31. Amalia
My mind is a puzzle that keeps spinning, trying to make sense of everything that’s happened over the last few hours.
I don’t know how long we’ve been driving until I hear Lupe.
“Alek, where are we going?”
I feel her gaze on me, but I don’t have the strength to meet it.
I want to go home.
I want quiet.
I want to talk to him.
Even if he’s a traitor.
A liar.
I was willing to put my degree on the line, to put distance between myself and my own family, just so his reputation would stay intact.
And for what?
For a man who is, at this very moment, with his wife and child, enjoying his life and laughing to himself at the fool waiting for him back in Ciudad de México.
How could you be so naive, Amalia?
Alek says something back to her, but I don’t catch a single word, too consumed by my own thoughts.
Suddenly, Lupe lets out a sound of shock, and I look over at her.
“?Qué es eso?”
In Lupe’s hands are several photographs of a woman who looks familiar. I lean closer, and it takes my tired brain way too many seconds to realize that the woman with the honey eyes, dressed in combat gear, is Julia. Our sister.
“Is that Julia?” I ask, and now I look at Aleksandr, whose face, I could swear, looks pleased.
What the hell is going on?
“Creo que sí,” my twin answers. “Where did you get these pictures?” Her gaze shifts to her boyfriend.
Without the slightest sign that he cares that he’s just turned our world upside down, he straightens in his seat.
“I told you I had dangerous people on my tail. These are those people. I barely got out of Russia alive. They run a human-trafficking ring there. Little children, rybka.”
“You’re lying!” I shout at him. “Our sister would never do anything like that.”
“Look at the pictures, Amalia,” he says, emphasizing my name. “One image is worth a thousand words.”
I take several of the photos in my hands and scan them, feeling my already-rattled soul shatter into pieces with every glance.
Children climbing out of trucks, tied with rope, shoved forward or held at gunpoint.
And in every single one of these pictures, Julia stands still…without moving, without a flicker of emotion on her face.
What happened to you, Julia, that you’d allow something like this?
My older sister was the most caring person I knew. I refuse to believe there’s any universe in which she would allow this.
“When I met you, Lupe, I didn’t know you were tied to the woman who destroyed me. She slithered her way under my cousin’s skin, the one who runs this entire trafficking ring, and turned him against me,” Aleksandr says, and his voice scrapes through my skull like nails on a chalkboard.
“Why would she do that?” I ask, my anger rising.
Julia would never take part in something like this. Julia wouldn’t stay away from us for thirteen years just to be part of a human-trafficking ring.
Something about this story doesn’t add up, and I hate watching the doubt creep into Lupe’s eyes.
“Because I refused to take part in their operation. My uncle disinherited me, and after years of work, I was left with nothing. All because of them. Because they conspired against me. I can’t go back to Russia, rybka. I can’t go home. The order’s already been given. I’m dead the second I land.”
I reach between the seats to squeeze my sister’s hand, trying to signal to her that something isn’t right.
Yes, I see the pictures, but there’s an explanation. There has to be an explanation.
Why hasn’t he told us any of this until now?
“Swear to me you’re not lying. Swear to me they’re threatening your life,” Lupe says firmly.
Without hesitation, without taking his eyes off Lupe, he answers.
“I swear they want me dead, rybka. In fact, if you want, I can show you the spot where your sister shot me. I almost didn’t make it, but I got lucky with Pavel, my right hand. He called for medical help fast.”
And for the first time, it doesn’t feel like he’s hiding something. I actually believe they want him dead, and some of the fire from earlier dims.
What have you done, Julia?
I pick up a picture of her and study her features, hardened by the passing years and by something I can’t quite put a name to. Like a weight that settled into her soul and now reflects in her eyes.
For the love of Thales, what kind of day is this?
It feels like I’ve stumbled into a nightmare where every door I open leads to a version worse than the last.
We pull up to a colonial house on the outskirts of the city and get out. Alek and Lupe stand by the car, deep in conversation.
A conversation that ends with my sister nodding at whatever her boyfriend has said to her.
I still get a bad feeling when I look at this man.
He carries a black aura.
“Lupe, no me gusta,” I tell her once we’re alone.
“Me neither.”
She walks into the living room, where every piece of furniture is draped in a white sheet, and I run my palms up and down my forearms, trying to settle the unease drumming inside my chest.
Alek is talking with a man who I think he called Pavel in a corner, and I find myself staring out the window at how many men are patrolling the property.
“Why are there so many men with guns out in the yard?” I ask Alek, and I can tell I’ve hit a nerve.
“Because I’m not going to risk being shot in the back again, Amalia.”
At least he sounds sincere this time.
I turn back to the window, where I watch a car pull up and more men climb out, fully armed, weapons in plain view.
“?Ay, Diosito!” slips out before I can stop it, and Alek is at my side in an instant.
The sound of gunfire starts cracking from outside, mixed with the shouts of men scrambling to mobilize.
“Alek? What the hell is happening?” my twin asks, though I think it’s painfully obvious.
“They found us, dammit! How the hell did they find us this fast?”
Alek crosses to Lupe and grips her by the shoulders, and it’s strange to see this arrogant man so visibly afraid of something — or someone.
“We have to leave. My men will hold them off. If we’re going to take this chance, it has to be now.”
Leave?
We just got here.
My whole body feels bruised, and there’s still something about him, something whispering that I do not want to remain anywhere near this man.
“Isn’t there any other way?”
Before he can answer, Julia steps in from the hallway. Behind her enters a tall man with eyes like glaciers in the middle of a storm, a leather jacket, and faint scars threading the side of his face.
I feel like my heart might burst out of joy at the sight of my older sister, alive and standing in front of me. It’s been thirteen years since I last saw her eyes. Since I last heard her voice. Since I last held her.
Alek’s soldier raises a gun, and I find myself taking a step toward Julia.
“See! I told you they’d never let us be together! They both hate me!” Alek shouts, but my mind can barely process the fact that I’m looking at her.
“Julia?” I ask, my voice trembling on the last syllable.
She has the same warm, honey-colored eyes that watched me every time I rattled off the calculations I’d just memorized. The same eyes that let me stay up another ten minutes for cartoons. The same eyes that carried us to safety on that wretched night.
“Let them go, Aleksandr,” the man with the scars says.
“Let them go?” Alek answers with a laugh. “I’m not keeping them here by force. They came with me willingly.”
Our older sister searches our faces for an answer, and that’s the moment I realize she has no idea about our connection to Alek.
“Aleksandr is Lupe’s boyfriend. They’re in love,” I whisper.
I see the way she stiffens, and something tells me that was the very last answer she expected.
You don’t need to be a genius to understand that everything our older sister feels for Aleksandr Rastovski is hatred. Disgust.
“Please, you need to come with me. ?Ahora!” Julia says, urgency cutting through her tone.
Outside, bullets thud against the walls of the house and the soldiers’ shouts climb higher.
I know my decision before it’s even fully formed in my mind.
Between the person who, for as long as I can remember, has only ever wanted what was best for us and this stranger who has always had a giant question mark hovering over him, the choice is simple.
I step toward Julia, feeling Lupe’s gaze burn against my cheek.
“Amalia…,” my twin whispers, and I know that, in this second, she’s begging me not to do this.
To stay with her. To trust her and Alek. But I can’t.
I let my feelings cloud my reasoning once already, and at the end of it I was left with a heart in pieces.
This time, my mind speaks first. And it tells me that, somewhere behind those photographs, there is an explanation.
I turn back to my twin and try to pour everything that matters into a single look.
“It’s Julia, Lupe! Julia, who got us out of that house when those men came for Dad. Julia, who washed us, who made bubble baths, who sang every Patito Feo song with you in front of the TV.”
I can see every word lodge itself like a knife into her chest. I understand she’s in love. I understand what it’s like to see pink clouds when you’re looking at the man who scrambles your reasoning, but for far too long, this man has hidden the fact that he knew our sister.
Because I don’t believe in coincidences.
Of all the women in Ciudad de México, he just happened to get close to Lupe.
The sister of the very woman he so plainly hates. The woman who makes him feel he needs an army of soldiers around him just to stay alive.
“Where have you been all this time?” Lupe asks Julia, and I watch our older sister struggling to put an answer together, an explanation. But in the end, it’s the man standing behind her who responds.
“She’ll explain everything once we’re out of here.”
I take two more steps toward them. Julia opens her mouth, reaching for our better judgment, but I feel— no, I know— that she won’t find it in Lupe.
Not when her mind is captured by what she feels for Alek.
I know she doesn’t think I’ve noticed, but I’ve seen how this man, shady as he may be, has given her attention.
Made time for her.
Given her a flicker of self-belief.