Chapter Thirteen

Mari Belle

 

Shock.

Surprise.

Elation.

They all rushed through me.

“What!” I screeched. I heard the words he said, but they weren’t making sense. I buried my daughter how could she be alive.

“Yesnia, she’s alive. She’s still healing. Her lung was punctured by the bullet. She had to have surgery and a blood transfusion. But your pain can be no more. She’s alive.” Javi’s words came out but my brain struggled to process them.

Anger hit me like a wrecking ball, slamming into me and destroying my heart. I killed my brother because I thought he killed my daughter. Guilt gnawed at me. This was a betrayal and I couldn’t fathom what to feel or think.

“I trusted you,” I screamed as I yanked free from his hold.

“I had to keep her safe,” he yelled back at me chasing me as I took off.

I ran through the house crazed until I came to the kitchen. He let me hurt while he knew where she was. I saw red. Nothing was clear other than this need to make him hurt. I pulled a knife from a butcher block and held it to Javi’s throat as he approached me.

He smirked and pressed his neck into the blade. “I’m ready to die, mi ceilo. I have but one request.”

The emotions were too much. I was struggling with everything. I didn’t want to give him a damn thing. The tears ran down my face in hot streams.

“In your pain lies my pain. In your suffering, I too suffer. For what you feel, mi ceilo, I feel it too.” Javi lifts his phone punching in numbers on the screen.

“Hello,” I heard Yesnia answer in a groggy voice. “Papá, when can I see Mamá?”

“Soon, hija. Very soon. Papá loves you, hija. I’m so ready to bring you home.”

Her voice was Heaven to my ears. “Hija,” my voice cracked.

“Mamá, I missed you.” Her voice picked up hearing from me.

“Oh hija,” I started to tell her everything but stopped myself. “I’m so thankful you’re okay.”

“Tio can’t get to me here. Papá has made sure of it.”

I glared at Javi. He kept my daughter from me.

“Tio won’t hurt you ever again. I can promise you that,” I explained.

“I know. Papá told me this would never happen again. I believe him. He loves you, Mamá.” I heard the hope in her voice. “Estella has told me so much about him and you. I’m sorry I helped Tio.”

“I want to see you, hija. And no more talk of Tio, he can’t get to you ever again.” My heart found comfort talking to her. I wanted to both kill Javi and never hang up the phone. I needed to hold her. I needed to see her, touch her. I needed this to be real.

“I want to see you too,” she told me as I heard voices in the background so I knew she wasn’t alone.

“Are you safe, hija?”

“Yes, I have Axel, my friend here and Abuela.”

I found comfort that she wasn’t alone, but at the same time my heart hurt to be away from her. “It kills me not to be with you,” I told her honestly as I felt the emotions overtaking me.

“We’ll be together soon. Papá promised I only had to stay away from you until he could make sure Tio wasn’t able to get to me.”

She was confident in her father. They had bonded over this tragedy.

I had been left in the dark.

It hurt.

Not as much as watching her bleed, but the pain was still raw and the betrayal was too deep.

Javi moved the phone closer to him as I kept the knife pressed to his neck. “I’ll make the arrangements, Yesnia. We’ll be to you tomorrow.”

“Okay, Papá.”

She was calm. She was okay. The call ended with I love you’s exchanged and Yesnia oblivious to the fact that I had killed her uncle and currently held a knife to her father’s throat.

“We’ll not be seeing my daughter tomorrow. I’ll be seeing her.” I pressed the knife in deeper seeing the red of his blood trickle out as the blade sliced into him. “You’ll be lucky to see another day. My daughter is gone to you. She and I are leaving and you’re not to follow.”

“You can hate me, but first hear me out.”

I thought for a moment and paused just enough for him to continue.

“You had over twenty years with her. Every decision for her life was made by you and you alone. I know you feel betrayed,” he said looking at me sternly. “I know that feeling well. You betrayed me before too. This wasn’t about that though and it wasn’t about you. It was about Yesnia. I had to keep her safe. I had to make sure her death was believable. We weren’t certain of Maricio’s reach. If he had eyes on the mass, it needed to be real. I did what I did for our daughter to be safe. Hate me all you want because I wouldn’t change a fuckin’ thing about how I handled her incident. I kept her safe.”

“You grieved beside me like you hurt too and all along you knew she was okay.”

His eye turned angry. “I hurt. Do not diminish my pain, Mari. I was away from my daughter after just learning of her existence. This wasn’t easy for me and it wasn’t without sacrifice. So before you get on a tangent and on some high and mighty roll you should know I have been away from her too. It killed me but I stayed away for her safety. And I couldn’t say she was one hundred percent safe until Maricio was eliminated.”

I was so angry. So hurt. I couldn’t think straight.

I jerked the knife from his neck throwing it to the floor as I screamed out in frustration.

“Where is she?”

“Currently healing in a home three hours from here on a farm. She’s surrounded by fields and trees.”

“Who is with her? Axel, whom I don’t know and your mother, but who else?”

“The Hellion, the biker who brought her to me is Axel Crews. He is no stranger to our daughter though. When I found out about Yesnia and sent my people for her, they studied her social media. She posted a picture with the biker on New Years Eve. So when I arranged her transport, I used him so she would be with someone familiar. After she was shot, Aurelio rushed her to a clinic with a doctor on my payroll. He saved her life. I didn’t want her to be alone, but I wasn’t sure who could be safe with her. When she came to, Aurelio said she was muttering she should have called Axel.”

“You left her with Aurelio when I could have been there to care for her.”

Javi nodded. “Yeah, I did because Maricio would have kept coming after you and using her to hurt us both. I wouldn’t allow her to feel anymore pain. So I contacted the Hellions Motorcycle Club and made arrangements for them to send their crew with Axel to the house where Yesnia would be recovering. They did because it was a job that I paid them well for, and Axel has been by her side as a source of familiarity and comfort.”

“And she was okay with this?”

He shook his head. “She didn’t care. She’s happy to be alive and safe. Axel will be going back to North Carolina and she will come here tomorrow. My mother didn’t know of her situation until after the mass and didn’t go to her until we left to chase after Maricio. I needed to know my mother was safe and I had many resources covering Yesnia so having them together made sense.”

“Money can’t buy everything.”

Javi smirked his blood still came down my neck only it was a little less now.

“No, it can’t, but I used it to keep her safe and I would do it all again.”

I thought on his words. He did all of this to keep her safe. To keep her alive, he pulled every resource at his disposal.

I felt like I was given a second chance to be a mom.

“She’s had no family with her.”

He shook his head. “My mother and my sister went to her. Luciana had to return to North Carolina to check on Anna who decided to stop answering her calls so she couldn’t stay. She needed to be a mother, but has called Yesnia every day. My mother has not left her side since the day I made the arrangements for Estella. They have bonded and gotten to know one another.”

A warmth filled me. My daughter was alive and she wasn’t alone.

“Take me to her.”

“No,” he replied. “She’ll be transported home tomorrow and we will meet her there.”

“I want to see my daughter now.”

“We have to sort our shit first.”

I thought for a moment and played my cards. “If I sort things with you then she comes home?”

He nodded.

“What do you want?”

He leaned back relaxed. “I want our family. We’re reunited. We have a chance at a life together.”

“I can’t simply marry you. That’s crazy.” I couldn’t believe he really had hope we could be together. I didn’t know what to think much less feel. Currently, I was fighting the urge I had to kill him.

“Didn’t ask for that. I’m not getting any younger and neither are you. I just want our second chance for you, for me, for us, and for Yesnia.”

“I can’t make you promises. And I don’t think the world you live in is for me and my daughter.”

“Our daughter,” he corrected. “I’ve never met a woman more capable of being in my world than you. Without hesitation you have protected me and our family.”

I shook my head trying to shake off the warmth filling me at his words.

“I just want a chance. No promises on either side. We’re connected by grief, love, and history. Tell me you feel nothing and I’ll give you and Yesnia every thing you want including freedom from me.”

I looked him in the eye. I saw his scar and the pain hit me. Everything he had been through because of my brother. The pain, the loss, the years he lost, it all swarmed in my head. I couldn’t say I felt nothing because that would be a lie.

“I don’t know what I feel.”

He smirked. “That’s a start and I’ll take it.”

He lifted his phone again. “Aurelio, bring my daughter home.”

Excitement, happiness, and comfort filled me.

“Can we leave now?” I asked needing to get to her.

“Are you gonna put a knife to my throat again?”

I looked him in the eye. “If you betray me and keep me from my daughter ever again, Javier Almanza, past, present, or future be damned I’ll not only put the knife to your throat again, but this time I’ll cut deep and wide until you bleed out at my feet the way my heart bled for my daughter.”

“You’re mine,” he told me proudly. Extending his arm he showed me the signature Almanza cartel dagger tattoo. “We cut with a knife for a bullet is too fast. When my enemies die, they feel my presence and they know their end is coming.”

“I’m not part of your cartel.”

“My cock in your pussy. My name’ll one day be on your body. You’re mine, Mari as the cartel is mine. The difference is you are not part of my cartel, my cartel is yours. The power I have is yours to take. The empire I amassed is yours to manage. I give you everything if only you would give me this chance.”

“I can’t think clearly. I need to see Yesnia.”

He softened. “Understandable. Let’s go home.”

And just like that he loaded us in his car and we hit the road to go home. I was a bundle of nerves ready to hold her again. My daughter was alive and returning to me. There wasn’t a better moment in the world than the one when I held her in my arms once again.