Chapter 28
Kairo~
With no choice but to go to work in a flimsy attempt to keep me grounded, I was sitting at my workstation, hiding in my office not an option. Taking Monday off had put me behind more than I’d been expecting, but in hindsight, that was a good thing since I needed the distraction.
After leaving my father’s house the other day, with no other options, I had done as he’d suggested, reaching out to Sonia for some help.
However, all that’d gotten me was an ass ripping that I was never going to recover from.
Even if Triana ever found it in her heart to forgive me, Sonia would hate me forever, and that was a tough thing to navigate.
Best friends were guaranteed to be in the wedding, brides and grooms not so much.
As for reaching out to her brother, I had decided against it.
Knowing everything that I knew about Sonia, I wasn’t worried that she might call the police on me or anything like that.
After all, she couldn’t do it without getting Triana arrested as well, so it’d been easier to reach out to her versus Tomasco Medina.
All I knew about him was that he was fiercely loyal, but being a man, I could see him calling for my head, and I could hardly blame him if he did.
“Kairo?”
I turned to see Dr. Alimeda standing in the doorway, her head barely peeking inside. “Yeah?”
“Your father’s here, and he’s waiting in your office,” she announced, and she didn’t have to say anything else for me to know that he wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t important. My father was big on respecting our careers, so it wasn’t often that he just showed up like this.
“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll go see what he wants.”
After putting everything away responsibly, I walked out of the lab, then towards my office, and sure enough, my father was waiting for me inside, and my stomach sank a bit at the sight of him.
“What are you doing here?” I asked as I hung my lab coat on the coat rack before heading towards my desk.
Getting straight to the point, he said, “All the Administrators got a courtesy call from Benicio Cortez to let us know that they’ll be airing a news segment about Mexico arresting a young woman for trying to cross into their country.”
“No,” I said, denial hitting me swiftly. “It can’t be her.”
“It is,” he said, not pussyfooting around. “He named Triana specifically, Kairo.”
Blood began rushing through my ears, and all I could picture was Triana sitting in a Mexican jail cell, and I could feel myself getting sick. Unlike America, she had no Constitutional rights there. In their eyes, she was a criminal and was owed nothing.
“What else did he say?” I asked once I accepted reality.
“Mexico won’t release her,” he answered, stealing the air from my lungs. “She has no political influence, so she doesn’t warrant any bargaining efforts.”
“When is he...when is the story going to break?”
“It’ll go public in about an hour,” he warned, and while there’d be no coming back from this once it became public, there was still a positive in all this.
After the new movement had finally taken shape, all governing parties had agreed to outlaw opinion pieces that had masqueraded as news.
Slanted propaganda was no longer aired to the masses as facts of news, and anyone caught doing so faced a hefty fine and/or imprisonment.
Now, while freedom of speech was still a very valued Constitutional right, opinions couldn’t be delivered as facts to the people of our country, and that made all the difference.
After wading the dirty waters of internet nonsense and conspiracy theories, facts were the only thing that news outlets were allowed to report, and in my opinion, that was a good thing.
“So, she’s going to spend the rest of her life in a Mexican prison versus an American one,” I scoffed humorlessly. “That’s comforting.”
“Kairo, I’m sorry,” he said, but all that did was piss me off further.
“Sorry for what?” I asked, my emotions hitting me hard. “What’s there to be sorry for? According to you, she’s a grown adult who made her own choices, so what are you sorry about, Dad? She got what she deserved, and since she’s no more special than anyone else, she needs to pay her dues, right?”
“I’m sorry that you got hurt by all of this,” he clarified, and I had to give him credit for keeping it real. “I’m sorry that you’re having to go through something this...this big.”
Suddenly, my eyes were wide open, and I didn’t like it.
Triana had spoken about not being free, and she’d never been so right.
Right now, it was everything that I could do not to lose my shit, but that’s because I wasn’t allowed to.
I wasn’t allowed to rage or curse the situation because I didn’t have the right or the freedom to do that.
If I lost my shit in public, then I’d be announcing to the world why I cared so much, and while my father was fine with Triana paying the consequences for her actions, he didn’t exactly feel the same way about me.
“Is that all?”
“Kairo, listen to me-”
“Listen to what?” I snapped. “What more is there to say, Dad? Triana got caught crossing the border, she’s been arrested and will spend the rest of her life in prison, and Administrator Cortez will be announcing it to everyone within the hour. What else is there to say?”
I watched him let out a heavy sigh as he slid his hands in his pockets. “Kairo, if they let her go, then it opens up an ugly can of worms that we’ve worked too hard to keep a lid on. I hope you can see that one day.”
“You want to know what I see?” I bit out.
“I see that, for all of my money, education, and upbringing, I’m lacking the only thing that matters in a person’s character, and that’s integrity.
I’ve absolutely no integrity, and if you think that time will erase that glaring fact, you’re wrong.
I’m going to lay my head down every night wondering what they’re doing to her, and if I’m lucky, I won’t put a bullet in my brain a year from now. ”
“Don’t talk like that,” he snapped. “I mean it, Kairo. I understand that you’re upset, but that is not something to remark on lightly.”
“You have two other sons, you’ll be just fine, Dad,” I replied ruthlessly. “Now, if there’s nothing else, I need to get back to work.”
“Kairo, this is bigger than just the love story between you and Triana,” he said, trying to reason with me again. “You have to be able to see that.”
“Oh, I see it,” I assured him. “I see it, I understand it, and I can even accept it. Still, that doesn’t change anything. I will forever be the guy that...you know, what? Never mind, just...I need to get back to work.”
“You’re a good man, Kairo-”
“And that’s where you’re wrong, Dad,” I argued.
“I’m not a man at all. A man wouldn’t do what I did, and he sure as fuck wouldn’t have done it to the woman that he claims to love.
No...I’m a coward, that’s what I am. A coward who enjoyed the perks of his life too much to take a chance on anything else. ”
“You took a huge risk when you crossed that creek the first time, Kairo,” he said. “Don’t forget that.”
“Which only makes things worse, if you ask me,” I retorted. “I was willing to take a risk as long as it wasn’t too big of a risk. As long as it didn’t cost me too much, then I was all in.”
“You’re being too hard on yourself, son,” he sighed.
“Right now, while you’re telling me that I’m being too hard on myself, jail guards could be dragging Triana out of her cell to do the most unspeakable things to her, but I shouldn’t be too hard on myself because it’s not a good look,” I said, and I could see it finally registering that he wasn’t going to get anywhere with me right now.
“I’ll come by when you get off work, so that we can talk some more,” he said, and I recognized his tone well enough to hear the demand in it.
I didn’t say anything as he left my office, and like a glutton for punishment, I didn’t return to the lab until after the news announcement had been made, and when I watched the footage of Triana being led to one of the many holding cell buildings that lined the border, I had to pull my trashcan from underneath my desk, everything that I’d eaten in the past couple of days spewing forward.
This was real.
Triana was in jail.
She was in jail in another country, and there was nothing that I could do about it.
Yeah, I could make a public plea and confess everything, but that still wouldn’t make Mexico obligated to send her back to me.
Right now, Mexico had the upper hand, and I had no idea how I was expected to exist after this.
Triana was only twenty-four, and the thought of her spending the next fifty years of her life in that hell was enough to cut me off at the knees.
She was in jail because of me.
She was in jail because of me, yet my father didn’t want me to be too hard on myself.