25. Sofia
25
SOFIA
“ S ofia.”
It wasn’t him talking to me again.
Diego had gone.
Everyone was gone .
The scene of those men dragging Ramon kicking and screaming out the front door replayed in my mind.
Over and over and over.
Keeping my eyes closed left me seeing the full visual, the details of his distraught face, lined and red from screaming. The redness on his cheeks already wet from fallen tears. The flail of his arms and legs as he resisted being captured. But he was only a boy, a small child and unable to get free from the strong men.
If I wrenched my lids open and let the air sting my eyes, so irritated and raw from crying, I heard it in my mind. His wailing cries for me. The desperate demands and begs to release him. And the mournful sobs as he realized he had no power to break free.
“Sofia?”
I didn’t move, lying still and zoning out at the baseboard of the wall nearest to me.
I couldn’t do anything.
Sebastian swore it. He announced it like a decree no one could dare to overthrow.
I was powerless. Defeated.
And no longer willing to carry on.
My life, as I knew it, was over .
I’d lost the one thing I swore on my life to protect. I’d watched my most beloved child be cruelly taken from me. All because the nasty old drunk who’d forced me to take his wretched dick was a Cartel leader. A boss. An overlord. Someone who could swoop in and say that my son belonged with those cretins and assholes.
“Sofia!”
It wasn’t Diego’s stern and commanding voice steering me back to focus.
This was sharper. Somehow, with more authority of a different kind. A mom voice, used toward children prone to trying to talk back or get their way.
Se?ora Vasquez winced as she knelt and rolled me over to face her. Her bony fingers were icy, so frigid and thin to the touch. Like talons, she used them to clutch my arm and maneuver me to face her.
She’d put up with legions of kids, her own and those in the neighborhood, and no one could get away with not responding to her voice. Not even me. Regardless of my frozen state of numbness, traumatized in the worst way possible.
“Sofia?” Lines spanned like crevices on her old, wrinkly face. She peered down at me, not with concern, not with confusion, but the expectation for an answer.
“They… they took him.” It was a shock that I could even get that much out.
She nodded, sage and serious as she lowered my hand. My arm was stiff, locked into the position of holding my other wounded limb close to my chest. So overwhelmed by the pain in my heart and in my head, I had tuned out the piercing aches from where Sebastian had struck me after I kneed him in the balls.
“I told him they were watching. The Cartel is always watching. All of us.” She shook her head as she lowered my wounded arm. Following her motions, I shot upright and sat to cradle it again. I couldn’t extend it without gasping in pain.
“Broken,” she guessed.
No shit. Even that little bit of sarcasm I bit my tongue on didn’t come out. No wit. No jokes. Nothing.
I had nothing else in me but pain.
“I told him those men were watching. I’ve seen them showing up at the market more and more.”
I nodded as she urged me to sit up.
“They’re always there in the background, hawking over us all and looking for anything to exploit.”
She nudged a broken pot aside.
“But more and more,” she repeated, “ever since your new man was hanging around this place, they’ve been watching nonstop.”
I hadn’t noticed. I lowered my guard and trusted too much. I used to go to the market. I used to do the shopping and use those little excursions as ways to scope and keep track of my surroundings.
With Diego idle and available while I was at work, he’d taken over that role. He’d been going to the market.
I knew he was careful. He had an innate sense of stealth, of awareness and always observing what happened around him without making it obvious he was doing a patrol or surveillance. At first, he’d gone out to the market incognito. And still, he maintained a need to hide his face.
Yet, he attracted them closer to sniff around here.
“I can’t help with this,” she said in her scratchy, wise voice. A gentle tap of her fingertip emphasized what had to be a break in my arm. If not a full break, then a significant fracture.
“But I can help you up.” She groaned and grimaced, getting off her knees and rising to her feet. With one hand on the wall to brace herself, she lowered her free one for me to take. “I said up , Sofia.”
I sniffled, shaking my head. I saw no point in it. What difference did it make whether I sat on the floor or stood? What would change about the fact that Ramon had been taken if I was in the living room or the kitchen? The Cartel would still have my son and I would still have no hope to get him back.
“Up!” She ordered. Thrusting her hand in her face, she used the same tactic that Diego often did.
No coddling. No babying. Stern, authoritative orders to jar me into compliance. Otherwise, I would remain weak and locked in my mind while the ugly, horrendous emotions flogged me.
“Sofia. Get up . Now.” Once more, she pushed her hand into my face.
“There’s no point,” I said as I obeyed. Lifting my uninjured arm, I placed my hand in hers. She was so slight, so thin and frail, I almost tugged her down and sent her toppling atop me. She didn’t fall. She didn’t waver. Keeping her hand on the wall to brace herself, she aided me to stand.
My legs shook, but with her help and a firm glare on me, she walked me into the kitchen and let me lower to a chair.
Once I was in place, I zoned out, staring at the floor. I couldn’t do anything else. I just couldn’t. Shrinking into myself, the despair and grief choked me until I could barely draw in a full breath.
In the peripheral, she went to the fridge to open the freezer door. Clicks and cracks of ice cubes smacking together followed. Then still without another word, she spun to me with a bag of ice.
“There’s no point,” I told her again as she placed the bag on my arm. My arm didn’t matter. My pain wasn’t an issue.
The only thing that held significance in my life was the fact that Ramon was gone. They’d taken my son and I’d rather be dead. I didn’t want to exist in this world without my son. Not when he was still so young and had so much to live for. Not when he was yanked out of my arms so cruelly and taken to be held captive by thugs and mean bastards who played with torture.
“There’s no?—”
She gripped my chin, pinching it with her icy fingers and she furrowed her brow. Staring down at me in the chair, she shook her head. “Stop. That’s nonsense.”
“But he’s gone.”
“For now,” she argued. “I saw your man running out of here. I saw your hero rushing after him.”
An incredulous laugh left my lips. Diego had left me with a foolhardy promise to get Ramon back. But this was the Cartel . This was an army. A trained and corrupt and lethal organization of many who took pleasure in punishing and killing whichever civilian they wanted to.
He had skills. I could respect that. He had shown his ability to fight, and to fight well. He’d proven how he wanted to defend us, like he had in killing those druggies who had broken in.
But one man against the entire Cartel?
He wouldn’t live.
He wouldn’t win.
He couldn’t win against the Cartel.
No one man could.
Sticking to these facts, I accepted that I was well and truly alone. I was isolated and left behind. Without my son. Without the man I was beginning to see as my partner and other half.
They were both gone, lost to the Cartel.
Accepting those facts wasn’t easy. I swallowed them down like shards of glass, slicing my throat and stabbing my heart.
Coming to terms that this bleak loneliness would be my fate for the rest of my days, I once again wished that I didn’t have to, that I would rather be dead than suffer the worst pain imaginable.
“Ice it,” Se?ora Vasquez ordered, adjusting the bag of ice to rest on my arm.
There’s no point.
I lacked the willpower to find strength or energy. I couldn’t summon the concern about my own health or pain. The gnawing heartache ate at me from the inside out and I couldn’t stop it.
“You stay up, Sofia. Not down. You wait, not quit.”
I wasn’t quitting on them. I was merely accepting the reality that my son would never return or grow up to experience the brighter half of life. I was only submitting to the fact that Diego would never be my man.
Se?ora Vasquez straightened, frowning at me as someone called for her next door, a relative.
She sighed, staring at me with worry and annoyance, most likely peeved that I was still so sluggish and dismissive of her help. I didn’t want to anger her. I didn’t want to abuse her generosity and compassion. I just couldn’t react any further.
“I will be back to check on you,” she said, moving to leave without checking for my answer. “I will come back to help you find faith.”
It’s all lost.
“And to count on the trust you’d put in that man.”
Trust. Now that was an interesting word that had mostly fucked me over.
I’d vowed to never trust a man again, but I had. The night I caved to the need to care for a wounded stranger, I lowered my guard. At first, it hadn’t felt like it. Diego had been so vulnerable and weak, confused and recovering when I’d brought him here. He hadn’t seemed like a threat at first, knocked out so hard that he had amnesia.
But the longer I let him stay, the more I developed feelings that stretched far past a cordial and professional relationship I should have with a patient, and the more I craved his touch and the orgasms he knew how to deliver…
That was where I erred.
If I hadn’t been so busy falling into the fantasy of having a good man willing to protect me, maybe I could’ve avoided all of this.
I had only myself to blame. If I had been smart enough not to bring a stranger into my home and then fall in love with him, I would’ve been more on my guard. I would’ve been paying attention and focusing on protecting my precious son.
And now, I’d lost them both, one captured and the other foolishly thinking he had a chance to go after my worst enemy.
I was alone.
And I always would be.
Another fat, hot tear slipped from the corner of my eye as I drew in a shaky breath and wondered how I could ever have faith that things could get better, how I could trust anyone—including myself—ever again when I’d erred so grievously by letting Diego in at all.