CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
We walked inside the company, and I looked around as if I was watching a movie. A horror one.
The memories assaulted me, and I took in a shaky breath, struggling to control my despair.
Ethan took my hand in his. “Take your time, Fire.”
When I was somewhat confident I could go on, I guided us to the conference room. “It started in here. Izzie and I came to the company that day to get the Christmas decorations we kept in the storage room. But I noticed someone had broken into the building.” I walked to the table and ran my hands under it until I found the little nub. “I triggered the panic button to alert the guys and instructed Izzie to run, but Michael—Benny’s father—Matias, and a few other members of the cartel ambushed us. Michael slammed my head on the table, and I was unconscious for a while. That’s when they tied me and Izzie in this room.”
Ethan squeezed my hand, and I wasn’t sure if it was for comfort or out of rage. But he didn’t say anything, and I couldn’t be more grateful. Talking about it was excruciatingly painful. But since I started it, I needed to see it through. It was time to expunge.
When we reached the storage, my steps faltered. He pressed his forehead on the side of my head and breathed with me until I calmed down.
With shaky hands, I pulled us inside. “There were a few more shelves around, we couldn’t salvage all of them. The previous owner was a home décor and construction supplier, and we hadn’t taken out all his stuff yet. So, I kept some of our sensitive information scattered around. I couldn’t care that much about them that day, though. From what we heard them talking, I realized they’d planted bombs in the building. Izzie and Benny had just had Teddy, so I had to find a way to get her out.” I pointed to the door at the far corner to our right. “I instructed her to run to that door, so she could reach the reception and seek safety in the panic room under Haley’s desk until the guys could come. Once she was out, I pushed one of the shelves and let them fall one after the other, like a domino, until the last one jammed the door, so it wouldn’t open.”
“Why didn’t you run with her?”
“If I had done so, they would’ve followed us out. I couldn’t risk that happening, I needed them trapped inside.”
“But that trapped you as well.”
I shrugged. “It kind of did. That’s why I ran to the bathroom and climbed inside the vents. They far outnumbered me, I needed to try to even the numbers a little. So, I crawled through the vents to that raised platform,” I pointed at it, “and shot two of them. But that betrayed my position…”
The first bullet that broke into my shoulder propelled me further. The second one hit my arm, and despite my pain, I was too high on adrenaline to slow down. The third one, though, struck my leg and made me falter. The sound of my knee hitting the metal floor sounded like a gong announcing my demise.
I powered through my pain. It was more painful to admit I was actually afraid. More shots were fired from under the platform, and I wasn’t fast enough to avoid their grazes. As I heard one of the men climbing the metal stairs, my instinct took over, and I braved further to get to the corner, where I could access the vault and gain a few more minutes.
I reached the top entrance to it, cleaned my hand as best as I could on my clothes so as not to leave any blood marks on the hidden door, punched the code, and put the lid again on the display, hiding it. As soon as the door opened, I stepped inside and closed it behind me, locking it from the inside. Since I entered from the raised door and not the floor one, I had to climb down the stairs, which proved to be impossible when you were shot up like Swiss cheese.
I fell with a thud on the floor, in the middle of a growing pool of my own blood.
I thought it was the end for me. I wished it had been my end instead of my brother’s.
I stared at the door under the platform. “That’s one of the concealed doors to the vault. The other one is up on the platform. I ran inside through the top one, but I knew it was only a matter of time until they found me. I had to come up with a way to stop them.”
The pain was insurmountable. I couldn’t even pinpoint where it was coming from. Just like my blood, it seemed to be coming from everywhere.
I pushed through my agony and tried to stanch as much blood as I could by improvising a tourniquet on the main wounds. They didn’t seem to have reached fatal organs, but they hurt like hell .
Struggling to breathe, I limped to one of the armory closets and picked up some of the grenades we had stored inside, positioning them around the vault. I needed to be ready for when the cartel found me—because I knew they would.
After I scattered them around the small space, I dropped seated on the ground to tend to my other wounds. My head was getting dizzy, I wasn’t sure if it was from the pain, the concussion Michael most likely gave me, the continuous blood loss, or my recurring vertigo.
I felt the company cellphone vibrating in my pocket again. The guys had been trying to reach out to me like a clingy boyfriend.
That made me smile, though. It even made me feel peaceful.
I was under no illusion there was any salvation for me. I was just relieved I had some time to say goodbye.
But I believed it would be me saying goodbye to them. If I had imagined it was Zee’s goodbye, I would’ve exploded that room sooner, before my brother ever got into the building.
I was fine with not being around anymore.
But I couldn’t fathom being forced to live a life without Zach in it.
My eyes stung from not blinking as I fixated on that damn door. Despite its invisibility, I knew it was there. I clenched my teeth until the knot in my throat loosened. “When Michael and some of the others stormed inside, I threw a grenade at them and ran out. But I didn’t know…I didn’t know…”
My heart started pounding inside my chest, and my vision got blurry. The dizziness was too intense for me to endure, and my limbs were shaking so hard, I couldn’t even feel the thud of my knees hitting the floor.
I felt Ethan’s arms surrounding me and his voice breathing in my ear as he talked to me, although I couldn’t understand what it was. It was getting harder and harder to breathe through the pain and pressure in my chest.
Even though I couldn’t understand what he was doing, I felt Ethan touching me, and I let him control the situation. I didn’t know if it was hours, minutes, or even seconds, but I started to recognize the place again.
He ran my sweaty bangs away from my forehead. “Maybe that’s enough, Fire. We’re done for today. You’ve done great.”
I shook my head against his chest. “I want to do this. I need it.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I do. I need to see this through. Just…stay with me. Please.”
Ethan kissed my temple. “I’m not going anywhere.”
We stayed on our knees as I kept staring at the vault door.
“Zach was able to dismantle one of the bombs so they could barge in. I didn’t know they were already inside the building.” I felt my cheeks getting wetter, and not from sweating. “I also didn’t know there was a plastic explosive under the platform. Or that Zee…was on top…of it.”
He tightened his arms around me and rubbed my back.
“Once the grenade I threw blew off, it created a ripple effect, setting off the other ones and triggering the C-4 attached to the wall. I was thrown against the side wall, and the platform caved…with my brother.”
We sat down on our heels, still entangled in each other.
Ethan played with my hair. “Your brother died protecting you.”
I sniffed. “That doesn’t make me feel better.”
“From what happened that day and what I’ve seen about you, you were willing to do the same.”
“But it’s different.”
“How?”
I opened and closed my mouth, summoning the courage to say the painful truth. “Because I failed him. I failed my family.” I took in a shaky breath and choked. “I failed Haley and Gabe.”
We stayed on our knees for a while, until I squeezed my eyes and soaked in Ethan’s strength for the last step .
“There’s another thing I need to do.”
He didn’t even need to ask me what it was. He stood up and stretched his hand to help me up as well. With our fingers laced, we walked up the stairs to our offices and stopped in front of Zee’s locked door.
He squeezed my hand again. “Let’s take some time first.” We sat down across the door, with our backs against the wall. “Why don’t you tell me about him?”
I leaned my head against his shoulder, and he rested his head on top of mine.
“He was so collected; since we were kids. There was this calm confidence about him that always made me feel safe.” I smiled at his memories, and the pain subsided a little. “He was a bit of a geek. You two would’ve gotten along well.”
We laughed quietly.
“I wish I could’ve met him.”
“So do I. You’re a lot alike. Selfless, caring.” One tip of my lips went up, and I felt my face heat up as I admitted, “You’re two of the best men I know.”
He rounded one arm over my shoulders, pulled me closer to his side, and took my right hand to kiss my bruised knuckles.
“He loved to do origami. I guess it calmed him. And it did the same to me. Now and then, I’d found one of his origamis in my things. My desk. My bedside table. My backpack. Whenever I was feeling down about something, I could always count on finding one of his folded figurines.” I let out a broken breath and whispered, “I’d do anything to find another one.”
I scooched closer to Ethan, our bent-up legs touching each other. “He was never afraid or embarrassed to show his emotions. He also took care of everyone he loved. Zee had the keys to my place. So, he popped up whenever he wanted, especially after Haley and Gabe moved in.”
I let his thumb rubbing the back of my hand calm me. It was the boost of strength I needed.
“Every time he left, he instructed me to lock the door, I’d assure him I would and that I’d leave the front porch lights on in case he wanted to come back, and then we’d say we loved each other.” My nose stung to the point of pain as I tried to control my grief. “To this day, I can’t leave the porch lights off at night. What if he needed to come back? I wouldn’t want him not to find my home or to think I wasn’t waiting for him.” I scoffed in self-derision. “How insane is that?”
He took off my glasses to dry my eyes and pulled me to his chest. “Grief doesn’t need to make sense. It just needs to keep us closer to the people we love and who left us too soon. Maybe that’s the way you found to keep him alive without hurting you too much in the process.”
I hadn’t thought about it. It made me feel slightly less guilty for avoiding his memories .
“He was my best friend. Everyone in town could see it. We were inseparable, which makes it even…weirder?”
“What does?”
I gulped and tried to make sense of the mess of memories and feelings assaulting me. “I always fancied ourselves to have this special connection, like we could feel each other and understand what the other was feeling even if we weren’t together. Even though I never let myself think of this scenario—the possibility of losing him, I mean—I guess I assumed when one of us…passed, the other would be able to feel it.” I shook my head and looked at Ethan. “I don’t feel he’s gone. I know this might be a severe case of denial, but in my heart, I feel he’s alive. And that makes me sad. As naive as it may sound, it’s disheartening to realize we weren’t as in tune with each other’s presence and absence as I once thought.”
He nodded slowly. “Maybe that’s because he isn’t totally gone. He still lives within you. In your heart, in your memories.”
I peered down at our hands in shame. “I haven’t done a good job keeping his memories alive.” I rubbed my nose just to have something to do other than look at Ethan and expose my shame. “I’ve been trying my best not to think about him. I worked crazy hours, I knowingly overdid it, I made up things to do and accomplish, only so I could keep my mind busy. I worked myself to the bone not only to avenge him but so I could come home and sleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. I didn’t want to have time to think about him, to notice his absence, to feel the pain of not having him around. But it was a mistake. I was just sweeping my grief under the rug. All those paralyzing feelings were there. And since I worked so hard to ignore them, I never know when the pain will strike. And when it does…I want to pass along with him.”
Ethan caressed my bruised knuckles with tenderness. “You lost a part of yourself when he was gone. It isn’t easy to learn how to function again without something so vital. Especially when you both had such a beautiful relationship.”
“During all our lives,” I whispered, “we only argued once. But it was a bad one.”
I squeezed my eyes in remorse and rested my forehead on my bent-up knees. Ethan ran his left hand over my back in comfort, while his other hand held mine.
“He was worried. The cartel seemed to be targeting me, so Zach wanted me out of the company.” I bit my lip and pressed a fist against my mouth. “We got into a huge fight over it. The last thing I said to him was that I wanted him not to treat me like a sister.” I took in a shaky breath. “I wanted him not…to treat me…like a… sister .”
Ethan pulled me against his chest to whisper comforting words.
“After what happened here, I just couldn’t face it anymore. This place. My family. Haley and Gabe. It was just too painful. I avoided my parents and their home like the plague. I was there for Zee’s funeral, then it took me almost a year to go again. Both times were successful disasters. After that, the only other time I went was for that lunch you accompanied me.”
He was startled by my side. “Really? That was only the third time you went to your parents after what happened with your brother?” I nodded, and he looked at me confused. “Then why did you go that day? And why ask me to come along?”
I rested my back against the wall and considered his question. I gazed at our joined hands and tightened my fingers around his.
“I missed my parents, but I was in no condition to meet them at that house that held so many memories. Just the thought of going there used to send me into a panic attack. But you…you manage to calm the mayhem inside my head. You ease the chaos within me. And I never thought that was possible. So, I knew I needed you there with me.”
Ethan leaned my chin gently for me to look at him and pressed a peck on my lips. We pressed our foreheads together, and I closed my eyes trying to gather the strength to fight one more demon.
It was a few more hours until I could do it.
I stood up and paced in the hallway in front of Zee’s door.
I jumped on the spot like a fighter getting ready for the round of their life .
I held each side of the threshold and pressed my forehead against the door, taking deep, fortifying breaths.
I sat down next to Ethan again and rocked back and forth, holding my knees.
Not even once did he urge me to go faster. He was my silent source of strength. My balm. My reviving bird who was making me come back to life. My once enemy who I was deeply falling for.
I finally closed my eyes, let his confidence invade me, and stood up.
I stepped closer to the door, fished the key I always carried with me out of my pocket, and inserted it in the lock with shaky hands.
I wasn’t sure what I was expecting when I opened the door.
The suffocating silence shouldn’t have come as a surprise. But it did.
Zee’s absence shouldn’t have come as a surprise. But it did.
I looked around, and as insane as that was, I was mad at the contractors for remodeling the space exactly how it used to be. Because as great of a job as they did, there was still something—rather someone—fundamental missing from that room.
I felt one tear roll down my cheek as I peered around. Ethan joined me inside the room, but I couldn’t even see him through the tears pooling in my eyelids.
“I hoped it’d still smell like him,” I whispered. “I know it doesn’t make any sense. It’s been almost two years, and this place was remodeled; it wasn’t supposed to smell like him.” A sob escaped my throat. “ But why doesn’t it smell like him? ”
Ethan marched to me, embracing me once again into his chest, not caring that I was wetting his shirt. He held my shaking shoulders and let me exorcise my many demons.
I knew it was a much-needed step forward.
But it also felt like losing my brother all over again.