12. Maricela
This week has only solidified my belief about the lack of need for power. Powerlessness is a strength and a virtue that humanity refuses to acknowledge.
When someone gives up force and control, he has nothing to fight against. A person who relinquishes all sense of power begins to live what life puts before them without trying to plan what will happen tomorrow.
Western culture makes it difficult to accept that nothing is under our control. The desire for success and a bright future with financial security has us chasing after a dollar bill made of twenty-five percent linen and seventy-five percent cotton. We plan for a family, a career, and fancy devices no one needs.
I gave up all the imaginary sinew I had in my life the second I returned to New York. And it makes him mad. Outrageously so.
The problem is that the changes in him are small yet meaningful, while mine are life-changing.
For example, he is bigger now and stronger. The other day, he came back drenched in sweat, each line on his body lethal, each vein throbbing with strength, of the most powerful man in the mafia alliance. A twenty-three-year-old man who took the biggest role in his world, what made him the god he always believed himself to be. But it’s not only the power and control he has now.
The man in front of me was always intelligent, but that, too, shifted and became fatal. Now, he lacks the recklessness he had. Each step moves with precision. A master in the game he created. His eyes, once full of void and with nothing to show, are more alive than ever, staring me down with each opportunity he has.
Meanwhile, I became less of all those things.
My frame is smaller, weaker, and thinner. The crazy girl who would have taken the children and run stays in place, tired and defeated. In my eyes, each time I wash my face, I see nothing of the fire that burned me from the inside.
My change happened partly by choice, but mostly by life and the people who took part in my story, but also by my personal struggles—struggles he can never know about.
“Maricela, are you not listening to me? I told you...”
Yes, he does that a lot. Speak to me, that is. He wants to know the truth.
A truth that ruined me and has the potential to do the same to him. I don’t care about him. Not anymore.
Or that’s what Ronen says I want to believe. Ronen says that I keep it to myself because I don’t want to be the cause of making him an irredeemable person.
He’s wrong. The man who became the entity before me is already beyond redemption. The Italian mafia’s capo, the deviant alliance’s head, can’t have anything good left inside him. Or that’s what I want to believe.
“This has to stop.” He sounds tired.
From what I’ve heard since returning, he must be. The Albanians and the Irish have been causing a lot of problems for the alliance for the last year, so when Killian isn’t here taking care of my dietary and hygiene needs, he’s out and about, probably killing people.
“I’ve been patient with you. I can understand you’re grieving. I can even understand your hate for me, but what I will not accept is your lack of cooperation.”
“I do what you ask of me.”
I really do.
I found a child psychologist and spoke to the new teacher for Connie. Taking care of Amado, I even thought about a daycare where Marlina and I could be with him if necessary.
I eat whatever he gives me. Hell, I even wash my body under his supervision. I don’t react to his provocations, and it drives him crazy.
“You do what’s needed, but you aren’t here. Where is the Maricela, I know?”
“She died.”
My intent isn’t to hurt him. I want him to understand that he doesn’t know the woman he thinks he got back. She doesn’t exist anymore.
“Because of the video? Did a lie from a cunt like Lila really have the power to break you?”
He comes closer, and I step back. I can’t let him near me.
“Partly,” I am not going to sugarcoat anything.
He had the power to break me, and he almost did. Scratch that. He did. Still, he wasn’t the one who broke every dream and goal I had for myself. Every secretive dream I harbored for us.
Secrets that I hid so deep under my untouchable don’t-fuck-with-me facade that even I refused to think about them or give them merit until it was too late.
“And I told you the truth.”
He did.
He told me about how his father had him by the balls, quite literally so. Maddox was in jail and under constant threat, Isabella was under his thumb, and Newt... I never saw that one coming. As for Raven... Fuck. Raven, my sweet, kind friend.
The old Maricela would have gone to the fourteenth floor and told her the whole truth, no matter how harsh it was.
This shuttered woman knows what a few words and actions can do to someone. So, I keep quiet like I do about everything else.
“You did,” I relent because he looks into my eyes.
His blues stare me down, looking into the depths of someone who has lost everything. His chiseled face is more handsome than ever, clean and ready for another day in his cruel world.
Shoulders broad and strong tower over me. Not knowing where to look, I stare into his eyes. I’m terrified that he’ll see the truth.
Julian saw. He asked me if it was Killian who hurt me. I learned that the actual word of the action that was done to me—rape—is too harsh to handle.
Julian saw my reactions and knew how to read them, but he couldn’t say the words. I couldn’t speak it out loud. Ronen did it for me. Unanimously, they think he should know the truth.
“And you still can’t forgive me. I get that.”
“I forgave you,” I argue, because I did. I understand where he came from. While I don’t particularly like being collateral damage, I do understand war. Victims are inevitable. And I was such a victim in his eyes.
“Then why are you like this?”
He’s so close to me, too close.
I can almost taste his skin on my tongue. The woman who wants out for some unknown reason begs me to go on my knees and find out if he tastes the same. If his stunning tattoos still feel the same.
Rough under the strokes of ink, hiding the atrocities done to him.
He doesn’t make it easy for me either. His shorts hang loose on his hips, and the buttons of his shirt are undone, showing what he hides under expensive suits.
“People change,” I reply.
“Now, if this conversation is over, I should take care of Amado’s bath.”
Again, I escape the conversation.
I do that a lot lately. Run. Not to a faraway country, not this time, but I do escape into my mind, letting my brain take me away.
His rough hand grabs mine, and all the brutal reactions I expect are not to be found. I don’t sweat, and I don’t shiver. I don’t pull away. His touch is familiar to my skin, and the fear that came in the first few days is gone.
He must see something in my eyes because he nods before he says, “Tomorrow, you start work.”
“Work?” It’s not like I specialize in drugs or the dealings of the mafia.
“You’re still there.” He chuckles, pinching my nose like he does to Connie, desperately needing to believe that the woman he knew is standing before him.
“I’m not going to give you weapons, and I will not send a pacifist like you to murder people. You’re coming to work in our law office. My secretary is already old, and I need someone to manage my schedule. Besides, you can’t stay idle.” And he can’t leave me alone because he doesn’t trust me.
“But who will stay with the children?”
“Connie is going to start kindergarten tomorrow, and the psychologist said that Amado should also be around other children. You trust Marlina. She can take care of them while you’re at work, and she can take Connie to school and the baby to his daycare when you can’t. Plus, they already know Marlina, and they’re fond of her.”
“But I can do that.”
“No. You need to rebuild yourself.”
Since when does he think like a mature human?
“And if I don’t want to?”
“Since when do I care about other people’s wants?”
Another lie. He does a lot of caring. Forgetting to take care of himself most of the time.
“You’ll do what I tell you because you’re in my territory. If you don’t want to think about yourself, think about the dependence the children develop by you being constantly by their side.”
I don’t argue because, this time, he’s right. I have noticed how Connie looks for me if I’m not in the room, and I know that Amado will start doing the same if I don’t give them the space they need.
When I arrived at this penthouse, I didn’t know what to expect. Perhaps a replica of the lifeless rooms and unnecessary grandiosity in the Fierro mansion.
Forty-three floors of the forty-five-story building belong to the alliance, and the top two floors belong to Killian.
Despite the size of the place and the extravagant wealth here, the drops of yellow and orange throughout the living room give the room a modern and warm feel.
The place is comfortable and family-friendly, and the children’s rooms are colorful and safe. Even though they both sleep in the same room with me right now because they refuse to leave me most of the time.
I was alone with him in the living room because Amado was sleeping, and Connie is at the child psychologist’s office. As he said, she was okay with Marlina taking her there.
Amado is waiting for me, standing on his feet while holding onto the bars of the crib. Every time he leaves the bars, he falls on his butt and babbles to himself.
His deep brown hair has grown to the point it’s in his eyes, almost the same eyes that meet me in the mirror. It’s funny how he looks just like Serena, but also like me. I hope the resemblance of her youngest to her hated sister didn’t hurt Serena too much.
“Who woke up?” I ask in a gentle voice with a smile on my face.
“Maricela, we’re not done talking.”
Killian enters the room with much less gentleness, causing the little boy who just woke up to cry.
“I didn’t mean to upset him.”
“It’s okay. I read it takes children longer to get used to men’s voices than women’s.” I speak calmly, smiling at the boy the whole time.
“When did you read that?”
“The internet is open to everyone. This isn’t North Korea, you know?”
The shock on his face means that I behaved differently, in a way that he didn’t expect me to act. I feel like I’m walking on eggshells. Each word is a weapon he might use against me.
“Anyway, we need to talk about the funeral. We’ve put it off for too long.”
“I don’t want them to be buried together.”
“Fine.” I thought he would argue with me about it.
In the mafia, it’s customary for the wife to be buried next to her husband as a sign of respect. However, what Santino did to her deserves nothing.
Serena may have hated me, but I never harbored such feelings toward her. I want her to have peace at death, a peace the Fernandez sisters weren’t allowed in life.
“After the funeral, you’ll start your life again,” he promises and leaves me be.
I wish it were that simple.
The funeral was prepared according to all my requirements, not that I had many. I asked that my sister be buried with the people she loved most, my parents. The same parents I didn’t get to love like she did.
A few select people came to my sister’s funeral. Maybe she would have wanted something splendid to show the woman she had become, but I didn’t know that woman.
The Serena I knew cared for me, loved me, and didn’t leave me bleeding on the floor after the wolf monster attacked me.
I didn’t attend Santino’s funeral, partly because I knew the wolf monster would be there. My nightmare. He’s back, from what Ronen told me.
I wonder if he knows of me being here. I have the power to ruin him. The man who ruined my soul is frail and about to perish. Any other person in my position would probably be happy about that. Sadly, I don’t know how to master such a feeling anymore.
“Aunt Fairy, Mommy isn’t going to be with Daddy, is she? If she’s here and he’s there, they can’t be together anymore. Right?”
My little angel needs to believe in the safety of her mother in death. I look at her tiny, perfect face.
Nothing of her mother, nothing of Santino.
It gives me hope. I don’t know if I believe in life after death or in Heaven, but that’s not what I say to a girl who so badly wants to hear that her mother will be free from her father.
“They can’t be together. Your mother will watch over you from Heaven and smile when she sees you growing and learning and doing new things.”
“And you’ll be with me?”
“Me and all your uncles and aunts.”
And that was that.