by Karina Halle
The guards.
A dozen of them moving through the darkness, coming at them, firing.
Ellie and Violet stay back while Ben, La Mueca and Vicente fan out, shooting as they go.
Violet raises her gun, her arm shaking, but Ellie takes it from her and pushes her behind so she’s shielding her. Ellie was a good shot once, let’s see if she is again.
She’s good enough, anyway. Manages to strike down one guy that was sneaking up to them from the side. But Le Mueca, Ben and Vicente take care of the rest of them.
Just when the last shots die down and the air fills with the sound of heavy breathing, there is a deep whir.
The lights come back on, bathing the house, the lawn, everything in a soft glow, showcasing the rain that’s slowed to a drizzle.
The five of them stand there, staring at each other, adrenaline coursing through them, while bodies lay strewn across the property.
And in that harsh artificial light can Ellie really see what was done to her daughter.
Violet stands there, soaking wet and shaking from the violence and the rain, the dark red V in her cheek standing out starkly against her pale skin, the swell of her wrist looking more definitive.
But what guts Ellie, right to the core, like a hook, is her leg.
Violet’s scarred leg.
The bubbling white, pink and red.
The horror.
Ellie knows exactly what was done to her.
She knows too well.
Her head snaps up like a viper’s, looking at La Mueca and Vicente.
She knows it had to be one of them.
But Vicente knows what she’s thinking.
Shakes his head slightly.
Points behind Ellie.
“It was my father.”
She whirls around to see Javier and Luisa approaching them from behind a grove of trees.
Javier’s arms are raised and he’s smiling through the blood pouring down the side of his head where she had hit him.
The fucker is smiling.
“You did this to her?!” Ellie screams. “You did this to her leg?”
There has to be a mistake. There has to be. It had to be someone else, maybe the other guy from earlier, the one Vicente killed. It can’t be Javier because Javier knows exactly what the scars did to Ellie. He knows too well. Too well.
But she sees the rare flash of remorse on Javier’s face as their eyes meet across the lawn.
And she knows he did it.
He took everything he knew about Ellie, everything that made her weak and he used it on her own daughter. He tried to replicate the horrors of Ellie’s childhood on Ellie’s child.
His ultimate revenge.
Everything drains out of Ellie.
And Javier’s expression relents.
Like he welcomes what she’s going to do to him.
Like he knows he deserves it.
Like he expected this all along.
Ellie lets out an inhuman roar. She’s not a mama bear, she’s a god damn monster, ready to tear out Javier’s throat.
She starts running, sprinting across the lawn, heading toward him like a bullet. But she doesn’t use the gun in her hand, she tosses that aside because she’s going to destroy him in a million different ways first.
Luisa cries out but Ellie barely hears her.
She just flies through the air at him and tackles Javier to the ground.
Starts punching him.
Choking him.
Scratching him.
And he barely fights back, just enough to keep himself from losing his eyeballs to her thumbs.
Ellie is nothing but white noise, red hot rage, boiling blackness.
She feels hatred and vengeance festering through her, invading every cell in her body. She won’t leave until Javier is dead. She won’t be anything until Javier is dead.
He stares up at her, pain and pity cycling in his golden eyes and her grip on his throat tightens until she realizes she’s close to killing him. Just a bit more.
In the background people are yelling. Luisa is screaming something.
Javier starts to fight less. And she knows that if he wanted to, he could fight back. Even with his head injury and the knife wound, he could throw her off of him.
But he’s letting her do this.
Letting her kill him.
Why?
Because he thinks it’s what he’s deserved all along?
He’s suddenly become a martyr?
Or he knows that Ellie is acting out of unchecked rage, much like he did with Violet, and once he’s dead, she’ll have to live with his death at her hands for the rest of her life.
Because deep down, try as they might, these two are forever connected. Not as lovers anymore, not even as people who like each other. Most of the time they despise each other. But they are two lost souls who briefly found their way with each other. They are each other’s past and history and as try as you might, that is something one can never escape. They both shaped each other to the people they are today, for better or for worse. Till death do them part.
And death is seconds away for Javier.
Ellie looks into his eyes.
Sees the man she once knew.
Sees her past.
And gently releases her grip. She doesn’t take her hand away, but she releases it enough to let him live.
He blinks at her, holding her gaze in wonderment before he tries to get a breath of air in.
He actually smiles at her. And it’s a warm smile. Genuine.
She doesn’t smile back. She needs to take her hands away from his neck, get up off of him, step away and get the fuck out.
He opens his mouth to say something. Probably something witty, maybe to thank her for not murdering him with her bare hands.
But blood splatters all over his face.
Ellie sees that first, the shock in his eyes, the blood all over him.
Wonders what happened.
Then she hears the blast.
It’s all backward.
Then feels the strange pressure on her back, like someone stepping on her spine.
Then realizes she can’t breathe at all.
Terror hits her like a hammer.
Something fatal has happened.
Terribly fatal.
She stares down at Javier wide-eyed.
He stares at her, the whites of his eyes glowing with fear.
The most fear she’s ever seen in his eyes during their whole time together.
He looks over her shoulder, stunned, ruined, just as Ellie collapses on to him.
It’s then that she realizes what’s happened.
Seconds before her world goes black.
She was shot in the back.
And now she’s going to die in Javier’s arms, just after he was going to die in hers.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Violet
I watched everything happen in horrible slow motion.
Javier and Luisa appeared from nowhere.
My mother saw the extent of what was done to me.
She turned into some kind of inhuman machine, one built of parts of steel and knives and hate.
She ran at him, lunged at him, tackled him.
I for sure thought she’d shoot him but she tossed her gun aside, like it meant nothing.
I knew the moment she did that, she’d be dead.
The funny thing was, Javier let her attack him.
He let her punch and claw and choke him.
I could only watch from where I was, wanting to do something but also wanting to see what would unfold.
I glanced over at Vicente, he glanced over at me.
This was their fight. Their battle.
It always was.
La Mueca, though, was starting to get impatient.
He was about to head over there to break it up.
It really seemed like Javier was dying.
His movements were becoming slower.
He wasn’t fi
ghting back at all.
Then he kind of stopped moving in general.
She was actually going to kill him.
I couldn’t believe what she was doing.
And neither could Luisa.
Javier’s wife would not let this happen.
Luisa was screaming at her to stop.
Luisa picked up the gun that my mother had thrown away.
Luisa aimed the gun at my mother’s back.
And that’s when I knew what was about to happen.
Horrible slow motion.
I scream.
I start running, screaming, I think I hear Ben screaming too.
And Luisa pulls the trigger.
The bullet gets my mother right in the back.
She wavers for a second and then slumps on top of Javier.
I lose my head, my mind.
Someone pulls me back.
Vicente.
His arms wrap around me and he’s pulling me back and he’s shaking too.
She has to be okay.
She has to be okay.
“Mom!” I scream. “Mom!”
Luisa drops the gun like it was burning into her hands.
She staggers backward, hand at her chest, until she stumbles and falls to her knees.
Javier is holding my mother in his arms, blood all over him, her blood. He looks at Luisa in absolute horror. Like he’s asking her how she could do this to him.
Even in death, Javier has to make it all about him.
That this was his pain.
His loss.
You can see it all over his face.
That he’s ruined.
But I can’t even feel a fraction of satisfaction. I feel nothing but disbelief, sorrow, the kind of pain that is so much greater than you that it hovers above your body. It can’t be contained. It’s larger than the world.
Vicente tries to contain me.
La Mueca, is holding back Ben.
But eventually Vicente’s grip fails.
Probably on purpose.
Because he needs to let me fly.
I go running, falling to the ground by my mother. She stares up at nothing, not blinking. Red hole spreading on her back.
Javier cradles her head in his hands and his hands, his bloody hands, are shaking.
I stare at him for a moment, looking right into his eyes, wishing I could kill him.
He stares at me and wants me to.
Then I shove him out of the way.
Take my mother’s face in my hands.
“Mom, please,” I sob, hot tears streaming down my face. “Don’t go. Don’t leave me, please.” I kiss her forehead. I can’t stop crying. I can’t stop breaking. “I love you, I love you. Mom…”
La Mueca and Ben are standing beside me now.
Ben reaches down and scoops our mom up into his arms, her limbs hanging at the side, her head rolled back.
He stares down at her for a moment.
His heart breaking on his face.
Then he frowns, like he doesn’t understand.
Turns and walks off with her.
La Mueca hauls me to my feet, starts leading me to the the SUV where Ben is placing mom in the backseat.
Vicente passes by us, heading in the opposite direction. Storming like a warrior toward his parents, gun drawn.
I stop, wanting to see, needing to see.
La Mueca stops with me.
I watch, numb to the bone.
Javier is now on his feet, unsteadily. Luisa is still on her knees nearby, hunched over and crying.
Vicente grabs his father by the back of the neck, yanks him to him and shoves the gun underneath his chin.
Somehow he manages to contain himself. I’m not sure how that’s possible.
“You are no longer my father,” Vicente hisses at him. “And you no longer have a son. You come for me, I will kill you and I will enjoy it. You touch Violet or anyone else in my new family, and that will be the end. I’ll mail my mother your fingers and toes, one by one. Do you fucking hear me?”
Javier swallows, his throat moving against the gun. His eyes, shocked, scared, weary, tell Vicente that he understands.
Vicente lets him go roughly, enough that Javier stumbles back a few feet, and then Vicente stalks off toward us. He barely glances at me as he gets in the front seat.
I get in the back with my mother and Ben.
All the blood. So much blood.
La Mueca drives off, the gates automatically opening for us.
We’re just hitting the dirt road, leaving the Bernals behind on the lawn of their house of horrors, when Ben says. “Whoa.”
I look at him dully.
He stares at me with big eyes and places his hand at mom’s throat, pressing his fingers in.
“Oh my god,” he says. “Oh my god. She’s got a pulse.”
“What?!”
I lean over her, grabbing her hand, squeezing it. “Mom, mom!?” I cry out.
Her eyes twitch.
Ben cries out joyfully. “Oh my god! Fuck. I thought I felt her in my arms, breathing, when I picked her up but I thought it was just me.”
I place my hand at her heart and cry when I feel a faint beat.
Hope floods me from head to toe.
“La Mueca,” I say.
“I’m on it, keep talking to her, senorita,” he says.
I exchange a hopeful look with Vicente before I start talking to my mom.
She’s breathing, shallow and barely noticeable, but she is.
We’re not out of the woods though. She’s lost so much blood. She might be paralyzed. We’re in the middle of the fucking jungle in Mexico.
But if anyone can pull through it’s her.
Fuck, I hope it’s her.
“Come on mom, just hold on,” I tell her, squeezing her hand tight. “Hold on for dad and Gus Gus. They need us to all come back together, okay?” I wipe the tears from my face.
I swear I see her smile.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Vicente
“Vicente Rodriguez?” the nurse asks me.
“Yes?” I say, standing up. Like hell I’d use my real name in the Mazatlan hospital, even though I’m pretty sure that most of the people here know exactly who I am.
In a way that’s a good thing. It’s been a few days since I saw my father last, since I shoved my gun in his face and threatened to kill him, and Sinaloa doesn’t have to know that I don’t work for the family or the cartel anymore.
“You can see her now,” she says, beckoning me with her clipboard to follow her.
She takes me to Violet’s room.
The one she shares with Ben.
Her father has another room. The one he shares with his wife.
Yes, the McQueens have fucking taken over this whole damn ward.
Violet is in for treatment to her broken wrist, her cheek, her acid burns
Ben for the gunshot wound in his leg.
Camden for some other gunshot wounds and a concussion that happened who the fuck knows where or when, except that’s some bad fucking luck right there.
And Ellie for the gunshot wound to her back.
Thank fuck my mother is a lousy shot.
Got Ellie right beside her spine, right below her lungs. A millimetre closer in either direction and she would have been paralyzed or worse.
In fact, the doctors are saying it’s a miracle that she survived at all.
But then they told me Santa Muerte works in mysterious ways.
I have to think that Santa Muerte is looking out for the McQueens.
Makes me think I’m marrying into the right family.
Because that is what’s going to happen.
Maybe not tomorrow.
Maybe not when everyone is discharged from the hospital.
Maybe not even in a year from now, when I’ve figured out my next steps.
But they will become my family, whether they want me to or not.
And judging by the way Camden looked a
t me the other day, I’m guessing not.
Still, Violet will be my wife.
We have empires to build together.
I go into the room and give Ben a nod.
He’s sitting up in bed, reading a Mexican magazine he can’t understand.
He nods back. That’s the best I get out of him. He’s not my biggest fan but he doesn’t hate me either. I think he’s still shell-shocked over everything.
Honestly, so am I. But I’m dealing with it, hour by hour.
I smile at Violet as she looks at me through drowsy eyes.
She just had the operation on her wrist, a cast over her lower arm.
“How do you feel?” I ask her, bending over and kissing her on the forehead.
“Very high.”
“That’s good.”
“Enjoy the drugs while they last,” Ben says glumly. “They’ve already weaned me off of them.”
So much for privacy.
“I just wanted to check in on you,” I tell her.
“How are you doing?” she asks. “How is mom and dad?”
“They’re fine. They want to kill me but they’re fine. Your dad is a grump and your mother is pretty weak still but she’s getting better. I’m sure you’ll be able to see her later today, that’s what they told me anyway.”
She nods, closing her eyes. “Did you go out for breakfast with Gus Gus?”
That I did. What a fucking character her grandfather is. I could sit and talk to that man all day and he seems to be the only one who doesn’t stare at me like I’m going to pull a gun at any moment. I think he’s a man who goes by his instincts and his instincts are telling him I’m okay. I hope the rest of the McQueens listen to him one day.
“We did. Drank too much coffee and he ate too much bacon. Says your mother shouldn’t find out. Something about his cholesterol.”
She smiles softly. “That sounds right.”
And then she drifts off to sleep again.
I kiss her hand, say goodbye to Ben and head out of the hospital.
I have a meeting.
La Mueca is sitting in the corner of the dark bar, almost blending in with the wood walls. He’s nursing a Corona Light, which is a surprise to me because I don’t think I’ve ever seen him drink before.
I tell him that as I sit down across from him.
He shrugs. “New boss,” he says mildly. “New me.” He clears his throat, eyes me. “How is she? Violet?”
