26. Carmen
Chapter 26
Carmen
I f there were a part of my brain still capable of processing humor and irony, I think I might laugh at my new, humble abode.
The cold stone walls of the cell press in around me feel familiar, yet not familiar enough. What does it say about me that I wish that they were different walls? A different cell. Long for it, even.
I wonder if something in me might be broken now.
Too many cages and too many places I would have loved to have called home. The Rubio mansion, for instance. Home. Home for over two decades. Home because my mother’s memory is etched into the walls, amber and sweet, sweet smiles.
And yet.
I’ve visited these cells before. I’ve just never ventured onto this side of the locked door. I’ve never spent any time here at all, really.
Now, it’s my existence. There are no iron bars, no dark stonework, no familiar footsteps walking down the corridor outside. No one to offer me reprieve from the silence with a complaint about bachelorettes. No Italian curses.
Just this simple, clinical space devoid of all character.
My father threw me in here without a word, without a glance, and I know he knows.
I think he might have known even before the pregnancy confirmed it.
How?
The thought gnaws at me—my father’s coldness, his silence. It’s suffocating. Because I have a thousand questions. And he has a thousand answers I’m not sure I want to hear.
What will happen to me now that I’m carrying Dante’s child? What happens if Lacruz finds out? Why make the exchange now when he was perfectly happy, leaving me to the mercy of the Italians for five months?
What happens next?
I should feel guilty. I should be afraid of what my pregnancy means for the Cartel’s alliances. My purity was everything, my one bargaining chip, the one thing I could offer that made me useful in my father’s eyes.
Yet here I am, and everything is ruined, but the guilt I know I should feel is...distant. Like it belongs to someone else. Like it belongs to the person I was five months ago.
Something changed in Italy. Hell, now that I have all the time in the world to think about it, I think something more than changed. That place rewired my brain entirely, making me think bigger and wider and want impossible things.
It made me want a life of my own. One where I get to make my own choices.
And in that life, my pregnancy is a good thing. The Cartel is an ocean away, and Dante is by my side.
I know I should hate Dante for making the choices he did, for putting me in this position, for leaving me behind. But I can’t bring myself to hate him. Even now, after everything, I can’t hate him.
I miss him.
I miss his stupid fucking face and his stupid fucking laugh and his stupid fucking arms. And I want to kick myself for not saying goodbye. I’ve already screamed about it, feral and desperate, now that there’s no one around to hear me.
My throat aches from misuse. My lungs ache because I’ve been trying to breathe without him, and it’s so unbearably hard.
Damn it. Everything is such a mess.
I stretch out my legs beneath the metal bed and try to wriggle beneath it, for a change of scenery, ha!. The walls beneath are bare, except for the faintest of scratches carved into the stone. I trace my fingers along them, feeling the jagged edges of each mark.
At first, I don’t recognize them. But as my eyes adjust to the dim light, something clicks, and I realize what I’m looking at: the scratches made by the last person who occupied this cell.
Mia.
The thought hits me like a wave. She was here. She was here for months.
The scratches on the wall are small and desperate. They show a progression, a slow decline from time spent locked away, each new line a reminder of the hours, days, months she spent in this very cell.
Then there, right in the corner, the words:
“Fuck you, Rubio.”
The below, slightly smaller:
“Not you, Carmen.”
A bubble of laughter bursts out.
Red.
It was all so Red. Memories of our whirlwind friendship rise to the surface of my mind. I’d never met anyone like her, someone I could trust to have my back in a world where anyone might take a stab at it.
Even her, in the end.
But that wasn’t the end, was it? Mia had vouched for me when the Guild caught me. She suffered for me in this cell for months.
She smiled at me at the exchange, and God, it felt like not a moment had passed since we were dancing in clubs together and feeling like the world was ours for the taking.
Her captivity wasn’t a brief respite like mine. She wasn’t given the grace of sunlight or freedom to wander the grounds. She was kept in the dark, forgotten, probably beaten into submission.
And for what?
The sound of footsteps outside the cell cuts through the silence, and I scramble out from under the bed and press my back against the wall in the corner, trying to make myself as small as possible.
The door creaks open with a sound that feels too final, too heavy.
His figure fills the doorway, tall and imposing, his face twisted into an expression of cold fury. It’s been days, and yet when his gaze settles on me, the weight of his disappointment hits me like a physical blow.
“Carmen,” my father says, his voice low, deadly calm.
“Papá,” I just need to stay calm and reasonable. Remain obedient. “I’m thirsty.”
Amos stalks toward the empty cup perched on the bed and knocks it to the floor. For a moment, the sound of it clumsily bouncing across the floor fills the brutal silence between us.
I try not to close my eyes. I try to keep my back straight and my mouth set.
I try not to cry.
“Papá.”
“Do you understand what it is you have done?”
I know better than to reply.
“You’ve sullied yourself. I never thought you’d be so weak, so stupid .” His words slice through the air, each one a barb aimed at my soul. “You’ve betrayed everything we stand for.”
I bite down hard on my lip to keep from making a sound.
“You,” he sneers, his lip curling as he steps closer, “you were supposed to be the perfect wife. You were supposed to remain untouched, pure for Lacruz. And now look at you. You've allowed an Italian to put his filthy hands on you, to ruin everything. To ruin me. ”
My breath hitches as the walls around me seem to close in.
“The Cartel needs the Lacruz alliance,” he spits.
“But you, you’ve destroyed it. You’re nothing but a mockery of everything we’ve worked for, everything your mother and I raised you to be. I would rather see you dead than live with the shame you’ve brought onto this family.”
I try to imagine Evelina in the sunroom, her immaculate dress wrinkling slightly as she throws her head back in laughter, a friendly smile on her face, the one reserved for the people she loves. We are laughing together over her second glass of merlot.
Family.
“You have two choices, Carmen. Two.”
I swallow hard and look up at him. Finally, gathering the courage to meet his terrifying gaze.
“Get rid of that...that thing inside you and beg Lacruz for his forgiveness. Throw yourself at his feet, grovel, and maybe, just maybe, he’ll take you back. Maybe you’ll be useful to the Cartel again.”
Thing.
My child…Dante’s child…is not a thing.
My stomach churns as anger fans the flames of my courage.
“And if I refuse?”
His eyes darken with cold, unforgiving rage as he takes in my defiance with disgust.
“He will kill you, Carmen. Simple as that.”
I feel my heart twist in my chest, a sickness rising within me. He’s not offering me a choice. He’s offering me an ultimatum. An ultimatum I can’t escape from.
“The only reason he hasn’t come down here is out of respect for me, ” he practically spits as he turns away. “So you shall do as I say. You will save me any further embarrassment.”
The door slams shut behind him, the sound reverberating through my bones. I’m left once more to my silence. The weight of it has never felt more suffocating.
* * *
I don’t know how much time passes before the door creaks open again. I don’t think I’ve moved even once.
Still, I scramble back wearily, preparing myself for the worst.
But it’s Melissa’s face that greets me as she steps closer into the dim light of the cell.
The doctor’s face softens as she approaches slowly as if addressing a wounded animal. “Carmen, I’ve come to check on your wound. How are you feeling?”
There aren’t enough curse words in the Italian dictionary to do that question any justice.
She seems to understand this, though, at least on some level, as she sets a small medical kit down on the floor beside me and doesn’t ask again.
I do notice her hands shaking slightly. There’s concern in her familiar eyes, but I’m not sure she can afford anything more for me. Not when her loyalties clearly lie with my father.
She checks my wound silently, and for a while, I think she might not say anything more.
But then she leans in close to retie the bandage and she whispers in my ear. “I am so sorry, mija .”
I let out a long breath. “It’s just...just a bullet wound.”
“No,” the doctor places a gentle hand over my stomach.
I swallow back the tears that threaten to spill at her tenderness.
“If I don’t do what they want, they’ll really kill me, won’t they?” I whisper back.
The doctor remains quiet as she carefully bandages my arm. I can see it in the way she avoids looking me in the eye, as if she’s afraid that if she sees too much, it will be hard to walk away.
“I’ve been thinking about...about my choices. And about the life inside me.” I swallow hard. “My baby doesn’t deserve this, do they?”
Her jaw clenches, but she finishes her word before she speaks again.
“I’m so sorry, Carmen,” she says finally, her voice low. “I wish there was something more I could do.”
Oh, there is. There is, but I don’t know if I can trust you now, Doctor Alvarado. Will you make everything worse?
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” I say instead, tears falling now. “Everything is ruined, and I don’t even know if I care anymore. I just want to...to keep my child safe.”
Please, see me. Please, I’m so desperate.
“I miss him,” I whisper. “He would look after me. He’d look after us both. I know he would. Don’t you think I deserve that?”
“Carmen.”
I see the hesitation in the doctor’s face, the uncertainty. She’s afraid. She has every right to be.
But I’m terrified. And I will fight for this.
“Look at me.”
Doctor Melissa Alvarado bravely meets my gaze.
“Do I deserve this?”
The older woman’s face shatters. It’s a face that I’ve known for twenty years. She looks at me with a grief that I’ve only seen once before.
The day she announced my mother’s death.
“Please,” I plead. “You’ve got to help me. Get a message to Dante, to anyone. Please. If anyone knows what to do, it’s him. And I know he’ll fight for me….fight for our child.”
She looks around the small, cold cell, the weight of the situation settling between us.
“I can’t make any promises, Carmen. You don’t understand how much danger you’re in, how much danger you put me in if I even try. But...I will try.”
A sob breaks out of me as I throw my arms around her neck and bring her in close. “Thank you.”
She’s silent for a moment longer, then nods against my shoulder. “I’ll try. I’ll try, Carmen.”