Chapter 30
Angel
“My father has to pay for what he did,” I said as Omar parked the car in the driveway. “You don’t have to watch. Go take your hot shower and climb into bed.”
Emma shook her head. “No, I think I do need to be there,” she said and touched her belly. “I have to know why he would do that to his own grandchild.”
“I have to know why he did it to you,” I said. I brushed a matted piece of hair behind her ear and brought my mouth to hers again. She still tasted like grit and earth, but it didn’t matter. Her lips were the best things that I’d ever felt against my own.
She held out her hand. “Let’s go,” she said, and how could I say no to that?
We walked into the house hand-in-hand with Omar at our backs —the triumphant returning to our castle.
In the dining room, Lili was sitting in a chair with my gun still trained on our father, who had finished his dinner, apparently.
“It’s about time you got back,” Lili grumbled and handed the gun back to me.
“My arm was going numb.” When her eyes fell on Emma, however, she softened.
“I’m so glad you’re okay,” she said and tried to pull Emma in for a hug.
Emma sidestepped her. “So am I,” she said flatly, refusing to look at her square in the face. Lili’s expression fell, and had it not been for the man in front me, I would have said something…but dealing with Gustavo came first. I would help Lili afterward.
“Before I kill you,” I said, focusing on my father, “I want to know why.”
He stared at me. “Why what, mijo?”
I stared, mouth drawn into a hard line, for a moment, and then I swung hard and smashed the butt of the gun into his jaw. Lili flinched back, eyes wide; even Omar appeared shocked. None of us had ever dared to strike back. “Why did you send Luis Rojas after my wife?” I demanded.
Gustavo gripped his jaw. The thin skin had split, and blood poured down his neck and stained his shirt. “Luis Rojas offered you peace, and you spit in his face. I had to do something before he declared all-out war.”
“He declared war when he attacked us at Elíseo,” I said. “Why should I take his offer of peace after he tried to have me killed?”
“He offered you a piece of his business; I approved it, and you refused.”
That was the real issue then. Gustavo wanted the trafficking business, and he was mad that I had refused it, despite all of the other opportunities that I had opened to us.
Despite it being unnecessarily risky for everyone involved.
Despite it probably being a trap so that the Rojas could either try and take us all out or turn us in to the feds.
Whatever Gustavo wanted, he got, and he wasn’t willing to compromise on any of it.
“You already punished me for that,” I said. “If that wasn’t enough, you could have sent someone after me and handed the family over to Omar. Why go after Emma?”
My father looked at Emma with contempt written all over his face.
I contemplated hitting him again, but if I did, I’d likely break his jaw, and then this all would have been a waste of time.
“I gave her to you because you fucked up and ended up with a life debt to a woman.” He said the word as if it were a curse. “You weren’t supposed to enjoy it.”
“You thought marriage was a punishment?” Emma asked.
While her voice was flat, she didn’t sound angry; it was more that she was confused.
Then, something must have clicked in her head because her mouth twisted into a sneer.
“You thought I would hate him, right? Like your wife hated you?” she asked, voice growing harder and meaner with every word.
“You wanted me to make him miserable because that’s what it was like for you? ”
Gustavo’s eyes were black flint. If he could have gone anywhere near, he would have strangled her; I could see it clearly in his face. I put my arm out and slid her behind me. “Your function was to give him children and get out of the way, like my wife. She lived up to her duties beautifully.”
“Did you think I was going to kill myself too?” Emma asked. “When I was done being a broodmare?”
“Anyone can be convinced to do anything given the right incentive, mija.”
Gustavo throwing a grenade in our faces wouldn’t have hit as hard. “Padre,” Lili said, voice wavering. “What are you saying? Did you…did you do something to Mami?”
He shot her a look so full of venom that she jerked as if she’d been hit. “She fulfilled her purpose,” he said again, completely deadpan. “I didn’t need her anymore; Miriam understood that.”
Gustavo didn’t have to say it explicitly for all of us to understand what he meant: he either had my mother killed and framed it as a suicide, or he ordered her to do it herself, and she complied. “I am going to enjoy sending you to Hell,” I said.
He smirked. “You’ll be killed the moment you try to take over,” he said, reminding me that this was a betrayal. “I’ll see you there.”
Before I could move my finger to the trigger, Emma grabbed my arm. “Wait, stop,” she said.
“Emma —”
“He has to die,” Lili choked out. Her voice sounded thick with tears, but I couldn’t take my eyes off my father.
Emma stepped around me, pushing on my arm until I lowered the gun a little. I could still use it in an instant, but she made it so that I couldn’t simply pull the trigger and blow a hole in his chest. “I’m not disagreeing with any of you,” she said, “but it can’t be like this.”
“Why not?” Omar demanded, and he sounded as on edge as Lili.
“Because your father is right,” Emma said. “If Angel kills him now, the whole family will turn against him.”
“I’ll protect him,” Omar insisted. “I’d never let anything happen to Angel.”
Emma shook her head. “You can’t promise that. If the men don’t follow him en masse, it’s going to be a slaughter, and I will not allow that to happen.” There was an edge in her voice that I’d never heard before.
“So, what do you suggest, mi esposa?” I asked. “We can’t leave him alive.”
“Why not?” Before any of us could protest, she raised her hand.
“He’s already dying.” The air was sucked out of the room; like Lara earlier, she was saying what everyone had been ignoring for months.
She stepped closer to Gustavo but stayed just far away enough that I would have time to shoot him if he moved.
Smart girl, I thought fondly. “Everyone can tell that you're sick,” she said, addressing Gustavo directly. “You’re shit at hiding it, especially since the whites of your eyes are turning yellow. What is it? Your liver or your pancreas?”
My father looked like he was chewing on his tongue. “Pancreas,” he finally spat.
Emma nodded, as if she expected that answer. “Stage IV?”
“Yes.” The word was a growl. He didn’t like her flaying him open like this, revealing all of the secrets that he’d been keeping for months.
Emma hummed softly, still assessing him.
“You probably don’t have much time,” she observed, and her voice was almost detached.
Like she was making observations about the weather.
It was frightening to see her like this; my wife usually wore her expressions loudly, even when she thought she was hiding them so well.
It was also one of the sexiest things I’d ever seen.
“My mom’s cancer had spread to her pancreas, you know.
That’s what actually killed her in the end.
She was in constant agony that pain medication couldn’t touch. ”
“Did you have a point?” Gustavo spat. He was turning a little gray around the edges; the still-bleeding wound on his face must be making him a little lightheaded by now.
Emma came back to my side, and I wrapped my arm around her shoulders.
She was trembling; she was still damp from her run through the Everglades, and she was running on pure adrenaline right now.
It was about time to wrap this all up. “My point is,” she said, but she was addressing me now, “that we let nature take its course. We let him die feeling the same agony that my mom felt. It’ll hurt more than shooting him ever will. ”
If she ever turns on me, I’m absolutely fucked, I thought.
Knowing that Omar wouldn’t hesitate to put my father down, I turned and kissed her, hard and deep, until we were both panting into each other’s mouths.
“If it’s what you want,” I said against her lips.
“I’ll do it. I would do anything for you. ”
She shivered against me, but her eyes were sparkling. “I think he’s owed some suffering,” she said.
I agreed. “Yes.” She told me that she didn’t like how being with me made her feel about herself.
Did I bring out the darkness that was already residing within her?
Or was I corrupting her by keeping her close to me?
Either way it didn’t matter. Like I told her before: I was too selfish to ever consider letting her go.
I glared at my father. “Here’s what I’m going to do,” I said. “You’re going to sign a power of attorney to me, and then I’m going to find a hospice to dump you in until you die there alone. No one will be permitted to visit or call, or they can join you in Hell.”
“What do we do with him until then?” Omar asked. “Even with money, it’s going to take a few days for everything to come together.”
I smiled at my father, and for the first time, he looked nervous. “I believe the room that he had Emma taken from is open.” I glanced at my brother. “Help me?”
Omar nodded, and together, we grabbed my father under each arm. He didn’t fight; he didn’t have it in him to fight. Although he didn’t look like he’d lost too much weight, he felt like a bag of bones held together with paper-thin skin.
We dragged him through the house to the hallway of holding cells.
While David’s body had been moved and the news delivered to his family, the door to Emma’s former room was still open.
We took him inside and dumped him onto her unmade bed.
Gustavo landed with a grunt, but he didn’t try to run.
It was like he had been deflated. “Who's going to feed him?” Omar asked as we left without even a word to our father.
I shut the door and punched in the code to the lock. Then, I went through the steps to change it so that no one besides me could get into the room. “We’ll see how long it takes to get him into a hospice,” I said. “If it’s only a few days, he can wait. There’s a sink if he’s thirsty.”
Omar clapped a hand on my shoulder. “Are you ready to tell the family?” he asked.
I wasn’t — I needed to get my wife into a shower and put my hands and mouth all over her, if she’d let me — but I supposed there was no way to put it off. “You’ll have my back?”
“Like I was always meant to,” he said. Omar reminded me constantly that he never wanted the power or the responsibility of being the firstborn, no matter that our father and tíos had been waiting for a reason to hand him everything. He was content to be my enforcer and stand by my side.
“Let’s do this.”