Prologue #2
The crushing, claustrophobic feeling grew even more intense as I peered at my family, who should’ve been by my side during my darkest moments. Honestly, it felt like I now stood in a room full of strangers.
I swallowed hard and kept my head up, refusing to look weak or scared in front of any of them. They didn’t deserve the satisfaction. I had suffered too damn much to back down now. I soon located my father, who sat in a chair next to Carlos’ right side.
I paused for a moment and gazed down at Carlos with a frown on my face.
He looked so still and broken. Tubes and wires were hooked all over him.
His head wasn’t bandaged anymore, but he seemed so limp.
He looked thinner than the last time I had visited him and this worried me. He had always been in great shape.
He had a good heart at one time. In my mind, Carlos was still the man who was mesmerized by a simple farm life and he always smiled the most.
Would he revive to continue being that person?
The thought of Carlos never being that way again made my throat grow tight, but I forced myself to swallow and turned to face my father.
The man that had done his part to erase all that was good about Carlos.
But that was what Santiago did to people.
He used them and abused them until they were dead inside.
All the better for him as they obeyed him in all things.
Now the sight of him shocked me. Instead of his firm, tough front he put on, Santiago looked frail and years older than he should’ve looked. There were dark bags under his brown eyes and his shoulders sagged as he hunched over in the chair.
“Papá,” I said evenly to get his attention.
My father lifted his head to stare up at me. He looked miserable and exhausted. However, his eyes still harbored the same anger they always had. He couldn’t shake his hatred for me no matter what. Instead of even speaking to me directly, he grunted and looked away from me, staring down at Carlos.
Then suddenly, he shot up to his feet, pushing past me to face the family.
“I can’t stand just sitting here waiting for him to wake up!
” he snapped. His angry voice filled the entire room and spilled out into the hallway.
If he was able to handle his anger better, he wouldn’t be such a terrible person, but he had hatred for the entire world.
He felt wronged and betrayed every time something went south.
Now, his heir was trapped in a coma that he might never be freed from.
It was clearly killing him to see Carlos so still and broken.
Carlos was young, brave, and handsome, but none of that could save him.
The damage had been done. Now, we had to wait for a miracle and those didn’t come around all that often.
“I want the Mancinis to suffer for this!” my father shouted as he stalked around the room like a rabid animal looking for something poor and defenseless to attack.
“They should all be targeted,” Miguel commented as he stood between Luis and Juan.
While Juan looked enthusiastic to agree, Luis merely lowered his eyes to the floor, seeming tense.
One of the things that bothered me the most about my family was the fact that they were too scared to even fight for themselves.
They bowed down to my father, even if they were forced to do things they didn’t want to do.
They were afraid of being hunted down like Alex was, but were they really willing to live their lives as my father’s puppets forever?
“Yes! I want every single one of them dead,” my father yelled. “We’ll declare open war and pick them off one by one!”
This spurred grunts and chuckles of agreement from some of my family members. The others remained quiet, but they nodded to act like they were in agreement. They were just too afraid to act uninterested.
“All of them?” Luis finally spoke up. “There’s a good bit of them and we can’t say that they’re weak either.” When glares were directed his way, he cleared his throat and shrugged. “I’m just saying that we need to think about the logistics as well.”
My father waved the others off of Luis’ back. “I want to redirect more of our money to get extra manpower from our allies,” he said.
I stood there unable to do anything just yet, but watch him prowl around and spout nonsense. He acted like going to war with a powerful crime family wasn’t a big deal, like we did this every other week. He didn’t care that there could be casualties, that his own family would suffer.
“And when I say all of the Mancinis, I mean all of them. Young and old,” my father uttered with cruelness in his dark eyes.
It felt like ice water just got dumped down my back, chills racing through me.
If my father had that same attitude when my twins were stolen away, maybe they were dead.
He didn’t seem to have any issues killing children right now.
I knew for a fact that the Mancinis had quite a few new babies and kids in their family.
I had just left the Mancini estate after seeing most of them this morning.
Those kids didn’t have anything to do with the rivalry between the Mancinis and the Castillos. They had just come into the world, unaware of the cruelty and darkness waiting for them. It pained me that anyone grew up in this sort of environment. It would change them forever. I should know.
I did know.
To my horror, some members of my family still seemed to agree with his plan.
Were they that cruel too? I didn’t understand how people could be fine with children and babies being killed for their parents’ fight.
Guilty by association shouldn’t exist for them.
“The children are innocent,” I stated firmly as I took a step toward my father.
The room became eerily quiet as all eyes shifted to me. I stood my ground, refusing to be beat down for my opinion. I was the one in the right here. I actually had morals and a beating heart, while my father didn’t even have a soul.
Slowly, he turned to face me, seeming to actually acknowledge the fact I was here instead of ignoring me like before.
He stepped toward me, only stopping within a foot of distance between us.
He towered over me, not looking so frail any longer.
“I don’t remember asking you,” he murmured in a low, threatening voice.
I met his dark eyes. I hated how we shared some features.
I didn’t want to be aligned with him in the slightest, which was one of the reasons why I kept my last name as Gomez-Mora instead of Castillo.
The Castillo family was cursed by darkness and pain.
“You have to know that going after the children is wrong. Don’t you have a heart? ” I asked him.
He laughed right in my face.
Part of me wanted to strike him, to take all of my anger and hatred out on him.
However, he was too well-guarded. Punching him in the face wouldn’t hurt him as badly as I wanted to for all of the pain he’d caused me. It wouldn’t be enough for me. If I really wanted to get back at him, I had to stick to my original plan and play the long game. Unlike him, I had patience.
“A heart? This is why you’re a childless widow,” my father hissed. “This is why you’re no longer my daughter.”
I swallowed hard as my eyes shifted over to Carlos. If he was awake right now, he would’ve acted as mediator between us, trying to calm us both, despite being a relentless, hotheaded troublemaker to others. He laid there still and quiet though, letting me and my father’s argument rage on.
“They didn’t drive his car into a tree,” I said.
I was tired of the blame being put on the Mancinis.
Their plantation house was set on fire and one of the daughters had been nearly kidnapped.
The two cartel deaths and Carlos’ accident were consequences of actions that never should’ve been done in the first place.
My father suddenly lunged toward me, stopping himself right before touching me.
I automatically flinched, putting my hands up to defend myself. When I didn’t feel any pain, I opened my eyes and peered through my fingers, my heartbeat throbbing in my ears.
My father had his hand raised, but he didn’t bring it down on me. He merely shook his head at me with a cold laugh. “You’re not even worth it,” he said before retreating to his son’s bedside. He took a seat and chuckled to himself, a few of my cousins and uncles echoing his laughter.
A blunt pain struck me in the chest, catching me off guard. Something about him saying I wasn’t even worth his abuse hit me harder than anything else he had ever said to me. I meant nothing to him, while I watched him fawn over the child that meant everything to him.
One of my other cousins, Alvaro, a tall, muscular man a few years older than me, stepped right in front of me, making me tense as he stared down at me.
He acted like his father, my Uncle Salvador.
Cruel. Heartless. Obedient to my father.
“Don’t you see you’re not wanted here, nina estúpida,” he scoffed in my face.
I glared at him.
He was a wanna-be version of my father, hungry for power.
He even pushed my other cousins around if they got in his way or questioned him.
There was no use arguing with him because he believed any word that came out of his mouth, his father’s mouth, or my father’s was right.
“If Carlos wakes up, I hope he comes to his senses and tosses you aside,” Alvaro told me as he leaned close.
“He won’t ever do that,” I bit out as I stood my ground. My body wanted to tremble from the adrenaline coursing through me, but I clenched my fists and kept myself as steady as possible.
I knew my brother. No matter how much trouble he got into or how many enemies he made with that cocky mouth of his, he cared for me. He treated me how family was supposed to treat each other. I believed that he would never abandon me for power or money.
I looked over at Santiago Castillo, my so-called father.
He was right about me having no loyalty to my family.
After how terribly he treated me, I didn’t have his best interests in mind.
I had been kicked around for too long and watched too many people get hurt and killed by my father’s hand.
It was time to bring him down with revenge and justice.
He refused to look at me.
This failed to hurt me like it should. I did not care about his hatred for me anymore. I held my head up and exited the room. I needed to alert Alberto right away. The Castillos were planning to kill his grandchildren.
Several days later…
Alberto had placed an entire MC, The Rebel Saints, around the estate to protect it.
His whole family remained inside. No one liked this isolation but it was necessary.
The Castillos had vowed to kill them all.
By now, Santiago knew I was with Alberto Mancini.
And I was about to become a Mancini when Alberto and I got married.
I had to face the fact that deep down I was a Castillo, no matter what happened. There were some family I still cared about…Carlos and Ignacio. They were my blood and I cherished them, but I wasn’t proud to be in the same family as them.
The thought of Carlos made my throat tighten.
He had been in the hospital for months and it would be a miracle if he ever woke up.
He might never wake up, leaving me without the brother I had known all of my life.
If Ignacio didn’t gather the courage he needed to abandon the cartel and live his own life, I would have to leave him behind as well.
I had just arrived with Alberto for a family meal in the dining room when my phone rang.
I checked to see that it was Ignacio, prompting me to flash everyone a sheepish look.
I didn’t mean to halt our plans for a moment, but I needed to take his call.
“Sorry, it’s my cousin,” I said before answering. “Sorry, I meant to call you.”
“Gabby, Carlos is gone.”
I gripped Alberto’s hand harder out of reflex, making him wince slightly. I quickly let go and took a step back from everyone. “What do you mean Carlos is gone? Y-you mean…h-he’s dead?” I asked as my heart thudded heavily in my chest. His words didn’t make any sense.
“No, not that…I asked everyone on the floor that I could find about him and he has disappeared!” Ignacio replied, sounding just as shocked as I felt.
“But he was in a coma!”
“I know!” Ignacio exclaimed.
I turned to look at the Mancinis, seeing their wide eyes and confused looks.
I honestly didn’t expect Carlos to ever wake up.
It had been months. I knew I was supposed to have hope for his recovery, but I was also a realist. He couldn’t have just disappeared.
“No one knows where he is?” I asked. Something felt off and dread crept down the back of my neck.
Carlos was always guarded by members of the cartel. What happened to them?
“No, I’ll ask around some more. I’ll call when I find out something,” Ignacio said then he ended the call.
I turned to Alberto with tears in my eyes. “I don’t know where my brother is,” I breathed out, unable to make my voice come out any louder. My throat and chest felt so tight like a snake was constricting me.
“It’s okay.” Alberto placed his hands on my upper arms. “He couldn’t have gotten far.”
“No…I think someone took him,” I replied while trying to fight off the dread I felt. Tears rolled down along my cheeks. “I don’t know where anyone is. My brother. My children. Everyone is gone!”