Chapter 27
Angel
“Let’s have Lara fix an early supper tonight,” Padre said as we came through the garage into the house.
He hadn’t said a word since we left the hospital with the envelope of his latest scans and his oncologist’s formal recommendations, which matched the verbal ones he gave us not too long ago: there was nothing to be done.
The cancer was quick and aggressive, and the treatment was only making him feel worse.
I was surprised when he didn’t mention the folder as we left; he didn’t make me get rid of it like the last time.
“I’m not hungry, Padre.”
My father gave me a flat look. “Dinner, mijo,” he said. “We need to talk.”
I sighed and agreed. “Sí, Padre. I’ll go and speak with Lara. Any requests?”
His face, sallow and thinning, turned even grayer. “Something bland,” he said, “but tell her whatever it is, I want fried plantains.”
I nodded again, and I went to the kitchen to speak with Lara and relay my father’s requests. “Padre would like something simple tonight. Maybe chicken and rice? With fried plantains.”
Lara didn’t bother looking at me. “Sí, jefe,” she said.
“Lara.”
The older woman refused to look at me. “She’s miserable,” she said. “You’ve made her miserable…just like your father made your mother.”
Her words were a punch to the gut. I thought about Emma’s eyes after I pulled away from her, how the light had dimmed in them. The sobs that followed me down the hallway had been worse than when I initially locked her in.
But, still, we’d come to the same conclusion in that room: we didn’t trust one another.
“I can’t trust her,” I said. “Not now.”
Lara’s shoulders slumped. “If you can’t trust your wife, who can you trust?”
It was on the tip of my tongue to say that I trusted my family, but that wasn’t the entire truth.
I trusted Omar and Liliana; I trusted Manny.
But on the whole? My family, on the whole, would rather see me dead than take Padre’s place.
“Keep the spices to a minimum,” I said, ignoring her question entirely. “Padre…isn’t feeling well.”
“He’s dying,” Lara said, crossing to open the refrigerator. “Dying is not a comfortable process.”
I watched her unload chicken from the fridge; it was a whole hen that she would break down.
I’d asked her when I was younger why she didn’t just get the pre-cut, packaged chicken when she went on her grocery runs, and she’d scoffed at the very idea.
She didn’t like taking what she saw as the easy way out.
“How did you know?” I asked, and out of everything, that was what got her to finally look at me. It was the same look she’d give me as a kid when she thought I’d said or done something utterly stupid.
“The man is turning more yellow every day,” she said. “Everyone knows; everyone sees, but no one will say anything to him. We know that the jefe has his pride, and we wouldn’t take it from him.”
We locked eyes for a moment, and I gave her a grateful nod. “Thank you,” I said.
Lara sighed. “You can thank me by bringing Emma to the dining room tonight,” she said. “That would be thanks enough.”
I shook my head. “No,” I said. “Not…not tonight.”
She peeked at me. “Soon?”
“Maybe,” I said. “We’ll see.”
Lara’s mouth fluttered in an almost-smile. “Tell your father that dinner will be ready in an hour.”
“Gracias,” I said.
True to her word, Lara had the table set within the hour.
She’d prepared moro de maíz with chicken and a batch of plantains, just as requested.
It smelled lovely. She stayed long enough to pile Padre’s plate with food and set it before him.
She eyed me, wary, but I waved her off. “Go, Lara,” I said. “I can serve myself.”
I could tell that she was attempting to not roll her eyes at me as she left. “You let her get away with too much,” my father said as he took a small bite of his rice. “She doesn’t respect you.”
She respects us both far too much, I thought but, wisely, kept to myself.
“She’s been loyal to our family for years,” I said.
“She deserves to be critical.” Padre made a noise of derision, but he kept whatever thought came to mind to himself.
Instead, he reached for the plate of plantains, and I noticed his wince.
“Padre, are you okay? Do you need your pain medication?”
My father snatched the edge of the plate and yanked it toward him. “I’m not an invalid,” he said and sounded so remarkably childish that I almost laughed. “I’m not dead yet, mijo.” He picked up a spoon and looked at his tiny, upside-down reflection. “Even if I’m starting to look it.”
He wanted me to assure him that he didn’t look like a corpse, but I wasn’t feeling charitable, so I lifted my wine glass instead. It was dark and dry, my favorite from the wine cellar: Lara was a softie at heart. She could never be mad at me for too long.
“Angel!” Lili came sprinting into the dining room; her eyes were wide and shocky. I could see the tremble in her hands. “Angel, David is —” David was on security for Emma; I had passed him when I stalked out of her room earlier. I clenched my fists around the cutlery in my hands.
“Liliana,” Padre cut her off, startling her. She turned her wide eyes to him, as if she only just registered that he was seated at the table as well. “It’s rude to interrupt when others are eating.”
“I’m…I’m sorry, Padre,” she said. “But I need to —”
“Get a plate, mija,” he said, cutting her off again. “Lara made plenty of plantains, and I know you like them as much as I do.”
Lili shook her head, eyes sliding back to me. She didn’t know how to cut him off without being rude; I was the only one who could get away with it. “Lili, what’s going on? What’s wrong with David?” I asked, and I could see her visibly shudder before answering me.
“David is dead.”
“Dead?” I stood. “Where? How?”
“There’s blood everywhere, Angel, I don’t know exactly how,” she said. “Emma is missing from her room.”
“Did your wife kill your cousin, mijo?”
Lili couldn’t fight back the sarcasm. “With what? Everything in that room that could be a weapon is nailed down. She didn’t break out of her room; the door was open like someone had the pin.”
I jumped up. “I’ll check the cameras; we’ll see —”
“Why bother?” Padre asked loudly, talking over me. “Now that that bitch and her brat are gone, we can get back to our lives. This is a blessing in disguise, trust me.”
I felt like I had been dunked in ice water. I looked at my father. “Padre?”
The man shoveled another bite of rice into his mouth. “What? Did you think that I wouldn’t find out about the pregnancy? People talk, mijo.”
No one would talk about this; I had made sure of that with David. “You have my office bugged, don’t you?”
“I’m your father,” he said instead of answering. “I need to know these things.”
Regardless of what he “needed to know,” his nonchalance was deafening. “What did you do with my wife?” I demanded. Padre continued to eat and didn’t say anything. “Are you really going to do this? Sit there like a child and refuse to speak?”
“Watch your tone,” he growled at me. I reached behind and pulled my 9mm out of the holster at the small of my back and aimed it at him.
Lili screamed my name, but my father didn’t flinch.
Instead, he stared at me like I was a teenager having a tantrum.
“Put that ridiculous thing away,” he said. “You’re not going to shoot me.”
I clicked off the safety. “It would be an honor to watch you die,” I said.
“Angel, stop,” Lili begged, and I could hear the tears in her voice, but I didn’t look away from my father.
“Tell me where Emma is.” My finger touched the trigger, and then a big hand was wrapping around mine.
“What the hell are you doing?” Omar shouted, trying to disarm me, but I held on.
“He’s trying to assassinate me, mijo,” Padre said in a banal tone, as if he were totally bored with the situation. “Lock him up for me. We’ll handle Angel’s punishment after dinner, yes?”
Omar, who never hesitated to follow our father’s orders before, froze. “Angel?”
That rattled my father. He stood. “What are you questioning him for?” he demanded. “I told you to take him away.”
“Emma is gone, and David is dead,” I said. “He has something to do with it.”
After only a second, Omar let me go, and I trained my weapon back on my father. “She’s pregnant with your grandchild,” my brother said. “What have you done?”
I ground my molars together. If I didn’t need him to find Emma, I would put a bullet right between —
“Angel? Are you okay?”
If she was wearing her St. Christopher’s medal, I wouldn’t need my father. I handed the gun to Lili. “Keep that on him, understand?” I asked and dug my phone out of my pocket. “If he moves, kill him.”
Lili’s lip was quivering, but her aim was solid. “Go,” she said. “I can babysit.”
I didn’t expect Omar to follow me, but I was glad for his presence at my back. “Check the cameras,” he said as we passed through my office door. The program was still open, but when I backed it up to an hour ago, the cameras cut out.
Swearing, I opened up the tracking program that I’d paid someone much smarter than me to create and then attach the tracker to the St. Christopher’s medal. It was tiny and seamless and waterproof. As long as it was still around her neck, I could find her.
“She’s alive,” Omar said in an attempt to reassure me.
“We don’t know exactly when she was taken. He could be dumping her body at this point,” I pointed out, and my stomach dropped into my knees when I saw where the tracker pinged the medal. Everglades National Park. Fuck.
I hadn’t felt fear in years. Not since I stared into a man’s eyes for the first time and blew his brains out the back of his head.
Not since Padre stomped on me so badly I thought I might actually die.
But staring at that little dot in the middle of nowhere, I felt a sticky cold wash over me.
It wasn’t the cold place that I could go, and my head would be clear.
This was cloying and clutching at my throat.
“Let’s go,” Omar said. “She’s been doing self-defense with Lili. She can survive until we get there.”
But she didn’t know that we would come. How would she know to hold on until then? “He’s going to die either way, you know that, right?” I asked my brother.
Omar nodded. “You pulled a gun on him,” he said. “There’s only two ways that’s going to end.” He put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “I’m with you, brother.”
“If Emma dies, he and whoever helped him will go slowly and painfully, and they will wish for death long before I give it to them.”
No, I thought, even if she’s alive, they’ll still die. There would be no mercy from me.