El Pecador (Saint-Sinner 2)

Every single day was another day of sorrow. Unrelenting sadness.

Another day I had to walk through life without him.

He was buried on a Saturday afternoon around eleven in the morning, surrounded by people who respected him, but didn’t know who he really was. Except me. I knew this complicated man inside and out, sides of him no one was lucky enough to experience, making me feel near and dear to his heart. It was a beautiful day to lay him to rest, nothing but clear skies and sunshine when all I felt were dark clouds and rain. It was a day I’d never forget, filled with so much heartache and pain.

So many unsaid things between us.

“I miss you. I miss you so much.” I bowed my head, closing my eyes for a few seconds to gain the strength to keep going, before peering back at the gray granite headstone.

It didn’t get easier.

It would never get easier.

This was my life now without him.

His funeral still felt as if it was yesterday, half a year later. Burying him in the ground was one of the hardest things I ever had to do. I stayed that entire day at his grave until there was nothing but darkness surrounding me, making me feel like I died as well. It could have been a handful of minutes, a few hours, or a couple of days that passed in front of my swollen eyes, time didn’t matter when I was here. It was the only time I felt a little bit of peace, even though I didn’t deserve it. I allowed my mind and body to seek shelter in that dark place within myself, and I was starting to think I’d never come out into the light again.

This was my penance for taking another life that didn’t belong to me.

I took a deep, sturdy breath, breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth. “I don’t remember what it feels like to have a good night’s rest. I cry myself to sleep most days. Sometimes it’s well into the morning before my eyes finally close and exhaustion takes over. It’s never peaceful sleep though. My mind refuses to shut off even though I’m mentally spent from the wheels turning at full speed. The guilt festering inside of me, eating me alive. I keep thinking about the ‘what ifs,’ but they don’t matter because they won’t bring you back. I’m so lost without you, I hope you know that. I pray that your soul is resting peacefully and you’re not still watching over me. Worrying about me in the same way you always did. I feel you everywhere I go, and I know I don’t deserve your presence, but yet there you are, always with me,” I shared, fidgeting with the stems of the flowers. Trying to refrain from bawling my eyes out like I had every other time I’d been to his grave.

He’d want me to be strong, and I wanted to give him that. It was the least I could do after ending his life.

“I’m trying to put the pieces of my life back together, but it’s so hard without you. You saved me. My life is so incomplete now that you’re gone.” I swallowed hard, my head pounding. “I’m so sorry, this is all my fault. You shouldn’t have lost your life, protecting mine. I hope you know that too. I hope you believe it. I hope you’re happy and at peace. I hope so many things for you.” An unexpected shiver ran down my spine from the sudden breeze. Almost like he was making his presence known. He was there for me, comforting me the only way he could now.

“I love you so much,” I whispered into the misty air. “I know you would want me to move on, stop coming to see you as often as I do, but I’m not ready to let go yet. I don’t know who I am anymore and maybe I never did. I struggle with everything these days. You’d be so disappointed in me, or maybe you already are. I don’t know.” I shook my head. “I don’t know anything anymore. Everything hurts right now. I don’t know what it feels like to not hurt. The pain is a part of me and I feel like I’m dying all the time. A little bit of my air is being taken from my lungs each day, enough to know it’s missing. It’s leaving me and there’s nothing I can do to save it, knowing it’s happening and I can’t stop it. All I can do is wait for the day where I can’t breathe any longer,” I cried, tears now freely flowing down my cheeks, landing in the grass beneath me. “How do I forget about you? All you ever wanted was for me to be happy, and I don’t know if that’s possible when I’m living a life without you.”

There was nothing else for me to say without getting even more emotional about it, and I hated doing that to him again. So instead, I wiped away my tears and just sat there. Keeping him company until it started to rain harder.

With a solemn expression, I placed the flowers beside his tombstone, kissed the tips of my fingers, and rubbed them over his name like I always did before leaving. Murmuring, “I love you.” Thinking about him the entire way back to the place I now called my residence. At least for the time being.

I walked over the threshold, throwing my keys on the entry table, and made my way inside. Heading straight for the balcony to gather my thoughts and hopefully clear my mind. Reliving that night all over again.

My eyes fluttered as I groggily stirred awake. Slowly willing them to open. My body felt heavy like it weighed a thousand pounds, sinking further into the mattress I was laying on. My skull pounded like it had taken a beating or two, listening to a loud beeping noise coming from somewhere I couldn’t place. Disoriented as all hell.

“Hmm…” I groaned, moving my head side to side. My neck stiff from laying still for so long. My eyes unable to focus on anything surrounding me.

“Shhh… it’s alright, Amira. You’re okay,” I heard a man’s low voice from above me. His hand gently stroking my hair in a comforting gesture.

I opened my eyes, coming face to face with Vlad hovering over me. “Where am I?”

“The hospital.”

I shot straight up, instantly feeling dizzy.

“Calm down, you’re going to make yourself faint again.”

“What the hell is going on?”

“What do you remember?”

I shook my head, narrowing my eyes, trying to push through the daze. “Your party, the fight… what’s going—”

“I’m going to get the nurse.”

“What? Why—”

And just like that, all the blood drained from my body, memories flooding my haze-induced mind. All hitting me like a ton of fucking bricks.

Vinny’s brother…

Roman…

Damien…

Gone.

“Nooooo!” I cried out. “Please, tell me it’s just a bad dream. Please tell me it didn’t really happen. Please, I’m begging you, Vlad.” I shook wildly with the realization that everyone I loved had been cruelly ripped away from me.

“Amira, you need to fucking calm down,” he coaxed, reaching for me, but I swatted his hands away. “You’re going to go into shock again. They’ve kept you sedated with an IV of Ativan or and Valium.” He nodded to the IV in my arm. “It was for your own good. You were a danger to yourself when they brought you in.”

I tore it out of my forearm, not giving a fuck about how bad it hurt. Throwing the blankets off my broken body, trying to get my legs to function enough to get out of there.

“I’m going to get a nurse.”

“Did you do this?! Did you set us up?!” I seethed as he was about to turn the door handle, making him turn to look at me again. “Is that why you were warning me?! Because you knew what was going to happen, you sick fuck!”

He surrendered his hands out in front of him. “Amira, why would I do that? Why would I warn you if I wanted you dead?”

“Because you’re a murderer!”

“Yeah, I am. But so are you.”

I jerked back with wide eyes. He was right, I was a murderer. No different from the men who ruined me.

“Shit,” he breathed out, taking in my wrecked expression. “I didn’t mean it like that. Let me explain, okay?”

“Liar! You’re nothing but a liar!”

“Jesus Christ, Amira! I knew something was going down, alright? I knew Vinny’s family was sniffing around, but I wasn’t sure. I had no facts to back it up. It’s why I couldn’t give you a name. I offered you the only thing I could give you… my p

rotection. You weren’t invited to my party, neither was Damien. They set it up that way. I will find out how they got in, and trust me, I will personally torture whoever is responsible for granting them access.”

“Why your place then? Huh? Why there?”

“They wanted your head, and they knew Damien was involved in some way or another with you. We all did. He left with you the night you guys went fucking joy riding, killing most of the men. He’s the DA, so they knew the consequences of taking him out, but it would also take me out if they set it up to look like I was responsible for the bullshit that was happening in my basement. Leaving my territory open for bids and them escaping free and clear. Make sense now? Because we need to get our stories straight before the cops come in here looking for answers. They’ve already been—”

“Oh God,” I blurted, my hand going to my stomach. Feeling as though I was going to be sick. “I should have listened to you. If I would have listened, they both would still be alive. I did this. I killed them.” Pain coursed through my entire body, my head throbbed, and my vision blurred.

“Amira… relax… you’re going to—”

“Fuck you!” I shouted, quickly spiraling out of control, unable to stop myself from losing my shit again.

“We need a doctor! Now!” Vlad ordered from somewhere within the room. I couldn’t tell what way was up or down, the walls closing in on me. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t move.

Was I screaming?

Was I crying?

Hands touched me everywhere and all at once, causing me to fight harder.

“Dr. Pierce, she ripped out her IV. Let me—”

“No, not yet. She’s going into shock,” a man with kind eyes said in front of me. Grabbing my wrists, holding them in between us. “Amira, Amira, Amira, follow the sound of my voice,” he soothed in a calm, leveled tone. “You need to stay with me. Focus on me, only me.”

My gaze immediately locked with his within a matter of seconds. There was something familiar about him, something I couldn’t place or understand, but for some reason I felt comforted by his presence. All the fight in me started to diminish as if it was never there to begin with. My body shook uncontrollably, and even though he was standing right in front of me, his voice sounded tunneled. Coming closer and closer.

“That’s right, good girl. Now breathe in and out, slowly, slower… yes… just like that. Just like that, Amira. That’s a good girl, that’s a very good girl.”

I just stared at him, not saying a word or making a sound. Trying to find my clarity through his guidance.

“I got it from here,” he announced to the room, nodding for them to leave.

Once they did, Vlad chimed in, “Looks like you got the magic touch, Aiden.”

I narrowed my eyes at him, recognizing where I knew him from. “You were there. At the fight. With Noah. You were checking him over, right?”

He clenched his jaw, tension instantly filling his eyes.

Vlad answered for him, “Well, looks like her memory’s intact.”

“How long have I been out?”

“Most of the night and half of the morning,” the doctor replied, eyeing me carefully. “Amira, I have something to tell you.”

A female’s voice sounded, “District Attorney Damien Montero shot—”

“Where is that coming from?” I interrupted, tugging my wrists from his hold, and got off the bed to follow the sound of the woman’s voice. Glancing all around the room.

“Notorious criminals were found dead on the scene and there has yet to be any information disclosing the events that resulted in several casualties.”

Like a moth to a flame, I found the source. Slowly walking toward the television in the nurse’s station as if it were my execution. Everyone’s eyes were glued to a photo of Damien on the screen. Tears suddenly slid down the sides of my face.

“Oh God,” I breathed out, reaching for him. “I’m sorry, Damien. I’m so sorry.”

“Amira, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” the doctor informed from behind me. “He’s not—”

The sound of the sliding door opening behind me jarred me from the memory.

“I would do it again if I had to.”

I jolted, instantly spinning around. My heart lurching into my throat when I saw him.

TWENTY-SIX

AMIRA

“Jesus Christ! You scared the shit out of me!” I shouted, placing my hand over my rapidly beating heart. “Don’t do that! I thought you were stuck at the office ‘til later tonight.”

He grinned folding his arms over his suited chest, leaning against the doorframe in a cocky sort of way that only he could ever pull off. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost, Muñeca, but considering what you’re remembering, I guess that’s to be expected. I did come back from the dead for you after all.”

I chuckled, shaking my head.

“I have to say though.” He pushed off the door, walking over to me. Placing his index finger under my chin to look up at him. “Waking up to your gorgeous face next to my hospital bed did make me think I’d died and gone to Heaven. But then I remembered there was no way in hell I’d end up there, so I must’ve still been alive,” he teased, releasing my chin to snake his arms around the small of my back, resting his chin on my head.

He did that a lot, finding any reason to hold me close, as if he was making up for lost time. I laughed into his chest, I couldn’t help it. If there was one thing Damien was always able to do, it was pull me out of my nightmares and the things that haunted me. Experiencing them with me firsthand.

“Who would have known that dose of ephedrine they gave you in the basement would jump-start your heart when they were loading you in the ambulance. They called your time of death, Damien. You were clinically dead. It saved your life.”

“No, the emergency surgery Dr. Pierce performed on my lung and nicked artery saved my life. Unbeknownst to you, I was just faking it all,” he joked, both of us knowing it couldn’t have been further from the truth.

“Oh yeah? How did that go?” I pulled away to look at the damn smirk on his face. Waiting to hear what he’d come up with next.

It was something different every time. He even went as far as saying that he couldn't leave this world or any other without his soul mate by his side, and he’d never drag me to Hell, so Earth would have to do.

“It got you to stay and take care of me, didn’t it?” He tapped the end of my nose with his index finger, and after all these years, it still gave me butterflies. “So, like I said, I’d do it all over again if I had to.”

It was true. I’d been staying in Damien’s guest bedroom for the most part, since he left the hospital. Tending to his needs and nursing him back to health during the months and months of recovery. He never asked me to stay, however he never requested for me to leave either. Seeing as he hated to be coddled or cared for. There was nowhere else I’d rather be than here with him, and that terrified me in completely distinctive ways.

He didn’t go back to the office for the first three months, handling most of his cases over the phone or through email. The assistant DA appearing in court for him during his absence. Over the last three months, he slowly started to go places like his office, the courtroom, wherever he needed to be that day. Never working a full twelve-hours like he used to, or so he told me. Saying there was no reason to drown himself in work when I was waiting at home for him.

Home.

Was a word he never used lightly. It flowed off his tongue like I belonged here. As if I had always been there with him since day one.

When Dr. Pierce said Damien was in critical condition but alive, it was one of the most surreal moments of my life. I fainted, exactly the way I had when they called his time of death in the basement. The second I’d come to, I went to him. Waiting by his bedside for him to wake up. Praying to God that he would survive, contrary to my last prayer to take him away.

I sat beside him, holding his hand and talking to him about any

thing and everything, hoping he could hear every word of truth pouring from my heart. In the days that followed, it was one thing after another. First, he came off the ventilator the morning after surgery since he was stable enough to breathe on his own. But the chest tube remained in place for another full day prior to them removing it. Unnerving doesn’t even begin to describe how it felt to watch them take out the long ass tube from his chest. He still received blood and IV fluids until his counts were in range to take him off those as well. The beeping of the cardiac monitors became the best sound I ever heard, his heart beating strong and hard. I was an expert on reading his stats by the time we’d left the hospital a week later. Although, it was three anxiety-ridden days after surgery before he finally woke up.

Dr. Pierce was amazing the entire time. I knew he worked for Vlad, or they had some sort of arrangement, because he was tending to Noah after the fight.

Why would he involve himself with a corrupt motherfucker like Vlad?

He did take time out of his busy schedule to answer any questions I had, being as patient with me as you would be with a child. Constantly reassuring me that he was providing the best care possible. We’d sit in the conference room at the hospital and look over Damien’s stats together, making sure I understood the healing process. Providing any knowledge I’d need once I got him home. Setting up house calls when Damien refused to rest. Going above and beyond normal patient care. Being a doctor was definitely his passion. It was evident in the way he explained things. In how much he cared.

It was entertaining to watch how all the nurses drooled over the good doctor from afar, but I could see why. The man was probably somewhere in his forties and ruggedly handsome. His tan skin, long slender nose, and square jawline were as startling as his crystal blue eyes. He had a graying five o’clock shadow and short brown wavy hair that was also graying at his temples. His dimples shown through when he smiled, wanting to calm my nerves or ease my worry. There was a wedding band on his left hand and it made sense a man like him would be married.