Chapter 25
Lyse
My lungs refused to pull in oxygen. I leaned against the door and tried to force myself to take in as deep a breath as I could, but my diaphragm was trapped under the weight of my panic. We were past that, I thought. Right?
Omar had promised me that he took care of what belonged to him…but the look that I saw in his eyes before I ran from his office hadn’t been the man who’d shared his smiles and his bed with me. They couldn’t be the same person.
Except that I knew they were. I’d known that all along: Omar wasn’t called La Bestia out of some misunderstanding or exaggeration. He was capable of carnage, and he’d proven that true again and again.
I shivered and swiped at the tears running down my face.
I’d heard Helena out in the hallway and their retreating footsteps.
It was a good thing: I couldn’t be trapped in this room again.
I’d lose my mind first. Turning around, I grabbed the doorknob, and for a moment, I felt a real fear that he’d locked it without my noticing.
But the door opened without an issue, and I was able to step out into the empty hallway.
I felt like I was right back where I started, scampering around half-afraid that Omar would jump out and grab me.
Squaring my shoulders, I trekked downstairs and found Helena in the kitchen, eating one of the cachitos that we made.
“Come sit,” she called as soon as she saw me.
“Omar isn’t here?”
“He’s been sent to clean his office, and then he’s to be outdoors until at least lunch.”
I let out a relieved sigh, and I accepted it when she handed me one of the pastries. It was flaky and smelled delicious; it was something that I might have made with Madre when I was very young, before my “duty” became my entire life.
“You don’t have to forgive him,” Helena said after the silence had stretched between us for way too long.
“But?”
The older woman gave me a tired smile. She reached over and patted my cheek, affectionate to a fault.
Why couldn’t you have been my mother? Helena hadn’t told me if she was married or had children, but if she didn’t have any, it was a shame.
“But that’s not who he is, you know? He’s always run a little hotter than most, yes, but he’s the most loyal person you’ll ever know. ”
“Loyal to his family,” I pointed out. “Which I’m not.”
Helena shook her head. “No, you’re not family in the way that you’re related by blood, but you have to know that he cares for you.”
I shrugged. I thought that he might, but that cold, angry stare told me that I was still the enemy, and I knew what Omar did to his enemies. “I’ll never be a Castillo.”
Helena hummed softly. “That’s not a bad thing, mi amor,” she said.
“Omar deserves to have something kind in his life, something that doesn’t demand he be a monster.
” But he is a monster. I didn’t have to say it because Helena’s sad sigh told me that she already knew what I was thinking.
“Did you know that Omar killed a man for the first time at thirteen?”
I couldn’t bite back my gasp. Even Apá had waited until Matteo was twenty before he ever held a gun on someone. “Why so young?”
“Gustavo wanted his sons to be tough,” Helena said.
“Angel was his heir: he had to be ruthless, yes, but smart and charming too. Omar, on the other hand, had to be terrifying. What’s more terrifying than a cold-blooded killer?
” Her expression became even more sad. “When the opportunity arose, Gustavo put the gun in Omar’s hand and told him to shoot, and because he didn’t want to disappoint his father, he did.
” She shrugged, and it was a movement that could have meant anything. “He’s been that way ever since.”
My mind tried to wrap itself around the idea of a pre-pubescent Omar executing someone on his father’s orders, and the concept was so wholly awful that I couldn’t picture it.
What father did that to his own son? Apá might be training Matteo to do the same thing, but at least he’d waited until Matteo was a man before starting that training.
“Do you think…” I swallowed hard. “Do you think someone who grew up that way could ever truly love someone else? Or are they irreparably broken?”
Helena was quiet for a long while. She took a bite of her pastry and chewed it slowly: I appreciated that she was thinking about my question.
I appreciated that the older woman didn’t pull punches, nor did she placate.
She meant what she said. “I think whoever manages to win Omar’s heart will be truly blessed.
That person will never have to worry about betrayal: Omar would rather cut off one of his own limbs than hurt the ones he loves. ”
But he had hurt me, and he scared me, and I never knew who I was going to end up with day to day, and I didn’t think that I could handle that. “It can’t work between us.”
“Anything can work if you want it to.” That didn’t ring true at all. “Just…give him a little time, and I’ll bet he’ll come looking for you.”
I shivered at that thought. “What if I don’t want him to find me?”
Helena stared at me for a long while. “Then that’s for you to figure out.”
After helping Helena with the dishes, I thought of going up to my studio, but I couldn’t make myself climb the stairs. Instead, I wandered out the front door and down onto the beach. I hadn’t spent much time out here since Omar’s boat crashed into the dock.
Efrain and Pascal had mostly rebuilt it: it wasn’t nearly as pretty, but it was functional, and there was another boat that had been placed in the water. Ready and waiting for whenever Omar decided to return to Miami.
My chest throbbed at the thought of him leaving, and I sank down into the sand, my mind a jumble of thoughts. I didn’t want him to find me. I didn't particularly want to look at him. At the same time, I couldn’t bear the thought of him leaving me here.
For the first time since leaving that locked room, I felt trapped.
The island was just big enough to fool me into thinking that I had freedom.
There was no one watching my every move, it was true, but then again, there was nowhere for me to go.
The house had a window that looked out at every bit of the island, and even if it was a two mile walk all the way around, it was still small.
With a vast sea on every side that made it impossible for someone who couldn’t swim to leave.
I felt like laughing and crying all at once: I’d gotten the freedom from my family that I’d always wanted, only to be trapped with a beast who might or might not turn on me one day. It was insane. What was I going to do?
“Lyse!”
I cringed. Helena said he’d come looking for me, I thought. But when I turned my head to look for Omar, I saw a small, rubber dinghy being pulled up on the island by my cousin, Jesus. I blinked. It had to be a mirage. What in the world was he doing here?
He started running toward me. “Lyse! Prima, it is good to see you!”
I stood, and he swept me into a hug that was just this side of too-tight.
Jesus and I weren’t particularly close; I couldn’t remember off the top of my head what the last conversation we had was about.
But I hugged him back; he was the first family member that I’d seen in weeks.
“How did you get here?” I asked. “How are Matteo and Apá?”
Jesus smiled. I’d always liked his smiles: his mouth split wide, and he looked so genuinely happy. “They’re fine,” he said. “They’re working on a plan to wipe out the Castillos once and for all.”
My heart stuttered. “Wipe them out? Isn’t that what got us in this mess in the first place?”
Jesus took hold of my wrist and began to tug me down the beach, toward the boat.
I dug my heels in a little to slow us down.
I don’t want to go with him. “La Bestia took out too many of us. Your Apá can’t ignore it; he’ll lose face!
” He looked at me, and his smile was hysterical now, his eyes wide and wild.
“You don’t want your father to look cowardly, do you? ”
“Well, no, of course not.” I dug my heels in a little more. “How did you find me? Exactly?” Omar telling me that my father had left me for dead came to mind. That, coupled with Jesus’s weird, manic smile, sent ice through my veins.
“Javier never checked in like he was supposed to,” Jesus said, “so we checked for his last location. It was fairly easy to spot the island after that…and here you were, already on the beach, ready to be rescued.” He cocked an eyebrow. “How are you just…outside like this?”
“Where else was I going to go?” I countered.
Jesus nodded. “Well, you’ve made it extremely easy for me, so thank you.” He started tugging me again. “Let’s go, Lyse. Your father wants to see you, and so does Matteo.”
“Apá told Omar to do what he wanted with me,” I argued, fighting back. Was I absolutely crazy? This was my cousin; the man had literally no reason to hurt me, but the closer I got to the rubber dinghy, the more I dug in my feet and leaned my weight on my heels.
Jesus stopped and turned. His face was cold now, like a light had gone off, and all the emotion had leached from his expression. “Stupid puta,” he snarled and backhanded me. I hit the sand with a thud.
Pain erupted in my cheek, and my hand automatically reached for my face. It was wet: he’d broken skin. If Omar sees this, he’ll die. The thought was an oddly calming one. “Apá sent you after me? To kill me?”
Jesus sneered. “I’m cleaning up the mess,” he said.
Reaching behind him, he pulled a handgun out of a holster in the small of his back.
He held it up and showed it to me, taunting me by waving it around.
“I was supposed to take you back to Miami and dump you somewhere in their territory that was just public enough that it would be easy to find you. Felix would help pin it on the Castillos, and that cabrón Angel would be carted off for good.”
I wanted to scream, to wave in the direction of the house, but if I did that, I was as good as dead.
I could only hope that someone could see what was going on.
“My father is going to start a war. The police aren’t going to cart Angel Castillo off over one dead girl, not when his brother got away with killing twenty.
Apá isn’t thinking…why do any of you listen to him? ”
“You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.” He clicked the safety off the gun. “But it doesn’t matter. Killing you here shouldn’t derail anything too badly if I bloody you up enough once I get back.”
He pointed the gun at my forehead. My chest went tight as fear bled through me, but instead of begging for my life, only one thought came to mind:
I didn’t get to tell Omar that I loved him.