“We usually just feed them to the pigs,” I pointed out. “But who knows what they’ve been eating lately.”
Paolo went and gathered up the rest of the men for the dirty work while Evaristo and I went back inside the house, hurrying now to get to Luisa.
“We’ll get you both taken care of as much as I can,” he said as we made our way upstairs and to the room. “There are a lot of clinics I know, even out of the country where no one can watch you.”
I nodded absently, unable to ignore the uneasiness in my chest. Diego was at the end of the hall, holding Luisa in his arms like some sort of action hero. He’d taken off his jacket and wrapped her in it, her head was back, arm swinging limply beneath her.
But he didn’t need to be a hero right now. I did. Even though I was the opposite of one. An anti-hero was still a hero in the end but I would never be more than a villain.
“Shit,” Evaristo swore under his breath as we got closer. “You’re sure she’s alive?”
I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. Even when smoke billowed down the hall, enveloping us, I could see her through the haze, clear as day. Her beautiful skin, broken down like a bruised peach.
“She’s barely holding on,” Diego said and the tremor of worry in his voice told me we didn’t have much time. I also could have hugged the damn man for taking care of her like that.
“Give her to me,” I said, reaching for her.
“Your leg, Javier,” Evaristo reminded me.
“Fuck my leg,” I snapped as Diego handed her over, placing my wife in my arms. She was lighter than usual and beneath the blood I could see her ribs jutting out. She’d been starved on top of that, but I should have never expected anything less from Esteban.
The more I stared down at her in my arms, the more that empty space inside of me increased, spinning outward, invading every corner of which I was alive. She’d undone me many times in the past but I wasn’t sure I could piece myself together again. Not now. I was ruined over what she’d done to me and I was ruined over what had been done to her.
Our marriage had been obliterated and this was all that was left.
I was going to hold on to that until my fingers were raw.
“We have to go,” Diego said to me and I managed to say something back, I don’t know what, but somehow I put one bad leg in front of the other. We walked down that hallway of what used to be our house, of what used to be a pretty good life, and I could almost hear her bubbly laughter, her intoxicating grin, from memories past. Fire and smoke filled the air, the stench of burning bodies, while my wife’s bird-like body, her fragile life, was in my hands. I could have given into that thick rage that had gotten me here, I could have killed her – put her out of her misery, even – and had my revenge on her. It would have been so easy and the others would have looked away.
I just couldn’t.
Maybe that made me weak. Maybe it made me strong. I didn’t know and I didn’t really care.
All of my vengeance was for Esteban now. He took everything away from me and made my loved ones suffer. Luisa never took anything from me. Instead, in her devastation here, she gave me something instead, and as I held her, I knew it was a piece of myself back, a part that I had lost along the way, a part I never thought I’d find again.
It didn’t make me whole. I didn’t think anything ever could. Some people weren’t meant to be whole, to have soul.
But it was something.
I would not harm my wife. Not anymore and not in any way. I didn’t know if she would pull through and if we could ever have what we once had, no matter how fleeting it had been, but I knew I’d have to learn to let go of that suffocating hate and start all over again. Learning to forgive her would be the toughest thing I’d ever have to do.
If she pulls through, I thought.
I had a hard time believing I wasn’t carrying a dead woman in my arms.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Luisa
When I was a young girl, maybe eight or so, my father once took me the dry bluffs above the ocean to see if we could catch a glimpse of the migratory humpback whales. Even though they were common during the winter months, I’d never seen them, so papa took me to the best viewing area he could find.
Unfortunately it happened to be part of one of the fancier resorts that plied the beaches between San Jose del Cabo and Cabo San Lucas. He told me to dress up in my Sunday best, a white cotton dress with red embroidered flowers that I thought made me look like a princess, and he donned his straw fedora.