AURORA
After another shower in which I allow myself to grow languid from the heat, I step out to find Esteban fully dressed in the closet.
He turns to me, his gaze traveling down my towel-clad body.
“Still hungry even after all we’ve done?” I ask.
“Always,” he admits. “But I think we both need some sleep.”
“I don’t want to,” I say through a yawn.
He arches a brow. “Go get in bed, and I’ll come tickle your back until you fall asleep.”
“All right,” I say, because I’m too tired to argue.
“I have to make a phone call, but I’ll return shortly.” He leaves me to dress in a pair of pajama pants and white spaghetti tee.
I pause on my way out of the bathroom, spotting something golden lying just slightly under the bed. It’s Raul’s Rolex. Going to it, I grab it, holding it closer to my eyes, feeling the weight of it.
Then I lift my gaze to the sliding glass doors that lead to the pool and garden. The watch in my hand, I walk toward them, and pulling the curtains aside, I open one and step through.
Once again, I’m surrounded by the yellow flowers Esteban gifted me just a few days ago because I told him yellow was my favorite color. That was when I realized what I felt for him went beyond a mere physical obsession. I’d fallen deeply and hopelessly in love with him.
The memory of the warmth of that moment surrounds me, and it’s so painful now that I want to weep.
I peer at the watch, staring at its golden yellow face with the broken glass piece. Esteban is a complicated man with many layers and facets to his life and personality. Yet I still find it difficult to reconcile the man who’d give me so much, who would make me ache for his touch, with the man who would murder Raul.
“Why?” I ask when I hear footsteps behind me.
Esteban comes to stand beside me, staring out into the garden as I have been. He takes a deep breath as if he’s steeling himself. Of course he is. Because he knows exactly what I’m asking, the one word carrying more weight than if it had been a full interrogation.
Why did he kill Raul? Why did he end the life I once envisioned? And why does he now hold my heart?
His lips part, but nothing comes out. Instead, he swallows hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat as if he’s choking on it.
“I just… I need to know everything,” I tell him, and to my surprise, there’s no hint of anger left. Only a need to know the whole truth, painful though it may be.
He looks at me, his gaze searching, though I’m not sure for what. “I don’t want to break your heart more than it is.”
“It’s shattered into a million pieces, Esteban. You cannot break it more than that. But you can put me out of my misery. End my nightmares.”
Glancing away momentarily, he clenches his jaw before he turns back to me. “He killed my sisters.”
I rear back as if he’s slapped me. “What?” Shaking my head with disbelief, I say, “No. I don’t believe it.”
“The DEA sent him to infiltrate the drug ring of a man named Urias Serrano. But Serrano was onto him from the start and made him a better offer than the DEA could.”
“You’re not trying to tell me he was a double agent,” I say in disbelief.
“I’m simply telling you the facts as I learned them after it was too late. He worked for Serrano, who had been too interested in my business and suspected I had my own coca fields. He sent Raulino to spy on me, which would have been much harder to do had my sister, Nancy, not become infatuated with him. He seduced her and, through her, got to me.”
“What?” I swipe my hand through the air, shaking my head, trying my hardest to twist what he’s saying into something that makes more sense. “Raul loved me. He would never have…have…” I struggle to finish the sentence, it’s so distasteful. “You’re lying.”
“It’s true. He was with Nancy.”
“How can you say that? He was going to marry me when he returned.” I jam my thumb into my chest as I point to myself.
With a calm I’m far from feeling, or maybe it’s defeat, he shrugs. “Perhaps that was still his intention. He certainly didn’t mean to stay with Nancy.”
The anger I’d thought quelled returns with a vengeance. “No. You’re lying,” I accuse, still finding it near impossible to conceive of something so ugly. Yet he’s managed to plant the seed of doubt, and it’s taking root quickly.
Esteban releases a long breath. “I’m not lying, Aurora. I would give my life to make it a lie, because I’d rather that than have my sisters buried six feet under. But he did charm Nancy, and I loved her so much that I relented when she insisted I give him a chance. He used her, and I let him into our family. Then one day, when my sisters decided to take a trip, he followed them. I was on the phone with her when she spotted him behind their car.” He frowns as he runs his palm over his face. Moisture builds within his reddening eyes, and he turns away from me.
My own tears fall to my hand when I look at the watch, though I’m not sure who I’m crying for anymore.
With a voice made thick with grief, I ask, “What happened next?”
He wipes his tears as he swallows hard, and he takes several deep breaths. When he can finally speak, his words come out hoarse and pained. “I had the privilege of listening as their car was rammed from behind. As they were dragged from it. As they were beaten to death by him and another man. First, it was my aunt, then Lidia, when they couldn’t tell him the location of the coca fields. And I listened to Nancy beg him for her life.” He screws his eyes shut, and when he opens them again, there’s not only anguish in them, but rage like I haven’t seen before. “I yelled out the location at the top of my lungs even as I ordered my men to find her. I would have given him anything to spare her life. But the phone had fallen too far from them, or he was too bloodthirsty to hear me. So he shot her. Then he put them back in their car and burned the bodies in an attempt to hide the evidence.”
“He worked for the DEA. He was a good guy. He loved me.” The last is said with much less conviction than when we first started this conversation.
Esteban huffs but seems too tired to argue. “We all have our side of the story. That’s mine. He killed them, and I needed to get justice. My men found him and his friend hiding in an abandoned house. The other man, I killed right there. I didn’t give a fuck about him. But Raul… He deserved something worse. I’ve never hated anyone more in my life and I wanted him to feel what my sister felt. I dragged him back to the place where he murdered my family and beat him until my hand broke. Then I put him in his car and set it on fire. As the flames spread, he regained consciousness and started screaming. Somehow, he was able to listen to three women cry and beg for their lives, but I couldn’t do it. He sounded like a banshee, screeching and wailing so loudly I thought my ears would burst. So I turned and shot him and put him out of his misery far too soon.”
I’m sobbing, my body shaking with every breath I take. “Please, please tell me you’re lying?”
“Why?” He turns to me now, his expression dark. “Because it’s so much easier to believe he was a better man than me? Because you’ve wanted me to be the villain from the start? Raulino was a terrible human being, Aurora. He deserved far worse than the mercy he got in the end.”
I look away from him, unable to take any more of this truth he’s spewing so easily now. “I was wrong. My heart was able to break even more.”
He remains quiet for a long while, though I can feel his intense stare on me. Finally, after what seems like an eternity, he speaks. “When it’s safe, I’ll take you home. You will never have to see or hear from me again.” And with that, he leaves me alone in the garden he made for me.
My knees buckle and I crumble. Hugging my legs to my chest, I sob like a child. With each cry of pain, I loosen the tight hold I’ve had on the past, on what I thought was real. I let go of Raul. Tears seem to wash away the haze that’s clouded my thoughts and emotions, leaving me raw.
I lie there until there’s nothing left in me to pour out, my heart and soul battered and bruised. When I sit up and take a good look around, the picture before me seems so different. Where there was once shadows, everything is clear now.
Standing, I wipe away the remnants of wetness on my face. Giving one last glance at the Rolex, I let it drop. It lands with a clink on the concrete pad, and I walk away from it.
Inside, I find Esteban sitting on the edge of the bed, his eyes downcast on the shot of reposado he’s holding.
I take the glass from him and set it on the nightstand, then sitting beside him I hold one of his hands, and bring it to my lap. He watches as I slide my palm over his much larger one and entwine our fingers.
“You fit me so perfectly, Esteban,” I murmur. “From the start, you’ve fit me. It’s like I was made for you. And it terrifies me.”
“Because you believe I’m a monster?” He lifts his troubled gaze to me now.