“Your father was and is an evil man, Valentina, and it’s a shame that you don’t see him for who he is,” I growled, and she snapped her head away from me. She didn’t want to look at me anymore.
“My father is capable of a lot of things, but trading his daughter to pay off a debt…he would never do that. He has pride, and he’s an arrogant man. Give him some credit for that!” she cried, and I clenched my jaw. I wanted to hold her and console her. I knew the feeling…of realizing that your own father has betrayed you, is selling you off in exchange for a debt. I had been through it myself, but the fact that she didn’t even believe me was too much for me to gulp down.
“You know what the Muerte Viviente are capable of, and he knows it too. At this point, he will probably do anything to get out of their debt. He used to be the one giving out the fucking orders. He knows exactly what their next step would be if he doesn’t pay off the debt somehow,” I barked at her and Valentina looked back at me, her eyes watery and burning as she stared.
“You’re saying that he tricked me into coming here?”
“He is sick, that much is true, but he might have exaggerated the extent of his illness,” I said, and she shook her head in anger.
“How could you even suggest such a thing?” she howled.
The answer was simple. I had been on the other side of Romero Luis’ wrath. I knew exactly what he was capable of. I wasn’t even surprised when my mother told me, and I was just upset that I hadn’t figured it out sooner.
“Valentina…you have to trust what I’m saying,” I said and took a step towards her.
“I don’t trust you, Jesus. I don’t trust you at all!” she snapped and our eyes met in a fury. She wasn’t lying. She didn’t trust me anymore. She had chosen her confidence in her father, over her trust in me. She had to leave town. She had to run away from home to get away from her father…how could she possibly be on his side now?
“It’s amazing…after everything that’s happened…that you don’t trust me anymore,” I said, making a last
attempt even though I knew that the battle was already lost.
She jerked up, making sure that the covers stayed in place.
“I’m his daughter, Jesus. I’m his blood. He would never do something like this to me. And you…you’re just a man, like every other man in the world. You want nothing more than my body. I know how gangs work, how the MC world functions. When you tire of my body, you’ll leave me to wither away, just like all your friends do…” her voice was firm, and yet her eyes were watery as she spoke.
I couldn’t reply to that. Not after she had already made up her mind. Ten years I had pined for her, and now she was turning me away because I had told her the truth about her father.
“You can stay here as long as you need, Valentina,” I said and turned around to walk to the door, hoping the whole time that she would stop me in my tracks. She didn’t, and I was gone.
Fuck it! I told myself. I needed to buy my mother milk and eggs anyway.
Chapter 12
Valentina
I was shaking in bed after Jesus left. I felt empty inside like a massive hurricane had hit the room and stripped me of all my possessions and my soul and everything. His words kept ringing in my ears. Papi had arranged the kidnapping, and he was the one who made Juan keep me prisoner. What were they going to trade me for?
I jumped out of bed and started collecting my discarded clothes off the floor. No, I didn’t believe him. Jesus was lying to me. The last words that I had lashed at him…I didn’t mean any of them. They had come spilling out of me from somewhere, from an unknown place. I shouldn’t have said those things to him. Not after everything he had done for him.
I started changing into the pajamas, my hands still shaking as I tried to smoothen the clothes over my body. The body that Jesus had touched. I could still feel his arms around me. His thrusts. My legs quivered from the soreness of the sex we had last night.
I shook my head, trying to get those thoughts out of my head. No, he was lying to me.
I was in a battle with myself. I didn’t want to believe what he had told me, Papi would never do such a thing to me. But what reason did Jesus have, to lie to me? Did he hate Papi that much? That he would try and turn me against him?
The man I knew…the boy I knew from ten years ago, would have done anything to keep me safe. I would have trusted him with my life and everything else back then. Why couldn’t I trust him again? Was I that afraid of getting hurt?
I tried to strengthen myself against him, and I slipped out of Moira’s guest room. She didn’t seem to be in the apartment, and I walked over to the living room and found her cell phone on the kitchen counter.
My mind was conflicted between calling Jesus and calling someone else. He had left his phone number with me earlier so that I could get in touch with him if I needed. I wanted to hear his voice. I wanted to call him and beg him for forgiveness. The truth was that there was nobody else I wanted to trust. Why had I lashed out at him? Was it because I couldn’t fathom the thought that Papi would do something like that to me? Was it because I was taking out my anger against Papi on him?
I picked up Moira’s phone and began to dial a number.
I remembered it by heart. Paola’s phone.
I hadn’t spoken to her in ten years either. We were kids back then when she got involved with the gang. Her father had been a low-rung member, who Papi used to kick around but Paola stuck with the gang. She always had plans on manipulating one of the gang members into a relationship with her. Even as a teenager, she kept her eyes on the prize. While I was falling in love with Jesus, Paola was sleeping around with the guys in the gang, trying to decide whose baby to have so that she could secure them for life.
I knew she had her eyes on Juan, and now I wondered if she was still in town, if she was still in association with the gang. We had been friends back then, and I knew there was a possibility that she wouldn’t want to be friends anymore. But girls looked out for each other, and I wondered if there was a chance that she could help me. Either way, there was nobody else I could turn to in this town anymore, especially since Jesus had washed his hands of me too. It was a flight to fight mode for me.