Black and Shy looked at each other wondering if any of that had anything to do with Ezequiel Simmonds or was the old man senile.
“Emiliano Molinero, he’s a high-ranking Ferreira financier,” he pointed at them. “And a childhood friend of Juan, owned the First Americas Bank. Members were permitted to overdraft accounts and take out loans without repayment which allowed them to move and launder large amounts of money.” He laughed. “That bank used to launder so much Comodoro money that the United States government officially cited it as a money laundering operation. Through their affiliation with Matías Cabrero,” he began, but that was the moment when a bullet shattered the window and a single shot penetrated Alejandro’s heart.
This time, Mr. and Mrs. Black wasted no time getting out of there. Alejandro was getting ready to tell them something; something important enough for him to have to die rather than tell it. That let Black and Shy know that whatever was going on, was far from over.
“Where are we going now?” Shy asked as they left the house.
“Where we should have gone from the beginning.”
Chapter Twenty-nine
Geno was able to get Valencia to the hospital in time for the emergency room doctor to remove the bullet in her abdomen. The doctor told Geno that the bullet nicked the intestine and there was some risk of the perforation causing fecal matter complications, and that she was weak from the amount of blood that she lost, but she was going to be fine. When she was taken to a room to recover, Geno bribed the nurses so he could stay in the room with her. He was still there at shift change and those nurses made him leave the room.
When Valencia woke up the following morning the first thing, she felt was the pain in her stomach. It brought her back to the night before, sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall, thinking that she was going to die. She opened her eyes and looked around the hospital room and was thankful to be alive. That was when Valencia saw Adrianna sitting in the chair next to the bed.
“Hey, Adrianna,” Valencia said, slowly, and tried to sit up, but she felt too weak for that. Adrianna stood up and walked to the bed.
“Why won’t you die?”
“What did you say?”
“Why won’t you die?” she asked and leaned forward.
“What is wrong with you?”
“Everything and everybody around you dies.” She got in Valencia’s face. “Everything you touch dies.” She stood up straight. “But not you. No, not the great Valencia DeVerão, you just go on hurting and destroying people. And once you’ve sucked the life out of them, like the vampire you are, you kill them, or you just leave them to die. But not you, you just won’t die. I poison you, you won’t die,” she mumbled. “I hire a hit man and you still won’t die.”
“You’re scaring me, Adrianna.”
“You should be scared. You should feel the fear and hopelessness you cause in others before you die.”
Valencia tried to reach for the nurse call button, but it was too far away, and she was too weak to sit up.
“I moved it, sorry.”
“Whatever I did, I’m sorry. I know I made a lot of mistakes and people got hurt, I know that. But tell me who you think I hurt, and we’ll make it right.”
Adrianna got in her face. “Think you hurt? You didn’t hurt him, you killed him. You took everything he had, sucked the life out of him and then you threw him away like he was nothing.”
“Who are you talking about?”
“There are so many that you don’t even remember the people you destroy.”
“Who are you talking about?”
“Darnel Wilkes.”
“Darnel?”
He was the man who, along with Sherwin Blake helped Valencia when she founded her first company, and later tried to sue her.
“You remember Darnel, the man who made you a millionaire. And when you were done with him, you threw him away and left him for dead like he was trash. Well he was my brother.”
After losing the lawsuit, his life fell apart, he got into drugs, found himself living on the street and went a little crazy. When he finally reached out to her and came to live with her, Darnel was too far gone and eventually committed suicide.
“I’m sorry, Adrianna. But you don’t know that whole story. Let me explain.”
“Explain what? How do you explain how you used him and when you were done you turned him into a homeless crackhead? How do you explain that?”