****
"Messina. I told you to not come back here," a man with a thick Spanish accent said from the other side of Noah's tinted out car window. "Boy's dead. It's done."
Boy's dead.
It's done.
Boy's dead.
His name is Hunter.
Hunter is dead.
Unlocking the car, I pushed the door open and climbed out. My entire body was shaking from head to toe, but my voice didn’t waver when I asked, "Are you Gonzalez?"
The man stared hard at me for a long moment before nodding stiffly.
"Do you know who I am?" I asked, tone flat and cold. "I'm the woman carrying his child inside of me," I continued, not waiting for his response. I didn't need it. I just needed him to hear me. "A child who will never know his father because you betrayed him –" my voice broke off as my tears threatened to choke me, but I forced myself to say what I had come here to say, "Take me to him. I want to see him."
"Coming here was a mistake, Damita." The man looked at me with a pained expression. "Believe me when I say, you do not want to see."
"I want to see him," I repeated, voice hoarse. "I want to take him home."
"Aye, aye," he muttered, rubbing his jaw. "Then you will be scraping his bones out of the ashes."
A harsh sob racked through my body; a direct result of his words.
Of his actions.
"You should know," Gonzalez added. "The debt is paid."
With tears blinding me, I looked up at his face in confusion. "The debt?"
"Between your family and your grandfather," Gonzalez replied. "The boy's life was the price of revenge." He inclined his head towards the fire and said, "It is over now. You will not come to any harm."
Pain.
Pain.
Pain.
"This is our code, Damita." Gonzalez gestured towards a bonfire where several men were standing around, all staring into the flames. "Our way of life."
With my head held up, I half-walked, half-staggered towards the flames.
In the haze of my grief, I could smell it; the stench of death all around me.
The stench of burning flesh.
My eyes landed on the fire and my head shriveled up and died right along with him.
I could see the clothes.
The blond hair singeing.
The smell of him being erased from this earth.
Dropping to my knees, I placed my hands on the ground, and screamed.
No one touched me.
Not one word was spoken.
The men that had been standing around the fire all vanished from sight.
And I was left alone in my grief.
To mourn the other half of my soul.
As my lover perished in the flames.
I remained right there on the blood-soaked ground, keeping vigil over his burning body, wondering how I was ever going to get back up again.
When the flames eventually turned to embers and then to ash on the ground, and the sun began to rise in the sky above me, I exhaled a ragged breath.
Removing my sweater, I laid it out flat on the ground beside me before reaching into the ashes.
With trembling hands, I began to scoop them up, placing them carefully on the fabric.
"Hope," a familiar voice choked out before coming to kneel beside me.
I wasn’t surprised to see him beside me.
I'd known he was here.
Keeping watch over me.
Over Hunter.
"Don’t do this," Noah begged, covering my hands with his. "Please…he wouldn’t want you to do this."
"I need to bring him home, Noah," I whispered, tears streaming down my face, as my body shook violently. "I have to do this." Sniffling, I reached for another handful of ashes. "He deserves better than this…"
"I know," he whispered. Taking my hands, he placed them on my lap, and said, "I'll do it."
And he did.
Numb to the bone, I watched Noah gather his ashes and wrap them safely in my sweater. "I'll take care of him, Hope," he promised. "I'll make sure he gets the sendoff he deserves."
Climbing to my feet, I glanced at the bundled piece of fabric in my uncle's hands, and felt the last strip of life peel from my bones.
And then I turned around and walked away, ignoring Noah's protests; saying it wasn’t safe to be alone.
I didn’t care about David Henderson anymore.
He couldn’t hurt me.
Not when he already killed me.
Not when I was already dead on the inside.