With Rico’s trap very much in mind, we quickly leave the mining camp behind and venture further into the jungle so the vegetation will keep us out of sight.
The happiness over arriving on land evaporates at the same rhythm sweat pores out of our skin. The rain stops, and by the time the sun is high in the sky, we’re all tired from the heat and hiking for three hours straight. So when Diego suggests we stop to rest, I agree.
I pick a clearing next to a stream, hoping being near running water will cool us down. For food, I snap a bunch of green bananas from a nearby tree.
I throw two of them at Diego, who gives one to Alex. We sit on a fallen trunk, enjoying the reprieve after hours of walking through thick vegetation and hunted by insects. Nobody speaks, too drained to bother with small talk.
As I peel the fruit, Alex stares at his with a wrinkled nose for a few seconds until reluctantly accepting his fate. He bites a piece and chews it very slowly, shuddering. Being picky isn’t a good trait for a survivor, but once I eat my banana, I quickly sympathize with the boy’s complaints. They’re harder than stones and don’t taste much better.
Surprisingly, Alex eats the entire thing, but I feel so bad about it that once I finish mine, I jump off the trunk and look around.
“What is it?” Diego asks. He throws the banana peel behind him. “Do we need to leave?”
I shake my head, still trying to find something tastier for us to eat.
“Wait here. I’ll be back.”
Neither of them does. Instead, they follow me as I spot a tall mango tree. The lower branches have already been picked clean by the jungle’s inhabitants, but there are a few ripe mangoes on the higher ones. I’m still sore from Ezequiel’s beating, so I climb slower than usual, testing each branch with some reluctance, but I eventually reach them, ripping one from the tree and tossing it downward.
“Catch!” I yell at the boys on the ground.
When their hands and arms are full of mangoes, I make my way down, jumping the last two branches. I land safely on the jungle floor and in front of a wide-eyed Alex.
He steps forward to meet me. “That was way cool! I don’t think I ever saw someone climb a tree so fast. Once we get home, can you teach me that?”
“I … Sure,” I say, a little taken aback. Diego throws me a knowing smile. I respond with a shrug.
We feast on the sweet mangoes, practically smearing our faces and hands with the juice and laughing at how silly we look. After he’s done, Alex wipes his sticky hands on his father’s arm, sniggering. Diego quickly retaliates by messing with his hair with his viscous fingers. War is declared. They start throwing pieces of mangoes at each other. I keep out of it for as long as I can, but once Diego’s eyes fall on me, there’s no escape.
He grabs me by the waist, lifting my body as a shield against Alex’s throws. A chunk of mango hits my leg, its juice gluing it to my knee.
“Not fair!” I yell with a wrinkled nose.
“All’s fair in love and war,” he teases in my ear as he puts me down.
But I’m not about to let that attack go unpunished. With my back to Diego, I wink at Alex. The boy nods. I spin around to face Diego. His hands are still firmly on my waist.
“Oh, we’re mixing love with war, are we?” I say with a smirk.
“Yeah.”
I lean in for a kiss, and he enthusiastically responds by closing his eyes, but our lips don’t meet. Instead, I slip out of his hold and crouch, giving Alex a standing target. The piece of fruit splats right on his face.
He curses. Alex and I laugh. I don’t think I have done something this childish in a very long time, but it feels so good, I don’t want to stop.
While cleaning his face with his sleeve, he says “Two against one isn’t fair. I’m determining this conflict to be over.”
“You can’t do that, Dad. If you want us to stop, admit you lost!”
He pouts. “No. Never.”
I grab a handful of mango from the ground and squeeze every bit of juice above his head. Alex bursts out a laugh.
“How about now?” I ask Diego.
“Okay. You mess with my hair, and you mess with the jaguar.”
He swipes me off my feet and spins us around as I hit his arms playfully.
The fight ends when the mangoes are no more. Diego doesn’t admit defeat, but nobody seems to mind. In fact, as I wash my hands and face by the stream and realize mango stains aren’t easy to clean from clothing, the smile on my lips remains. I don’t care how sticky and smelling of mangoes my clothes are at all.
This cheerfulness persists even when it becomes apparent we’ll take longer than five days to get back to Punta Franca. Alex’s shorter legs and our injuries slow our progress considerably as every obstacle is twice as hard to conquer, but apart from customary worry about my mother, I don’t mind taking longer.
At night, I find a relatively dry spot next to a tree for us to sleep. Alex rests his head on his father’s shoulder. He fights to keep his eyes open, but eventually dozes off. I feed a small fire, so its smoke repels the worst of the bugs eager to bite us. The heat is unbearable, but some bites can itch and sting all day long. The temperature is a temporary, but necessary evil.
Although I feel exhausted, sleep doesn’t come. Sitting on a large rock, I watch Diego and Alex’s peaceful breathing, oddly content to be an observer to their slumber. The canopy above is too dense, hiding the sky and its stars from me, but I find the dark greens of the vegetation equally beautiful.
I catch myself smiling for no apparent reason. This is the happiest I’ve ever been since my father died.
That sudden realization scares me. I pull my legs up to my chest, and then sigh. Will my life be like this from now on? Will it be filled with small, happy moments or was this just a single lucky day?
Life being unfair is nothing new to me. I’ve been disillusioned with my existence ever since we buried my father. My mother stood in front of the National Mining Company’s building for days, holding my hand and silently demanding compensation for the careless way they treated my father’s life. Employees would walk past her, pretending we weren’t there. Nobody cared.
She wanted justice for my father, an acknowledgment his life mattered. She got nothing but grief.
You’re expected to move on. To accept what life gives you. Keep your head down and survive, no matter the cost to your soul. Any happiness I stumbled upon was a mere accident, and it wouldn’t last because I didn’t deserve it.
Do I finally deserve happiness? Have I fought enough for it?
“Having trouble sleeping?” Diego whispers, careful not to wake his son.
I shake my head and answer him in a low voice as well, “I don’t want to fall asleep just yet.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Why?”
I shrug. “This feels nice.”
Diego gently rests his son’s head on the backpack and sits next to me on the rock. “Aren’t you tired?”
“I am. But …” I sigh. “You’ll think I’m ridiculous, but I’m feeling happy right now and … I want to keep feeling happy for a little while longer.”
He holds my hand. “You’re afraid tomorrow this feeling will be gone. Something will happen to destroy it.”
I don’t know why, but tears threaten to fall. I hold back a sniffle. “Something like that.”
“You’ve been in survival mode for so long, you can’t stop worrying things will turn out bad at any moment.” His smile is tender, and he squeezes my hand tight. “But, Bel, everything will work out. You have my word. Anything that threatens our happiness now will be dealt with. I promise.”
I look at his deep, dark eyes, and I find myself. We’ve been together only for a few short days, but our connection feels stronger than time. He knows me, and I think I know him too. We see in each other the same struggles, the same hopes.
I can’t explain it, but it feels like he pulled me out of a dark pit. Hurting people, lying, betraying them no matter the justification, chi
pped away bit by bit my ability to love myself. I was buried under the weight of it, choking on my own guilt.
Diego gives me hope that things will be different this time. Our past, the place we came from, doesn’t matter. We don’t have to be defined by our mistakes or regrets. We are allowed to be happy, to strive for better things, and to do better things.
Not out of guilt or to prove our worth, but because we can and want to. In his eyes, I see a different Isabel. Someone worthy of being loved, someone who deserves happiness.
I stare at his dark eyes, barely lit by the campfire. This feels like a dream, a mirage that will end at any moment. I desperately want to make this moment last forever.
I reach for his cheek with my free hand, leaning in to plant a soft kiss on his lips. He tastes like mangoes, sweet and sour—a taste I crave more each time our lips meet. I can’t help myself, I pull him toward me and open his mouth for my tongue to explore it freely. Diego lets out a laugh at my eagerness, but I shut him up with another deeper kiss.
While I’m focused on holding his face in place, Diego’s hands travel from my bare arms to my waist, masterfully finding their way under my shirt. The contact sends flutters all over my body, my heart beating fast in anticipation. But I wince as he touches my midriff, bruised by Ezequiel, and he stops.
“Sorry,” he breathes out as I pull back. “You’re hurt. And this rock is… not comfortable.”
I bite my lip as my rational mind agrees with him, but my body demands more. I finally nod slightly. “Yeah… You’re hurt too … And Alex is there, and … this is not the place.”
He nods too, his hands resting on my thighs, with mine still on both sides of his face. We don’t move. Our chests rise and fall in sync. Just staring into his eyes spreads fire all over me.
My fingers trace his jaw, and his hands slowly rest on my stomach again. This time, the tips of his fingers barely touch my skin, hovering between clothing and skin and, instead, going straight to his real goal. He squeezes my breasts, and I stop myself from moaning by kissing him again, harder.
We don’t stop, and we won’t stop. Diego grabs my waist and pulls me down with him. We fall on the ground behind the rock, his body pressing against mine, taking my breath away.
I reach for his belt as he sucks the sensitive skin of my neck.
“Dad?”
We freeze. Diego clears his throat and gets up. I close my eyes, disappointment mixing with my body’s frustrations.
Later, when Alex is asleep again, and I’m dozing off, he whispers in my ear, “We’ll continue that at home, on a bed, in the shower, anywhere you want. I promise.”
The promise of more makes every day of our journey even more frustratingly slow. The precious few moments of privacy we manage to steal barely gives us time to kiss. As much as I want to trust his promise that life will be easier from now on, the feeling of this being our only chance of being together lingers in my heart.
On the last day of our trip, I wake up holding his hand. One of the things I’ve learned about him these past days is that Diego is a light sleeper. But today, he keeps his eyes closed, deep asleep. I play with a lock of his hair, pulling it behind his ear. He stirs but doesn’t wake up. We’re almost there—in a few hours, my mother will be cured and everything else will fall into place.
Soon, fear will not rule me anymore.
Punta Franca looks the same. I’m shocked by that until I realize I haven’t been away for that long. While my life feels completely different since I left to travel with Diego, this place has gone on as usual.
The cobblestone streets are still crowded by people in line for food, sacks of dry leaves on their shoulders and on top of their heads.
The workers talk among themselves, tired but looking forward to an evening of drinking in the only pub left in Punta Franca. Their conversations are confusingly mundane—someone is sleeping with someone they shouldn’t be, they wonder which part of their bodies are more sore, or request for someone to look at the weird specks or spots on their backs. If the outside world is mentioned at all, it’s in passing and quickly discarded.
It’s oddly calming to hear these people. With my mother cured, maybe I can also start to worry about simple, silly things again.
I shake my head at myself. I don’t think I ever bothered with those things once in my life.
We make our way toward City Hall, and there, people finally notice Diego Vargas is walking among them. Mostly thanks to the huge painting of his face on the concrete walls of City Hall. They step back, opening a path for us toward the entrance of the building.
Their awe doesn’t seem to be only because they’re near someone infamous. They’re surprised he’s alive. People whisper and point at us with wide eyes and open mouths. Diego ignores all of this, calmly striding toward his home, but I stay close to Alex just in case the crowd becomes overexcited.
As is usual at this time in the morning, Ana Cruz and a group of armed men oversee the food line. Her eyes follow Diego. Her expression is completely neutral. The only person who would’ve told Punta Franca about Diego’s supposed death was her. Did she truly believe he died or was this a way to become the leader of the cartel in his absence? While she wasn’t working with Rico, there’s something about her attitude that makes me distrust her.
Whatever her reasons, Diego has put an end to her plans the second he publicly showed up.
She whispers in Felix’s ear and he quickly disperses the crowd, telling those in line to come back later. After the front of the building is clear, Ana meets Diego. They stand face to face, and there’s tension in the air.
“You’re alive.” Her tone is dry. “Would you kindly tell me why the hell you left us behind?”
“I had my reasons. But I’m back. That’s what matters, right?”
She tilts her head and looks at Alex and me. “You rescued your son.”
“I did.”
“Congratulations.”
Diego snorts. “You don’t sound too thrilled.”
“I am. But I’m also pissed you disappeared during the night, making us run in circles trying to understand what the hell happened.”
“I thought you were working with Rico. After Rico shot me, it became clear that wasn’t the case. I’m sorry.”
She raises an eyebrow. “Rico showed up?”
“Yes, and with a gun. Isabel saved me.”
Ana shoots me an annoyed look, clearly disappointed I’m still breathing. “And now, you’re back. Have you given the cure to her yet?”
“Soon. How are things here? Everything seems to be going smoothly as always. Thanks to you.”
His attempt at flattery fails to amuse Ana Cruz. “Yes, thanks to me. We have to talk about a few things, Diego, in your office.”
“Now? I was hoping for a shower and some sleep first, Ana. We’re all exhausted.”
Pepe, Felix, and Carlos Alberto take a step forward, flanking her. Their aggressive stances making it clear this isn’t a happy reunion.
“This is not a request, Diego,” Ana Cruz says with her arms crossed. “One week is a long time. Things have changed.”
Diego stiffens. He glances back at me with a frown, and then takes another step forward. Felix places a finger on the trigger. Pepe adjusts his rifle. The threat is plain—one wrong move and they might shoot him.
“I see. I guess I was right not to trust you, wasn’t I?”
“This is happening because you didn’t trust me. Let’s go.” She indicates us with a hand. “They are coming too.”
“Ana … Leave them out of this.”
She shakes her head. “Not until we’re done talking, Diego. I’m sorry.”
And for once, she sounds sorry.
We’re surrounded by six guards. Felix pats Diego and me for weapons, taking away our machetes, knives, and his gun. Dread rises from the pit of my stomach as we’re escorted into the City Hall and up to Diego’s quarters.
After Ana and Diego step inside it, Felix shoves me along wit
h Alex. Every gun stays pointed at us.
They took his bed and personal belongings out of the room. They even tore down his curtains, letting plenty of light shine in and providing the room with an ample view of Punta Franca. The only noticeable furniture left is the large desk at the farthest wall. The place seems like a regular office now, one the old mayor would’ve used.
But those changes quickly become insignificant when the man sitting behind the desk gets up and, with his hands behind his back, calmly strides toward Diego and Ana Cruz.
I blink, barely understanding what I’m seeing.
General Ortiz himself stands in front of us with his hands behind his back, legs far apart. His mustache twitches as a condescending smirk appears on his thin lips.
Diego laughs. “It has been a while, General. What made you leave your little island and join us mere mortals?”
Ana Cruz falls in line beside Ortiz. “I invited him.”
My eyes race around the room. Along with the six cartel men, Ortiz is flanked by three soldiers, their uniforms pristine and their weapons brightly new. We’re surrounded. And outnumbered. Panic pressures my chest, making it harder to breathe. I knew something like this would happen. Every taste of happiness I get turns into ash in my mouth.
“You invited him?” Diego repeats, incredulity in his voice. “You hated Ortiz all your life. You fought the Army back when you were in the guerrilla. Have you lost your mind?”
Ana shakes her head. “No. I hated what he represented. I fought against him because our goals for this country were opposites. Not anymore.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
She puffs her chest out, voice filled with fervor. “I’m talking about using the cartel to rebuild this country. I’m talking about giving back Guavina to its people. I got tired of seeing you waste all that money, all that power, when there’s so much we could do with it.”
When Diego addresses Ana again, he does so with a surprisingly firm voice. “So you sold the cartel to Ortiz? Is that it? How long has this been going on? When did you become Ortiz’s lapdog?”
Deadly Hearts: A Post Apocalyptic Romance Novel Page 20
