24. Diego
24
DIEGO
M y side trip to that neighborhood turned out to be a bust. No one was hanging around there. No Cartel members were loitering in that area. At least, none of the ones I saw at that other park.
Driving around for a few more minutes, keeping a lookout for anything suspicious, I worried that I was doing nothing but wasting my time.
Sofia would be home soon, and I didn’t want her to worry when I was later than usual. Ramon should’ve been there with me already, ready to relax for the coming holiday.
No relaxation seemed to be in the works now. Instead, I had to go to the woman I loved and wanted to protect before I explained that her biggest enemy, her most-feared threat, was closing in on her.
Because of me.
I drove there, hit with the reminders that her life could be forever altered just because she’d done the “good” thing of stopping to see if I was alive, of pausing and going out of her comfort zone to take a chance on me, just like that person at the health clinic in the jungle had taken a chance to help her.
Meeting Sofia and getting to know her was a life lesson that everyone needed to experience. She was so brave and strong, running from a literal hell to survive on her own. It had given her anxiety and trauma, but she persisted beyond it. She had every right to be jaded and hate the world, but she didn’t.
My angel had the audacity to have faith in the good of others. According to her, good and bad were absolutes. Every bad person had the capacity to do good, and vice versa, and that was a sign of her growing and healing in the wake of her trauma.
She had the courage to stand up to her fears and hesitations to still extend a helping hand. It was a demonstration of the firmest goodwill.
And that’s why she can’t make sense with me.
On the drive home, I compared her goodness with the evil I was certain resided in me. I had the joy of killing. I was experienced in death and destruction. It didn’t seem feasible for her to want to stick around with me. I still harbored a fear that she wouldn’t want to once I told her that I suspected I had previously been involved with the Cartel, with thugs like Manny and Antonio and countless others.
I would be upfront. I wouldn’t hide this revelation from her. She deserved better than that.
I parked at the house and locked the car. Overhead, dark clouds swarmed and collected, promising a deluge. Humidity hung low in the air, almost granting an oppressive pressure bearing down on me and pushing my shoulders low. I cracked my back, feeling the side effects of folding myself into Sofia’s small car for so long.
A glance at the sky didn’t tell me much. It didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know, that a storm was coming. When I lowered my gaze, taking in the sight of the front door, I was instantly on edge at what that visual meant.
The door was ajar, hanging open, and that couldn’t be right. It was not a good sign when no one was supposed to be home.
I ran, panicking about the possibility of another break-in, whether more assholes tried to barge in and ransack the place for drugs because Sofia was a nurse and that could be a loose and weak way to assume she’d hoard drugs at her home.
Swinging in slightly from the pound of my footsteps as I ran over the threshold, the door squeaked and whined on its hinges.
The sight that greeted me spoke of nothing but destruction. The furniture was shoved around. More of Sofia’s things had been dropped or thrown on the floor, many of them the Christmas decorations she’d just set out with Ramon’s help. Bits and pieces of debris lay scattered everywhere, but that wasn’t what threatened to stop my heart.
Sofia curled into a ball near the bedroom door. She rocked slightly, sobbing with a heart-wrenching keening sound that only a wounded animal might make.
“Sofia!” I sprinted to her, anxious to hold her and soothe her from whatever had her so distressed.
She didn’t lift her face, burrowing into the fetal position as she cried and cried. Shaking and closed in on herself, she didn’t react to my shout. She wasn’t just locked down mentally. She was trapped in a numb stasis that prevented the outside world from reaching her.
What the fuck happened?
What’s going on?
“Sofia!” I knelt next to her, tugging her into my arms. She didn’t lift her face, but as I rolled her toward me, she loosened her arms slightly, showing me her tear-streaked face, red from sobbing. Her eyes were squeezed shut, her hair mussed and in a disarray that could only look like that from someone’s hands yanking on it.
“Sofia, what’s going on?” I scanned the room quickly, feebly wishing something could give me a clue.
“Who did this?” I demanded, angry before I even knew where to direct my ire. Someone would receive it. Someone would pay.
I had sworn and vowed over and over again that Sofia wouldn’t be hurt under my watch, and I’d failed her. I wasn’t sure why she’d gotten home earlier than I thought she would, just the same as why I felt like I was in the dark about the different arrangements for Ramon to get home. Maybe that was some kind of subliminal communication that happened in families. Something I didn’t know yet.
“Ramon!” I bellowed his name, needing his help to know what happened. He was just next door, but he’d hear my yell. He’d be alert to the sound of my distraught voice.
Sofia shook harder and her cries intensified.
“Sofia, who did this?” Waiting for the telltale sound of Ramon’s feet on the floor as he ran to my yells, I checked over her the best I could. Without her uncurling from this balled-up position, I was limited in helping her and seeing if she was wounded.
No blood came from her skin, and while her face was red, I couldn’t tell if it was only red because she was bawling or if she’d been struck. Some of the swelling high on her cheek had to be from a hit of some kind, but I just couldn’t tell.
“Sofia, please. Talk to me, my angel.” I’d beg. I’d demand. I’d plead. Whatever it took to get her to tell me what happened. Because if I had to keep guessing where I would direct my anger and retaliate, I’d go insane that much faster.
Favoring her arm, she cradled it to her chest.
“Please, Sofia. What happened?” If she was stuck in fear and the lock of trauma, I had to jolt her out of it.
Still nothing but cries as she steeled herself into a pretzel position, keeping me out and depriving me of looking her in the eye.
“Ramon!” I yelled again, desperate for his help with his mother.
“He’s gone.”
She whispered it so shakily that I strained to follow her message.
“He’s gone,” she repeated, not opening her eyes or melting into my embrace.
“Who—”
“He’s gone!” She screamed it that time, redder in the face with spittle flying out. The force with which she yelled it up to me seemed to sap all her energy.
“What do you mean, he’s gone?” I felt instantly stupid to ask. It wasn’t that hard to figure out.
Ramon had yet to rush in here and help me calm his mother. She had expressed her deep fear of this scenario ever happening. And now… it had.
Ramon was gone.
I didn’t need her to spell it out. Nothing else could have impacted her this severely. The loss of anything or anyone else in the world couldn’t have made her crumple into this sobbing mess.
“What—”
She squirmed, rocking her body from side to side but not letting go of her arm as she tucked it to her chest. Baring her gnashed teeth, she growled then sobbed, seeming unable to tell me or otherwise indicate that she wanted to be out of my arms. To avoid my touch.
I wasn’t sure she was aware of her actions, much less her words or thoughts. Like a rabid, wounded animal of prey, she hunkered into a ball on the floor.
“They came for him and took him away.”
“Who?”
“The Cartel. That drunk bastard came to take his son.” She sniffled as she rested her cheek on the floor.
No. Fuck! No, it couldn’t be true.
I’d sworn to watch over them. They were supposed to be my future. My new hope. This little family I’d protect.
Ramon was gone.
And I felt the impact of loss as the news sliced my heart in half. Sorrow could fully come later. Regret and agony could braid in with it.
In this moment, though, I let the rage take over instead. Trembling and vibrating, I didn’t fight the wave of anger sweeping through me and superheating my veins.
“He came and took him away because he said he belongs to the Cartel,” she added between deep, labored breaths.
I should’ve been here. I should’ve been here to watch over both of them. If I had been, none of this would’ve happened. None of it.
I didn’t have the luxury of time to excuse myself. Sofia had come home early. Ramon had too, apparently. I hadn’t been informed of the changes, and since I thought I had a chance to investigate further in this crusade to learn more about my past, I had been driving around, looking for a goddamn needle in a haystack.
“I…” I staggered back, knowing better than to offer her comfort. She’d shied away from my touch, and while I hated that distance, while I was crestfallen from her rejection, I understood that she was burrowing in and hiding behind whatever walls she needed to throw up and erect against the horror of this freshest and worst trauma.
All I could offer her was justice. All I could give her was the ability to avenge Ramon and get him back.
I couldn’t be sure of what my affiliation was with the Cartel. That mystery loomed too large. But it didn’t matter if I was actually connected to them at all. I was coming for them. I was coming for Ramon. And no matter what I might have done to, with, or for the Cartel before the night I lost my identity, they would have to answer to my wrath for taking Ramon from Sofia. For ripping a son out of his mother’s arms.
If I was a bona fide enemy of the Cartel, then I would weave through and fight back against every single member until I retrieved Ramon and had him returned to his weeping, broken shell of a mother as she tried to live through the pain of her nightmare coming true.
I backed up, unsteady on my feet as I tore my gaze from her.
I wanted to comfort her. My heart ached to hold her, to appease her and just magically make everything better. But I couldn’t. The only thing I could do—that I had to do—was get her boy back.
I bumped into someone at the door, so in the zone at seeing my love in distress.
“Oh!” An older woman raised her brows at me, startled. Then she frowned as she heard the sounds of Sofia’s cries. “I thought I heard…”
“Vasquez?” I guessed, my tone hard. It had to be the old woman next door.
“Yes, I heard?—”
“Help her,” I ordered, placating myself with the minuscule comfort that I wasn’t actually abandoning Sofia like I'd promised not to. I wasn’t taking off and leaving her to suffer alone. This neighbor could help.
Because I would be back. I would return.
With Ramon.
I turned and ran out into the beginning streaks of rain, ready to hunt for the boy who never should’ve been captured.