Javi tries to rouse me from my sleep, and I dig in deeper. My dreams are too sweet, and his touch is so warm against me.

I don't want to move. I don't want to go anywhere other than this space between my dream and reality. But he is insistent.

"My Bella, I need you to wake up. Wake up and be a good girl for me, yes?"

My eyes are cemented together, and the thing that he asks of me is easier said than done. The pills he gave me knocked me out. I don't know how long it's been.

Days, months, weeks.

I’m groggy and confused when I realize that I’m already dressed. Not just dressed. But dressed for outside, with a coat and shoes and socks. My hair is braided too.

I blink up at him, and he is still blurry until my eyes adjust to the light.

"It is time to go," he tells me. "There is something we must do together."

I shake my head and tell him no. Whatever it is, I don't want to go.

"You will want to see this, my Bella.”

Still, I try to pull the blankets back over me. Javi sighs.

"It is about your father."

And now he has my attention.

"What about him?"

My voice is froggy. I sound weird. Terrified. Terrified that he will have bad news for me. But Javi's only answer is to help me from the bed.

"Come," he insists.

I follow him. It isn't easy. I'm still in pain. But he helps me every step of the way, allowing me to lean on him for support.

He unlocks the front door, and my legs grow weak before locking into place. I don't want to leave anymore. I only want to stay.

The caged bird is me.

And I am afraid. More afraid than I have ever been in my whole life to step foot out that door. But I know that I must. Whatever news there is of my father, I must go. I must find out.

Knowing and doing are two different things. So even when Javi steps outside, I hesitate on the threshold. He looks back at me, extending his hand. A gesture that means so much more than just this moment.

It's there in his eyes. The change I had been hoping for all along. His barriers down. My monster is asking me to walk beside him. To trust him to guide me. To protect me and care for me.

With this knowledge, I step beside him. He holds my hand and nods. He feels it too. We are in this together. The walls have come down, and the only barriers we have now are those of the outside world.

He leads me to a motorcycle. His only mode of transportation. After providing me with a helmet, he helps me onto the back and secures my arms around his waist.

The engine roars to life, and the comfort of his scent surrounds me when I lean into his back. He drives us away from Moldavia and back towards the lights of the city.

My heart is calm, but my mind is loud with questions. It only gets louder when the scenery begins to change. When Javi turns into my old neighborhood. Then onto my street.

I hold onto him long after he parks in the driveway. He doesn't move either. But then the front door opens. And everything implodes.

My father stands on the stoop. The same stoop where I never thought I would see him again.

He is alive.

And his eyes are on me. Swimming with relief. I try to spring from the bike, but Javi captures me around the wrist. Our eyes meet for a split second, and there is real fear in his. Fear that he might lose me.

“Javi, it’s okay,” I tell him. “It’s okay.”

He hesitates for another long second before releasing me. I bound towards the stoop, the aches in my body fleeing in the presence of the joy I feel at this moment.

My father moves to meet me. Slower than usual. He is walking with a limp. But he is alive. Alive and... hugging me.

I sob against his chest. There are no words. None. Not between either of us, for a very long time. We just hold each other. And I am a little girl all over again. But he has never held me this way.

It feels so right. It feels like everything in my world is right again. Until I look up at his face and catch the way he is staring at Javi.

I have never seen him look at anyone this way. I have never seen so much hate. My arms fall away, and I wrap them around myself instead.

Relief dissipates and fades into confusion. Turmoil. The reality of my current situation is like a brick to the face. There is no peace to be had. There never was. Because now I'm caught between the two of them. The two men that I love the most.

The two men who hate each other.

"Let's go inside," Dad says. "Shall we?"

Javi dismounts from his bike and reaches the stoop in three long strides. Both men try to usher me in beside them, but Javi is the one I allow to guide me.

I don’t know why.

I am ashamed when I see the hurt in my father’s eyes. I am torn. I want to feel happy, but right now, all I feel is that the ground is about to give way beneath me at any moment. And Javi is the one I lean to.

He has been my source of comfort and pain for so long now. Perhaps it is just conditioning, but it doesn’t make it less real. I want my father to understand that. But it is clear he does not.

I try to read the unspoken messages that linger between them. Awful silence fills the room as they look to each other and then me.

Dad instructs us to take a seat on the couch while he sits in his usual chair. The chair that has been empty for so long.

I have so many questions.

“Where have you been?” I ask.

And now it is me who is unable to hide the hurt. It might not be rational, and I never realized it until now, but a part of me has blamed him for his absence. A part of me has been so angry with him for leaving me.

“Isa, I am so sorry,” he answers. “Something went bad on a job. It wasn’t meant to happen this way, but it did, and I’m sorry for the pain I have caused you.”

“That isn’t good enough,” I tell him, swiping away the fresh wave of tears as they fall. “You’ve been gone for months. I need to know where. I can’t accept your canned responses anymore. I need to know what happened to take you away.”

He sighs and rubs his forehead.

“I was in South America,” he says. “Our convoy got hit by a rebel group, and they took us hostage.”

I search his eyes, trying to discern whether he is telling me the truth. But the reality is, I don’t know. I have always accepted whatever my father told me without question. Only now, I am not so sure.

Regardless, it doesn’t matter where he was. He could tell me whatever he wanted to, and I wouldn’t know the difference. He could be spoon feeding me agency scripted dialogue, for all I know.

The important thing is that he’s home. And he’s safe. This is what I try to tell myself.

"There is much to discuss, my dearest Isabella," he continues on. "But we have all the time in the world for that. First, I must know. Are you okay?"

He glances at Javi again as he asks.

I swallow and nod. It doesn't look natural, but I really do feel okay. Dad isn’t buying what I’m selling either though. His eyes are roaming over my scratched face and arms.

"They are nothing," I assure him. "I'm okay, Dad. I promise. I'm just so happy to have you home. I thought… I thought I would never see you again."

My voice cracks and he reaches out to take my hand in his, squeezing with reassurance.

"I am okay, Isa," he assures me too. "I promise."

I choke back my emotion to give him a watery smile. Beside me, Javi squeezes my other hand. A gesture of comfort and possession. I glance at him and smile too. He wraps his hand around my knee, staking his claim on me in a way that provokes my father even further.

"Isa," my father commands. "I would like to speak to Javi alone."

Javi sneers, and he does not break eye contact from my father when he tells me it’s okay. I rise to give myself distance from both of them.

"No."

"No?" they both ask in unison.

"I said no," I reiterate. "I'm done with the secrets. With the lies. Whatever has happened between you, I deserve to know the truth. The whole truth. And I'm not going anywhere until I do."

My father shifts in his chair, unbuttoning the top of his shirt and rubbing at his throat. Javi is still calm, but now his eyes are on me. Concerned. I don't like it. But it only makes my point that much more valid.

My father does not miss Javi’s concern, and he seems to relax if only a little.

"Would you like to start, Javier?"

Javi scoffs at him and then paces the length of the floor.

“You would like that,” he says. “You would like me to be the one to hurt her this way. Because you are a coward.”

My father does not answer. His easiness is gone now, and all that remains is the flint in his eyes.Neither one of them is backing down from this silent war of wills. Javi moves towards me and tucks me back into his side.

"This is where we stand," Javi says. "Bella has been with me for the duration of your long absence. Much has changed since you were gone. Because she has been with me, and she has fallen in love with me."

The guardianship in his tone and body language can’t be denied. Even his stance is fierce. Protective. For some reason, he feels the need to safeguard me from my own father. But his eyes are soft and warm when he looks in my direction.

“And I have fallen for her, as well.”

My father shakes his head in disgust, but I can only focus on Javi’s words.

He just admitted that he’s in love with me. In front of my father. I don’t know what this means. But my stomach won’t stop fluttering, and my head is all fuzzy. I’m smiling, and I can’t help it.

Even though my father’s face is tomato red. Even though he looks so disappointed in me right now. He curses in Italian and scrapes a hand through his balding hair.

"I suppose you feel as though you have served your just desserts then."

"I will not deny that it is precisely what I set out to do with Bella,” Javi admits with shame in his eyes.

“It doesn’t matter,” I tell them both. “None of that matters now. It’s the past. Dad, you are back home now. And Javi and I… we love each other.”

"What have you done to my little girl?" My father howls.

His eyes are teary when he looks at me, pleading.

"Isa, he is a dangerous man. Whatever he has done to you... we can get you help. Whatever you think you are feeling for him right now, it isn't real."

Javi argues before I can, speaking in his native Spanish tongue, which my father understands but I do not. My head hurts as they continue to bicker, and I realize that maybe this wasn't the best idea after all.

I can't understand their words. But body language has no barrier. They hate each other. It is clear as day.

I still don't understand what happened between them. But despite the obvious tension in the room, I’m on a cloud of euphoria right now. It feels as though the storm clouds have finally lifted away and the sun is shining again.

Javi loves me. And my father has returned. The rest will have to work itself out. The rest, we can figure out later.

My father segues back to English, and Javi follows suit, answering him so that I can hear.

"I have hurt her," Javi says. "As I set out to do."

The tone of his voice threatens my haze of blissful ignorance. Something is off. Something is wrong. Javi is withdrawn. His eyebrows pinched, his shoulders tense.

He looks so ashamed. So guilty. And worse, he looks so far away.

“I learned from the best,” he continues. “I had every intention of coming here to thank you, Ray. For guiding me. For showing me the way. For teaching me how to destroy the fragile minds of people who are not like us.”

My father's face pales, and a cold sweat forms over my body. I don’t know what he’s saying. That my father did this to him? That he did to Javi, what Javi did to me?

I look up at Javi and see nothing but genuine sincerity on his face. He reaches out to touch my face, and for a moment, I forget everything else and focus on him. On the light in my heart. The one I thought long since extinguished, which now burns bright.

“My Bella,” he whispers. “I wanted to be selfish. I would give anything to be selfish if I did not know that there was only one possible outcome from all of this.”

My heart stops beating. My lungs stop taking in air. And I’m shaking my head before he can even say it.

“What do you mean?”

"Isa."

My father’s voice is harsh. Harsher than it's ever been with me, and he's looking at me like he doesn't know me at all right now. Like I am no longer his daughter, standing here in the house that I grew up in.

“What Javi is trying to say is that the things you are feeling right now, they aren’t real. And in time you will see that. You will understand that when you’ve had some time to heal. To contemplate the reality of your situation.”

“No,” I tell them both. “Don’t try to tell me what I feel. I love Javi. And it’s real. I will always love him.”

My father sighs and Javi looks away. I don’t like this. I don’t like where this is going. I won’t let him leave me behind, and I tell him so.

"I need a drink," my father says. "Will you get us a drink Isa, please."

His bar is still stacked against the wall where he left it, so I don't have to leave the room. It gives me the opportunity to clear my head. To digest everything that's happening.

I reach for the bourbon, and my father interrupts me.

"Not that," he says. "The Macallan."

I look back at him in question. He only drinks this whiskey on special occasions. But I guess today is a special occasion, being that he is alive.

I pour two glasses and take one to him and hand the other to Javi. They stare at each other from their seats, and I remain quiet between them.

My father swirls the amber liquid in his glass, staring into the abyss as he gathers his thoughts.

"This is over,” he says to Javi. "I'll never allow it to continue."

I rub my temples and look at my father.

"It isn't up to you," I tell him. "Dad, please. Don't do this. Not today."

"You don't know what you are saying, Isa. You have been brainwashed."

Javi meets my father's gaze head on.

"And you have a right to speak about brainwashing?"

Dad's face is red and mottled all over again.

"There are many things you do not understand," he tells Javi. "That you never could. You want to believe only what you want to believe."

Javi looks at me and shakes his head, his eyes sad.

"Bella does not need to hear these things.”

My father silently agrees, and the room falls still again. Too still. Like the calm before the storm. The tension is still there, simmering below the surface. And I am anxious now because I don’t know when it’s going to erupt. But I know one thing, and that is I won’t let Javi leave without me.

Not today. Not ever.

They both stare over the rims of their glasses, like snakes poised to strike. Javi is the first to drink, swallowing the entire contents of the tumbler in one fell swoop.

And then he looks at me again. His face contorted. At first, I think he is angry with me. But then he coughs. And sputters. And coughs again.

"Javi?"

I move to his side, but he doesn't respond.

It all happens in horrific slow motion. The color drains from Javi’s face while my father looks into his own tumbler and it shatters to the floor.

"Dad?" I scream.

Javi falls back against the sofa and begins to convulse.

"Dad! Help him. What's happening? Please help him."

My father rushes to Javi's side and begins chest compressions. I grab Javi’s face, trying to see him. Trying to see his eyes, but they are closed, and he is lifeless.

It's all happening too fast.

It's all too real. Nothing about this makes sense. He was just talking to me. And now he's lying here, and I can't see his eyes. I can't feel his heartbeat or hear his breath.

I'm sobbing. Begging him not to go anywhere. Demanding that he stops this right now. He can't trick me anymore. He can't play these games with me anymore. I’m too fragile, and I can’t survive it. Not this time. Not when he said he loved me, and I believed him.

During the chaos, the front door opens, and someone else appears. In the back of my mind, I hope that it's the ambulance. The ambulance that's coming to rescue him. To fix him. The ambulance that we haven't even had time to call. But paramedics don’t wear a mask. And they don’t have guns, either.

"Time to say goodbye, little Bella," the strange voice tells me.

"What?" I blink and cling to Javi. "No."

None of this is real. It can't be. It just can't. I don't know what's happening. Only that I'm sobbing hysterically and Javi isn’t moving, and I’m so scared. My father keeps saying that he's sorry. He's so sorry. There's nothing he can do.

But he’s a liar, and I hate him.

I hate him so much, and I can’t even comprehend why at this moment. He's dragging me away from Javi.

The masked men are shouting orders. But I can't hear them. Because I'm trying to get to Javi. I'm trying to fight my father off. But he's too big. Too strong. And the men are taking Javi away from me. Dragging him out the front door.

I scream at them to stop. Only one of them does, just to look back at me one last time.

"I will send you the ashes, little Bella. It's what he would have wanted."