Julia #2
Antonio’s men watch in silence, poised to make a move if they have to, but clearly unwilling to do anything without his express permission. I can only imagine how bizarre this is to them, seeing the son of the man they’ve worked for over so many years turn against him like this.
But they haven’t seen the half of it yet.
“You’ve let her come between us,” Andreo corrects himself, his voice taking on a wheedling tone. Suddenly, he’s a spoiled child, talking to his father, trying to force his hand to get what he wants, just like he always has.
“She’s the one who caused all this mess,” he goes on, and the way he drops his voice, it’s as though he can tell that he’s getting under his father’s skin.
I look to Antonio, and find his face stony.
I can’t tell if he’s entirely unmoved by what his son is saying, or if it’s succeeding in reaching under his skin, and a cold grip of discomfort rises through me.
No. Please don’t listen to him. I part my lips, intending to speak, to plead my case, anything, but the words fail me as Andreo continues to speak.
“I know she’s pregnant,” Andreo continues, as he shoots another disgusted look toward me. “Got herself knocked up so you would have no choice but to keep her around, huh?”
“That’s not—”
He lifts a hand, silencing me, and I reel back, too frightened to argue with him.
I can’t help but feel that if I try to push on, I’m only going to make things worse.
Everything hangs in the balance right now, the threat of it all almost more than I can take, and I know I have to hold myself together somehow.
I have to play my cards right, or I might lose everything…
“I know what you are,” Andreo spits at me.
And gone is the man who insisted that he knew what was best for me, the man who told me that I would come around to be at his side soon enough, the man who told me that he would raise my child as his.
“You can end this now,” he tells his father, taking a step toward him, imploring.
Antonio doesn’t move, doesn’t speak. Neither Andreo nor I can tell what’s going on inside his head, but he hasn’t cut him off, hasn’t shut him down, and the thought of him considering any of this is enough to make me ill.
“Just turn that gun on her, and finish this,” Andreo says.
There it is. My knees tremble, and I draw back from Antonio, trying to get a better look at his face so I can figure out what’s going on under his skin.
He doesn’t move a muscle. Doesn’t have to.
He knows that he holds all the power here.
The choice, it seems, is between me and Andreo—his flesh and blood, and the potential of a future that he doesn’t even seem all that enamored with pursuing.
I already have a bad feeling about how this is going to go.
“Antonio, please, listen to me,” I plead with him, doing everything I can to reach him. His gaze locks onto mine for a moment, and I think I can see it, a flicker of light in his eyes. I reach for his hand, but Andreo moves between us, cutting us off before I can get any closer.
“You don’t get to play those cards again,” he sneers at me, looking me up and down.
“Whoring yourself out to my father because you thought it would get you what you want. Look at you. You agreed to marry me, and now you’re pregnant by him?
You can’t expect either of us to think for a second that you actually care. ”
I bite my lip hard. I do care.
Not about Andreo, of course not, not after everything he has done to me.
But I care about Antonio. I care about our child.
And I care about the possibility of our future together, no matter what it looks like.
A chance to give my child a better life than I ever had, the opportunities that I never did.
I doubt Andreo even remembers what I told him about my family over the years we were together, no doubt brushing it off as proof that I was truly as screwed-up and hopeless as he had imagined—as a tool he could use against me, information he could file away.
“I’m your flesh and fucking blood,” Andreo goes on, bumping his closed fist into his chest pointedly.
“And we can build an empire together. Now that I have Salamanca on side, there’s no threat against the business.
I worked with him till I got his trust, and now I have it—I can extend it to you too.
You really think she can offer you anything close to that?
” He waves a hand at me, like I’m nothing more than a distraction.
“You said you wanted me to have the business,” he goes on.
“Well, now, I’ve shown you that I can handle it. So…”
He moves to my side, as though forcing his father to compare the two of us. “Pull the trigger. Get this over with. Put her out of her misery.”
Antonio reaches for his gun, and the world tilts on its axis.
He can’t actually be listening to him, can he?
After everything we’ve shared? Those touches late at night, the kisses that are still burned into my memory, the child that hasn’t yet even taken their first breath?
It feels like some kind of nightmare, something that must be happening to someone else, but then Antonio raises the gun, and in my blurred vision, it looks as though he’s aiming it straight at me.
“That’s it,” Andreo crows, triumphant.
I can’t believe that this is it. That the last thing I’m going to hear is that bastard’s voice.
I close my eyes, unable to even look at the scene in front of me, and search my memory for something better than this.
If I’m going to—if this is it for me, then I don’t want to be here when it happens, I want to be somewhere else, I want to be as far from this nightmare as I can be.
I sift through my mind, but nothing comes to the surface that offers any kind of comfort.
My parents, screaming at me, my father’s raised fist—living on couches, then trapped in that apartment with Andreo.
My whole life, laid out in front of me, and all of it as useless and painful as the moment that stands ahead of me now.
I hear the gun cock. I know he won’t choose me over his own son. No matter what potential our future might have, the man standing before him now is fully formed, a grown adult, capable of actually handling this world and everything that comes with it.
Whereas I am nothing but a burden. Have been since the moment he put that ring on my finger. And the best I can hope for is that it’s quick.
I send a silent apology to my child, the one I never got to hold, and prepare myself for whatever comes next.
The gunshot rings out, my ears dampen with the sound, and I wait for the pain and the darkness to take hold.