s why your father has allied with Marcus Kozel. He’s the only one who can take on the Russian mafia.”
I shook my head, unable to believe what he was saying. I had thought my father might’ve defrauded people, owed them money, which was why he needed Marcus’s help. But the Russian mafia? Narco trafficking?
“What the hell are you telling me, Sebastian?”
“The truth.”
“The truth is shit!” I said tearfully. He stepped closer. “Don’t even think about touching me, fuck!” I shouted, turning to the door.
I needed to get out of there. I needed to get away. I would go to London. I could ask Tami to let me stay at her house. Her parents would take me in, yes…
He stopped me before I could unlock the door. “You wanted the truth, Marfil? This is the truth,” he said, squeezing me to his chest.
I tried to pull away. I wanted to leave. I couldn’t trust anyone. I couldn’t trust anything Sebastian or my father or anyone in my family told me… My God, my sister!
“Gabriella!” I shouted, terrified.
“Your sister is safe. She doesn’t know any of this. It’s not about her.”
“Let me go, dammit!” I shouted.
He released me, but he stood in front of the door to keep me from trying to leave.
“How can you tell me all this and stand there so calm? How have you been able to lie to my face for months?”
“I was doing my job,” he said, and that made me so furious that I shot out a hand and slapped him across the face.
He held his breath and clenched his jaw tightly. I stared at him, unable to believe what I’d just done.
“Do you want to do it again?” he asked.
I took a step back and a sob escaped my throat. “I can’t believe you lied to me like that… that you let…”
“What I feel for you is no lie.”
“But you aren’t even capable of telling me what you feel for me!”
“Because I never should’ve touched you, Marfil!”
“But you did!”
Sebastian was losing his cool, and I felt like I was suffocating.
“I never planned to fall in love with you, Marfil. Ever.”
In spite of everything he’d just told me, his confession caused my heart to race.
It was incredible how the heart and the mind could go in two totally opposite directions.
My mind despised him, still trying to assimilate everything he’d just confessed to me, but at the sound of the word love from his mouth, my heart melted, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
“I hate you,” I said, wishing the words were true.
Sebastian kept his composure. “I didn’t expect anything less.”
I turned my back on him and wrapped my arms around myself.
Why was all this happening to me? Why did my father have to be a drug lord?
Why couldn’t I have been born into a normal, everyday family?
Why couldn’t I have an affectionate father who looked out for me, who took care of me and protected me?
Why couldn’t I have a mother who fed me chocolate ice cream and gave me advice about my fears and ambitions? My mother…
“My mother wasn’t killed in a robbery, was she?”
Sebastian moved closer and stopped in front of me. I could feel the warmth of his body, but it did nothing to thaw the icy shell around me.
“You’re going to have to ask your father that, Marfil… but I doubt it.”
My mother had been killed for being married to someone like my father, and I was now following in her footsteps.
“Is that why you and your wife separated? Because you’re a fucking drug dealer?” I spat.
“That, and a long list of other reasons.”
I laughed. “Of all the things that could’ve come out of your mouth…”
“This is the only thing that would keep you away from me, I know.”
I lifted my head to look him in the eye.
“I can understand that my father does it, you know? I never thought he was involved in something as big as this, something as terrible, but deep down I knew there was something that didn’t add up…
” I whispered to the man in front of me, the man who had taken care of me, who had guarded me in my sleep…
“But I never thought that you were like him.”
Sebastian remained silent.
“It’s clear that you’re not who I thought you were. You forced me to live a lie, and I’ll never forgive you for it.”
“I always knew you were smart,” he said, looking at me very seriously, “but don’t judge me so quickly. Not everyone is born with a silver spoon in their mouth.”
“A silver spoon? You mean a stolen spoon.”
“Neither one of us can change what we’re born into, Marfil, or who our parents are.
I was left in a dumpster at just one day old; you were born surrounded by drug dealers and murderers, but you had twenty years to grow up oblivious to that world and learn to look down on it.
I couldn’t afford the luxury: I had to do everything I could to survive. ”
“It’s always possible to choose a different path.”
“Says someone who’s spent five minutes in my world.”
“Sorry for not being a fucking criminal!” I shouted, angry that he’d now turned against me. I stepped away from him, but he stopped me, pulling me closer, and I glared at him.
“One day you’ll understand everything, I promise.”
“And what is that supposed to mean?”
“Not all of us are cut from the same cloth.”
“No one is forcing you to be a fucking drug dealer!” I shouted, wrestling away from him.
“You think it’s easy to get out? Do you have any idea the things I’ve seen? They’d kill me for just thinking about it!”
“My father would never—”
“Your father is a murderer, Marfil, just like the rest of us.”
“Are you hearing yourself?”
He nodded without letting go of me. He held the back of my neck and placed his mouth close to mine. “There’s not a day that I don’t regret everything I’ve done, and I assure you there’s not a day that I don’t try to make up for it.”
I stood completely still, searching his eyes for the truth. “How?”
Sebastian closed his eyes for an instant, as if afraid I might see into his soul. “I’m still here, aren’t I?”
“Are you saying that you’re trying to redeem yourself by getting into my pants?”
“Enough!” he said, shooting me a furious glance. “Don’t talk about what we have, fuck. You know perfectly well that you’re not just another chick to me. For the love of God, I could’ve fucked you the first week we met, and look where we are, months later!”
“Are you insinuating that I’m easy? Is that what you’re saying to me right now?”
“I’m insinuating that what I feel for you is the only thing keeping me here, risking my life for you, do you understand?”
“Well, then, go! I don’t want you to protect me; someone else can do it. I don’t need you! Not anymore!”
Sebastian took a few seconds to process my words, and then he released me. “Well, your wish is about to become reality. I’m not going to be guarding you anymore.”
What? No.
“What do you mean by that?”