31. Amalia #2
Because my sister could move mountains, but she doesn’t believe herself capable of it.
“I’ve loved you from the moment you opened your eyes in this world, and I’ll love you until my last breath. But please, I’m begging you, come with me. Por favor.” Julia’s voice is raw with desperation.
I take the hand of the man standing next to Julia, and that’s when I see them turn to look at each other, a whole conversation passing between them without a single word.
“Juls…I’m not leaving you here with them,” the lean man says.
“Por favor, amor.”
He knows he’s lost the argument and exhales.
“Don’t do anything reckless,” he tells Julia.
Then my older sister turns to me.
“He’d be proud of the women you’ve become,” Julia whispers. “Go with Maksim, Amalia. He’ll keep you safe.”
There’s a certainty in her voice that makes me turn to Lupe one last time. And I hate what I find there: betrayal, etched into her eyes.
So, without another word, I leave the room with Maksim.
He keeps his gun pressed to his side as we move, while behind us the soldiers keep shouting.
“We really screwed up, didn’t we?” I ask him, turning over in my head every piece of information Aleksandr fed us, every moment when I had to erase footage. Why didn’t I push harder?
Because your mind was occupied with another snake.
His silence is the only answer I need.
“Wow, you can’t even lie to me,” I whisper, thinking of my twin and everything she must be feeling right now.
I know how much she blames herself for the night our parents died, for making Julia go back to help them. I know how she sells herself short next to me simply because her mind doesn’t work like mine. But I also know that, of the two of us, she’s the one with the biggest heart. The most loyal.
Maybe I should have stayed with her.
“Your sister is in there with a killer, someone who can make an innocent soul bleed. When this is over, we’re going to have a serious talk about your taste in men.”
I drop my gaze, unable to keep looking him in the eye.
We screwed up.
“I told her there was something off about him, but he was always so sweet to Lupe.”
I screwed up. I’m the calculating one of the two of us. I’m the one who weighs every risk. Why wasn’t I more careful? Why didn’t I look into him harder?
Julia’s partner’s phone rings, and I hear a man’s voice on the other end, but my brain is drowning in guilt.
Between the two of us, I’m the brain. She’s the heart. I think. She feels. That has always been our dynamic, and I failed her. I let my mind go quiet under kisses in a library, under a man I thought saw me. The Amalia who isn’t interesting, the one who simply wanted to be accepted.
A man comes limping toward us, and Maksim signals him to take me to the car. He guides me into the back seat and climbs in beside me, the door slamming shut behind us.
Gunfire and shouting keep going in the background. The man, whose name is Jeremy, sits with his eyes closed, trying to steady his breathing, while my heart climbs up into my throat.
When he tries to shift his leg a little to the right, a grimace of pain cuts across his face.
“Can I help you with something?”
I remember the bag hanging across my chest and pull out a tablet of ibuprofen.
His eyes weigh the pill in my hand, then drift to my glasses, and he smiles. A weak smile, but a smile nonetheless.
“No, miss. Unless you happen to have a spare ligament or meniscus tucked in there.”
“Can you put weight on it?” I ask.
“Yeah, but my knee feels like it’s about to give out.”
“Then it’s just the ligament. At least that’s my guess. Sixty percent sure.”
His gaze softens and he nods.
“Good to know.”
The next second, the car door swings open and I see Maksim, with Julia in his arms.
Julia, unconscious. Julia, bleeding from her abdomen far more than anyone should be able to bleed.
“Ay Diosito, what happened?”
“Lupe had the gun in her hand when I walked into the room,” Maksim tells me, his fury feeding the black energy I can practically feel coming off him.
Lupe would never do this. No.
“Where’s Lupe?”
He lifts his eyes to mine and I swallow hard because he looks like he could rip my head clean off my shoulders.
What did you do, Lupe?
I look at my older sister and the tears gather in my eyes, because we didn’t have enough time.
Every candle tío Felipe lit for her. Every trip to the police station. Every birthday I bought a pineapple and caramel cake, because it’s her favorite.
The car races toward the hospital. Maksim is in the back with us, pressing his bloodied shirt against her stomach, his eyes never leaving her face.
I take her hand in both of mine. Her skin is so cold it terrifies me.
I start whispering anything I can think of, anything that might keep her here with us.
“I won the math olympiad. I always wanted a cat, but Uncle Felipe said we’re too scatterbrained to take care of one. Every morning, I pray for you, Julia. Deep down, we always knew you were alive somewhere. Please, don’t leave us now.”
I don’t remember walking into the hospital, but I remember Maksim pinning the first doctor he saw against the wall.
I don’t remember saying countless prayers, nor trying to call tío Felipe again and again, without an answer.
I don’t remember being told Julia was going to be all right.
But I know it took hours before they found Aleksandr and Lupe.
I watch Maksim deep in conversation with his twin brother, Roman Borisov, and my thoughts fly straight to my own twin.
I know in the marrow of my bones that Lupe would never have hurt Julia on purpose.
When I catch Maksim alone, I lower myself into the chair next to him and let out a breath.
“Do you think you could send someone to bring tío Felipe here? I don’t know if we’ll be staying, but —” I stop the second I see his eyes.
A dark gray that, in this moment, glints with pity. With compassion. With regret.
I shake my head before I’m even aware that I’ve risen from the chair.
“No, no! ?Está bien! Está trabajando, that’s why he hasn’t been answering me.”
“Eight hours ago we got an alert that Aleksandr had been seen in Ciudad de México. Contrary to what you saw in that file, Amalia, he is the one running that trafficking ring. Your sister and I, we’re the ones pulling those children out of hell.
The first place we went when we got into the city was your home.
We found tío Felipe dead in the kitchen.
One of Aleksandr’s flunkies, probably making sure he didn’t leave anyone behind.
I don’t know how he managed it, but with his last strength, your uncle wrote down the plate number of the car you left in. That’s how we found you. I’m sorry.”
I hear him. At least, I’m certain my auditory nerves are still working. But my mind cannot wrap itself around the information.
The man who raised me, who stroked my hair and wiped my tears after every insult, after every beating I took for being different, the man who believed in my mind and fed it with every resource he could lay hands on…is dead.
Lupe is going to lose her mind.
And I find myself wondering how, in the span of twenty-four hours, we’ve managed to drag our lives straight into hell.
My already broken heart shatters again and again and again.
I close my eyes, and for one fragile second, I can still feel his arms around me, his hand settling heavy on the back of my head the way it did after every bad day at school.
If I concentrate hard enough, I can still smell the coffee and cinnamon on him, the trace of too many churros he swore he wasn’t sneaking when Lupe and I weren’t looking.
He’s gone.