••• PART 4 •••

It’s now or never.

There isn’t much left of the old Sarah, and that girl died a long time ago. Corrupt by fear and painful betrayals, Emilia teeters on the edge of darkness. As her heart grows cold, she becomes a person she once despised—a slave to addiction, a master manipulator, and a remorseless killer.

In a race against her own demons, Emilia has to make a choice. Staying close to Pablo is the key to survival, but she yearns for something more. Running away with Juan is her only hope to live a life free of terror.

For love and liberty, she has to risk it all.

•••

A bloodstain bloomed like a rose in the center of her chest.

I pulled the trigger.

She coughed up thick lumps of crimson, which spilled from her lips and splattered the ground.

I shot her.

“We’ll have to work on your aim,” Pablo sighed, as he pat me on the shoulder and picked the gun out of my trembling, sweaty fingers. “It’s easier when you shoot them in the head.”

Everything was shaking. My hands, my legs, my lips, each of the painful breaths I desperately tried to suck in.

Mafer wasn’t dead yet. Her eyes were glazing over, but they were still staring at my feet. She retched and choked, as blood kept on seeping through her once-pristine apron.

She didn’t beg for forgiveness, not even for her life. She just looked him right in the eye, and told him she loved him.

I didn’t think. When I heard those words, my whole body seized, my finger clenched around the trigger, and as fast as I blinked, the shot had been fired.

That’s how I killed her.

Without a single thought.

I stared at the man who had caused her betrayal. He was leaning against the tiles behind him, like a vine creeping up a wall. He was the root of all evil.

“Don’t look at me like that,” mumbled Pablo, shrugging off my deadly glare. “I don’t know why she said it.”

“Are you sure?” I asked him.

“Yeah,” he replied. “I didn’t even know her name until yesterday.”

I pinched my lips to hold back whatever was coming out – a loud sob, a slew of insults, chunks of fruit from my sangria, or that unending scream I could already feel burning through my lungs.

Her shallow breaths had stopped now, and she was nothing but a heap on the floor, face down in a pool of her own blood that was still trickling down a drain.

Pablo nonchalantly pushed her with the tip of his boot, and she slumped over to the side. The blood had started to dry at the corner of her open lips, and her neck was bent at a strange angle. Her brown eyes looked like opaque beads, as still as glass as they stared into the emptiness.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

Terrible, really. My chest hurt like someone had just stomped on my ribs. My head was spinning and my heart thumping like I was stuck in a falling elevator. My cheeks were so cold it felt as if they’d been bitten by frost.

Yet, I’d accomplished what I wanted. I had gotten rid of Mafer. The scream stuck in my chest felt more like a victorious war cry than a lamenting whimper.

“I don’t know,” I answered.

“The first kill hits the hardest,” he sighed as he wrapped an arm around my shoulder. “You’ll get used to it.”

I shook my head. “There won’t be another.”

“Never say never,” he whispered in my ear. “That’s just how things go here. It’s not all champagne and glitter, is it.”

He softly kissed my temple, but the feeling lingered like he had branded it with a hot iron.

I stared at her body for a long minute. My feet were still set in that awkward shooting stance. I hadn’t moved since I’d shot her, besides from letting my arms dangle down the sides of my chest, which swayed back and forth with every deep breath.

There was a high-pitched ring in my ears, growing louder as Mafer’s face drew more pale.

I could smell her perfume meddling with the pungent stench of lead and blood, like a vanilla cupcake lost in a battlefield.

I killed somebody.

Once upon a time, she was like a sister to me.

“Gordita,” Pablo called me, muttering like he was repeating it for the fiftieth time. “Let’s go.”

The basement’s hallways seemed darker than ever, and so did the gray clouds outside. I jumped every time a lone raindrop knocked against the bedroom window.

There was blood on my ankles. It wasn’t carnage, just a few tiny spots that had already dried and crusted, but no matter how much I scratched them, they didn’t come off. They seemed tattooed on my skin, etched into my flesh, clinging onto my legs like little ticks.

Even after I showered, I was still pale and shaking, and Mafer’s blood still stained my skin.

“The first time I killed somebody, I could see his blood under my nails for weeks,” said Pablo.

I stopped picking at the little red dots on my legs, and looked up at him.

“Okay,” I mumbled, pulling up my towel before it slipped from my chest.

He sat down beside me and ran his fingers through my hair. “How do you feel?”

“Like a horrible monster.”

“Don’t say that, Gordita,” he murmured. “You’re a good girl. You’re nice.”

I swallowed my spit, and it cut up my throat like a jagged rock. “But I killed her.”

“Killing people doesn’t make you a horrible monster.”

“It does, Pablo,” I retorted. “Killing people is the number one thing that makes you a horrible monster.”

“Not when you have a good reason,” he shrugged.

“I didn’t have a good reason.”

I wanted to believe that those words were a lie, but they flowed out of my mouth like pure truth.

I pulled the trigger when she told Pablo she loved him. Not a minute earlier, not a second later. Even though it had all started with the betrayal, I had doubted my decision up until the point that she professed her feelings to him.

Killing Mafer because she loved Pablo was not a good enough reason.

“Then why did you do it?” he said.

I chose my words carefully. “Because you asked me” would make it sound like I had some free will when I shot her. “Because you made me” would make it seem like I was shifting the blame on him, which was the opposite of what Pablo wanted when he decided to put the gun in my hands.

“Because you told me to,” I said.

“And, isn’t that a good reason?”

He had a smug smile on his face, tugging at the corner of his lips. He looked proud of himself. I wished I could have told him I didn’t do it for him, that I didn’t do it out of loyalty, and instead just to get rid of one of his most precious allies. I wished I could have popped his inflated ego and shattered his confidence.

As tempting as it was to slap him with the truth, I had to keep on lying. As long as he thought his secret was safe, so were Juan and I.

“You knew how much I loved her,” I sniffled.

And you made her betray me.

He shrugged with one shoulder, and his smile didn’t fade. “Yes, I did.”

“I needed her, Pablo.”

And you turned her against me.

He rolled his eyes and stood up, sighing as he paced toward the window.

“The only person you need here is me,” he replied, his tone a little sharper. “I’m the one keeping you alive here, not your maid.”

He pretended to stare out of the window, but I could see him looking at me out of the corner of his eye, carefully monitoring the effect his words had on me.

I knew that fear was what he wanted to see. He wanted my eyes to simmer with terror, he wanted my jaw to clench shut and lock in any answer. He wanted respect, for me to bow my head rather than talk back. I could see him straighten his neck as he anxiously waited for me to fight back.

Most of all, he wanted submission, and I faked it with a slow nod.

The smile on his face returned as fast as it had left.

“I’m surprised, to be honest,” he murmured. “I didn’t think you’d have the guts.”

“Neither did I, until she said she loved you,” I muttered.

He raised his eyebrows. “I thought she said it to you.”

“She was looking right at you, Pablo.”

“I wasn’t paying attention,” he shrugged. “But the way she defended you, during that whole interrogation, you’d think she had a crush on you.”

And there he went again, playing with my mind, making me wonder if my eyes or ears had betrayed me too.

The bedframe below me creaked as I folded my legs, tightly squeezing my own knees. I pressed one ear onto my shoulder and covered the other with the palm of my hand, trying my best to block out the sound of his voice.

I didn’t hallucinate anything. I’d seen Pablo leave her room, I’d heard her tell him she loved him. As much as I didn’t want to believe it was true, Mafer was a traitor.

The only thing I was wrong about was how good it would feel to pull the trigger.

Pablo let out a sigh as a tear rolled down my cheek.

“Come on, Gordita, don’t cry. You did the right thing.”

“It doesn’t feel like the right thing.” I said.

He sat down on the bed, and coiled strands of my hair around his fingers.

“I’m proud of who you’ve become, you know,” he whispered. “When I first met you, you were so afraid, and weak. You had some fire in you, but it was just a tiny spark. But look at you now, now you’re a–”

“A murderer,” I muttered. “I’m a murderer.”

He paused, and pursed his lips. “I was going to say a volcano.”

A lump grew in my throat. I’d heard Juan call Pablo a volcano. Juan had also warned me not to turn into another Pablo. It was just a coincidence, but it still sent chills down my spine. As if to confirm my fears, Pablo grinned, and added:

“It’s like I made you in my own image.”

“You sound like you have a God complex,” I scoffed.

Pablo snickered. “I don’t have a God complex. God has a Pablo complex.”

I shook my head, a bitter taste spreading on my tongue.

“Come on, Gordita,” he groaned. “Laugh at my joke.”

“Ha-ha,” I deadpanned.

He rolled his eyes again, but more softly this time. I brushed away his hand as it caressed my hair.

I was nothing like him. Not yet, at least. I still felt remorse when I hurt somebody, no matter how right I could have been for doing so.

“We should go back downstairs now,” Pablo sighed. “But you’ll get over it. We always do.”

•••

The rain relentlessly drummed against the windows, as mist covered their panes with a grey veil. Cold, damp air seeped in through the walls, and an eerie breeze whispered through the long corridors. The cool air leached into my skin, numbing my fingers and thoughts.

People were talking, trying to greet me, or just chatting about a wedding, but I couldn’t hear a thing.

All I could think of was how she died. The bullet ripping through the air, the recoil lashing up my wrist. The way her body spasmed when she was hit. The ringing in my ears after the gunshot, the empty chamber clicking a dozen times. Her shallow gargling, my heavy, trembling breaths, the smirk tugging at the corner of Pablo’s lips.

I drew back my hand whenever someone touched it, for the feeling of their skin always felt like it was burning. It was hot like shame, scalding my cheeks when anybody looked at me. Good thing most of them would never find out what I had just done.

Pablo handed me a glass of wine, dark and red like the blood I’d spilled. I pushed it away.

“I need some fresh air,” I whispered.

He nodded. “Go ahead.”

I stood in the roofed part of the patio, watching the deluge fall down on the garden, and listening to its deafening roar. Raindrops pounded on the windows, clattered on the roof, battering the ground, digging muddy torrents that snaked through the grass.

My eyes stung from the tears I repressed, my body shook from the memories I rehashed. The bullet piercing through her chest, the blank look in her dead gaze, the way she fell sideways from a tiny push of Pablo’s shoe.

Something touched my arm, and I flinched.

“What happened?”

There were deep lines on Juan’s face, a look of concern and a somber shadow veiling his worried eyes. His words hung in the air, thick like fog, and I choked up as I tried to answer.

“He made me kill her.”

Juan’s frown grew deeper. “What do you mean?”

“He put a gun in my hands and told me to shoot,” I said.

“You shot Mafer?” he asked.

I nodded. “I killed her.”

Even I was shocked by the calm and cool tone of my own voice.

Juan shook his head in disbelief. His mouth opened and closed as he tried to come up with an answer, and with every passing second, his frown grew deeper.

“This is your fault, Em,” he spat.

“I know.”

“She didn’t deserve to die.”

My shoulders heaved with a dry shrug. “I thought she did.”

He looked to his right, to his left, and then back at me.

“You better fucking explain yourself,” Juan muttered.

“Yeah,” I sighed. “Is anybody watching us?”

He glanced over his shoulder. “Just a maid, in the kitchen.”

I nodded slowly, still staring at the garden, smothered by a blanket of fog. My cheeks were wet, either from the rain or because I was crying cold tears.

I tried to recall the things I’d already told him, and the things he had yet to know. The guilt in my chest was spreading like wild ivy, and I didn’t know how much I could talk before it choked me.

I had relived all the scenes a thousand times each, laying in bed as I stared at the ceiling, standing in a room as still as a shadow on a wall. I felt like Juan already knew everything, and yet he still stared at me like I was nothing but a stranger.

“I caught Mafer and Pablo having sex,” I said.

He let out a bitter laugh. “Well, it’s not like you love him.”

“I thought they were strangers,” I murmured. “He always acted like he didn’t even know her name.”

“Everyone fucks everyone here, Em,” Juan scoffed, sniffing back a lone tear. “Especially the maids. They give us blowjobs, we give them nice clothes. We don’t have to know their names. That’s just how things go.”

“Yeah, and you did that with Majo every Friday at ten, right?” I retorted.

Juan paused, and took a step back. The whites of his eyes were glowing red.

“How do you know that?” he asked.

“Because when Mafer said she’d help me escape, she sent me to Majo’s room at the exact time she knew you’d be there. She also told me there was a bus that night, and there wasn’t,” I explained. “She did everything for me to get caught.”

He stayed quiet, and I could almost hear the blood flush from his face, as if it was trickling down a drain.

“Remember what I told you, when I thought you were pretending to be friends with me just so you could tell everything to Pablo?” I asked him.

“Did you ever tell her about us?” he whispered, standing as still as a statue.

“No, but she knew anyway,” I answered. “She tried to talk about you a lot.”

“Oh my God,” he breathed. “So Pablo knows too.”

“That’s the thing,” I replied. “Once I found out, I went to tell her how much I hated you. I waited until she told Pablo, and then I cut off the loose end.”

“Cut off the loose end?” he echoed.

“I planted Manée’s phone under her pillow, you tipped off Pablo, and he took the bait. Pablo thought she double-crossed him to try and help me, so he brought me downstairs and made me kill her to hurt me,” I muttered. “Now he thinks I’ve been scared into submission, that I have no allies left in the house, and that I despise you. And most of all, I got rid of Mafer before she found out that I knew. You should be thanking me.”

His mouth hung open, and I could see the hinges of his jaw grinding with tension.

“What the fuck, Em?” he shouted.

I frowned at him, discreetly cocking my head to hint at the young maid working in the kitchen.

“What?” I hissed. “I was just protecting us.”

“We could have, I don’t know, kept on using her to our advantage,” he stammered. “We could have tried to understand what game they were playing, and turned it against them. But you– you just straight up had her killed.”

“That’s exactly what I did,” I retorted. “I just did it faster than you could.”

He sucked in a long, shaky breath. His fingers curled around the patio’s railing, turning his knuckles white.

“How long have you been planning this?” he asked.

“Couple days,” I muttered.

He shook his head, slapping the sides of his thighs in frustration.

“And how the fuck are we going to deal with Manée, now that we don’t have the phone as proof?” he sighed.

“I’m working on that, just leave it to me,” I replied.

His brow was still furrowed, but his frown softened. The anger in his traits slowly broke apart, turning into a sad expression. His dark eyes were wet with tears, and his silent lips began to quiver.

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” he asked me.

“I didn’t want you to fuck anything up,” I answered.

“Is that what you think of me?” he scoffed, his lip curling in with disgust. “I’m a dumbass who fucks everything up?”

“No, it’s just–”

“You know, I’m not surprised anymore,” he spat. “Now I see why you don’t want to leave.”

I frowned at him. “What do you mean?”

“You fit in well here,” he said, nodding twice to hide the way he swallowed the lump in his throat. “You’re just like the rest of them.”

Kerning

Nice

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