Chapter 13 – Barbara
The nausea had been my constant companion for a week.
It started as a vague unease in my stomach, something I’d blamed on stress and too much whiskey. Then it became more insistent, waves of sickness that hit without warning, leaving me dizzy and weak. I’d barely eaten, barely slept, barely functioned beyond the mechanical motions of existing.
Now, standing in this abandoned building on the outskirts of Chicago, clutching a duffel bag full of cash that had cost me everything to gather, I understood that the nausea wasn’t just stress.
It was fear. Pure fear that had taken up residence in my body and wouldn’t let go.
The building was a skeleton of what it used to be, rusted metal beams exposed like bones, concrete crumbling beneath my feet, windows long since shattered.
Graffiti covered every surface, layers upon layers of paint that told stories of everyone who’d passed through this forgotten place.
The air smelled like decay and old smoke and something chemical that made my eyes water.
Perfect location for a shady meeting.
I hugged the duffel bag closer to my chest, the weight of it making my arms ache.
It was heavier than it looked, ten thousand dollars in mixed bills that I’d scraped together by pawning my mother’s jewelry.
Pieces I’d sworn I’d never sell, items that were the only tangible proof she’d existed beyond old photographs and fading memories.
But Sebastian didn’t care about sentimental value. He never had.
He was waiting near the back wall, exactly where he’d told me to meet him. His silhouette was backlit by weak sunlight filtering through the broken roof, making him look more shadow than man. He had a cigarette between his lips, the ember glowing orange in the dim light.
As I approached, he took one last drag, then tossed the cigarette to the ground and crushed it under his boot with deliberate slowness. The gesture felt symbolic. Threatening.
“Right on time, sister.” His voice echoed in the empty space, too loud, too pleased. Like he enjoyed this. Like my compliance gave him some sick satisfaction.
I stopped a few feet away, every instinct screaming at me to run. But where would I go? He’d just find me again. He always did.
“I have your money,” I said, my voice sounding small and hollow.
Sebastian held out his hand, fingers flexing in a gimme gesture that made my stomach turn. I stepped forward and handed over the bag, watching as he unzipped it and peered inside.
His brow raised. Then his jaw tightened. “This isn’t what I asked for.”
“It’s ten thousand….”
“I asked for twenty.” He looked up from the bag, his hazel eyes going cold in a way that made my blood freeze. “Did you think I wouldn’t notice? Did you think you could short-change me and I’d just accept it?”
“I need more time.” The words tumbled out, desperate and pathetic. “It’s not easy to pawn jewelry and antiques from the house without getting noticed. The security is tighter now. My father’s been asking questions. I’m doing the best I can….”
“Your best isn’t good enough.” He dropped the bag, letting it hit the concrete with a dull thud that echoed through the space. “I needed twenty thousand, Barbara. Not ten. Not fifteen. Twenty. And you brought me half, like that’s acceptable.”
“Please.” I hated the begging in my voice, but I couldn’t stop it. “Just give me another week. Two weeks. I’ll get you the rest. I promise.”
“Your promises mean shit to me.” He stepped closer, and I automatically stepped back. “You’ve been saying ‘just give me more time’ for five years. Five fucking years of excuses and delays and half-measures.”
“I’m trying….”
“You’re not trying hard enough!” His voice exploded through the building, making me flinch. “Do you know what I’ve been dealing with? The risks I’ve taken? The people I owe because I’ve been floating on promises that you’d deliver?”
“I’m sorry—”
“Sorry doesn’t pay my debts, Barbara.” He was towering over me now, close enough that I could smell stale cigarettes and something sharper—alcohol, maybe. “Sorry doesn’t keep me from getting a bullet in my head because I can’t pay back the people I borrowed from.”
“I didn’t know—”
“You never know anything!” He shoved me. Hard.
I didn’t have time to catch myself or brace for impact. One second, I was standing; the next, I was falling backward, my arms windmilling uselessly as gravity took over.
My head hit a jagged rock jutting up from the debris-strewn floor. Pain exploded through my skull like lightning, white-hot and blinding. For a moment, I couldn’t see, couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything except feel the agony radiating from the back of my head.
Then I felt the sticky warmth.
Blood.
I blinked up at the sky, or what passed for sky through the broken roof. Gray clouds swam in and out of focus. My vision blurred at the edges, going dark and light and dark again like someone was playing with the brightness settings on reality.
I tried to move, tried to sit up, but my body wouldn’t cooperate. Wouldn’t respond to commands that seemed to be traveling through water, reaching my limbs too slowly, too weakly.
The warmth spread beneath my head, pooling on the cold concrete. So much blood. Too much blood. I could feel it matting my hair, soaking into my clothes, stealing heat from my body with each pulse of my heart.
“Shit.” Sebastian’s voice came from above me, distant and tinny. “Shit, shit, shit.”
I managed to focus on him, my vision clearing just enough to see his face. He was staring at me with an expression I’d never seen before. Panic. Raw, undiluted panic.
“This wasn’t—I didn’t mean—” He ran both hands through his hair, pacing in tight circles. “Fuck!”
I tried to speak, but only a weak sound came out. Something between a moan and a whimper.
“You weren’t supposed to fall like that.” His pacing got faster, more frantic. “You weren’t supposed to hit your head. This wasn’t—” He stopped, staring at me with wild eyes. “Just like today, I didn’t mean to—I had no intention of killing you. Just like I had no intention of killing her.”
Her?
“Your mom.” The words came out strangled, pressured, like they’d been building for years and finally found an exit.
“That night. I didn’t mean to kill her either.
She caught me trying to steal files from Andrew’s office.
Important files. Documents I needed to sell to pay off debts.
She was going to tell him. Was going to call the police. ”
My heart stuttered. Stopped. Started again with a painful lurch.
No. No, no, no—
“She fought me.” Sebastian was still pacing, still spiraling, the confession pouring out of him like poison.
“Wouldn’t let go of the files. Wouldn’t shut up about calling the cops.
I just—I pushed her. Like I pushed you. Just trying to get her to stop.
But she fell. Hit her head on the corner of the desk. And then she was—she was just—”
Dead. He didn’t say the word, but it hung in the air anyway. Heavy. Final.
“I had to make it look like she left.” His voice was rising now, getting higher, more frantic.
“Had to stage it like she ran away with some secret boyfriend. Planted evidence. Created a narrative. Andrew believed it because he wanted to believe it. Because believing your wife was a cheater was easier than believing your son was a murderer.”
Tears burned down my face, mixing with the blood. My mother. My mother, who I’d spent years believing had abandoned me. Who I’d hated for leaving. Who’d haunted my dreams with whispered accusations.
She hadn’t left. She’d been murdered. By him.
“Why did you have to fall like her?” Sebastian screamed at me, his voice cracking. “Why do you both have to make me—why can’t you just….”
He was breaking down. Coming apart. And I was lying in my own blood, dying, listening to him confess to murdering my mother while he blamed us for making him do it.
Rage surged through me. Hot and pure and overwhelming. It cut through the pain, through the fog settling over my thoughts, through the numbness creeping into my limbs.
He’d killed her. He took my mother from me and let me spend years thinking she didn’t love me enough to stay. Let me grow up believing I wasn’t worth staying for. Let me carry that wound, that abandonment, that fundamental wrongness—
When all along, she’d died trying to stop him.
My body screamed in pain, but something deeper responded. Something primal and furious and unwilling to just lie here and die like he wanted. Like he expected.
I reached for my phone with fingers that felt thick and clumsy. Bloody. Shaking so badly I nearly dropped it twice. The screen was cracked—when had that happened?—but it still worked. Still glowed with that familiar light.
“What are you—” Sebastian’s voice cut through my focus. “Put that down. Barbara, I’m warning you—”
But he didn’t move toward me. Didn’t try to take the phone. Because somewhere in his panic-addled mind, he’d already convinced himself I was dying. Already moved past the guilt and into survival mode.
“Sebastian’s mom—my mom—Andrew’s first wife,” he was muttering now, more to himself than to me.
“She died of cancer when I was eight. Eight years old, and I watched her waste away. Then he remarried. Brought your mother into our home when I was eleven. She tried to replace my mom. Tried to act like she belonged there.”
He spat the words like venom. Like my mother had been the villain in this story instead of him.
“I disapproved of her from day one. But Andrew didn’t care. Never cared what I thought. And when I was fourteen—fourteen, Barbara—he cut ties with me. His own son. Because of Los Zetas. Because I was trying to survive. Trying to make money the only way I knew how.”
When he was fourteen. When I was two. The timeline clicked into place with horrible clarity. He’d been cast out young, left to fend for himself, pulled into cartel violence as a child barely old enough to understand the consequences.
Not that it excused anything. Not that it made what he’d done to me, to my mother, to anyone—acceptable.
But it explained the monster he’d become.
Sebastian spat at me—actually spat, the glob of saliva landing near my shoulder—and turned away. “You brought this on yourself. Both of you did. If you’d just given me what I needed, this wouldn’t have happened.”
Then he walked away.
Just like that. Left me lying in my own blood, dying in an abandoned building where no one would find me until it was too late.
I watched his silhouette disappear through a gap in the wall, heard his footsteps fade into nothing.
And I realized with crystal clarity that he’d left me here to die.
That this was his solution—let me bleed out, let it look like an accident or an attack, wash his hands of me the same way he’d washed his hands of my mother.
Rage and grief and justice all tangled together in my chest, making it hard to breathe. Or maybe that was the head injury. Hard to tell at this point.
My fingers found Kirill’s contact. Why his? Why not 911? Why not my father?
I didn’t know. Didn’t have the brain power to analyze it. Just knew that his name was the only one that made sense in this moment. The only person who might—who could—
The call connected. One ring. Two.
“Barbara?” His voice came through tinny and distant. “What—”
“I’m dying.” The words came out as barely a whisper. Two words. That’s all I could manage. Two words to sum up everything—the blood, the confession, the end of everything.
“What? Barbara, where are you? What’s—”
But I couldn’t answer. Couldn’t form more words. The phone slipped from my bloody fingers, hitting the concrete with a crack that might’ve been the screen breaking further or might’ve been my grip on consciousness fracturing.
The world tilted sideways. The gray sky above me faded to black at the edges, closing in like a tunnel. I tried to fight it, tried to stay awake, tried to hold on just a little longer.
But my body had other ideas.
The darkness swallowed me whole, and my last coherent thought before everything went pitch black was simple:
Mom. I’m sorry I didn’t know. I’m so sorry.
Then nothing.
Just absence where consciousness used to be.
Just the cold concrete beneath me and the blood still pooling around my head and the phone lying useless a few inches from my outstretched hand.
Just me, dying in an abandoned building, finally knowing the truth, but too late to do anything about it.
Too late to save myself.
Too late to save anyone.