Cora
“No,” I snapped.
“What do you mean no? You gave five grand to Jennifer. And I get two hundred bucks?” Meredith asked, thoroughly insulted.
“You got two hundred bucks and a trip to rehab,” I corrected. “When you finish there and stay clean for another thirty days of outpatient, I’ll pay for a plane ticket for you to go to your sister’s house in Virginia. And when you get a job that actually requires you to pay taxes and stay clean for another thirty days, I’ll pay your first and last months’ rent on an apartment of your own.”
“That’s not fair!” she shouted, looking around the room for someone to back her up.
Jennifer was not surprisingly silent. Tears were still streaming down her cheeks after hearing the news that I—or, really, Penn—was going to pay for her first year of college, and I’d given her five grand to buy a car and a wardrobe with slightly more fabric.
“Meredith, I’m gonna tell you this one more time and then, if you keep this shit up, you are walking out of here with nothing. I am not here to fund your life. I am here to make sure you live long enough to actually have one. So take the damn money. Go buy a toothbrush and some body wash, and I’ll text you the details on the rehab program I find for you. It’s your choice if you want to show up or not. But if you don’t, then this will be the last money you ever get off me. Do you understand?”
She was so pissed that her face was turning red.
I couldn’t have cared less.
Penn had died to get them that money. If they didn’t want it, I’d give it to someone who did. Cut and dry. End of story.
I waved the two hundred bucks in her direction. “Last chance.”
“This is bullshit,” she muttered, but she plucked the money from between my fingers and stomped out.
I wasn’t sure if she’d take me up on my rehab offer, but she needed it. Desperately. She’d been using drugs and alcohol to numb the pain for too long.
And with absolute agony burning my soul, I understood her more than ever. But I didn’t have the ability to fall into the pits of despair like so many of the girls had over the years.
I had to keep going.
Keep moving.
Keep…living.
Even when I couldn’t breathe.
One in. One out.
“Thanks, Cora,” Jennifer said softly before giving me a hug.
“No problem. Get those applications in as soon as possible, and let me know where you get accepted.”
She nodded, more tears falling from her chin.
“And stop crying. You deserve this. You’re smart, Jenn. Just keep your head up, and I know you’ll kick some major college ass.”
“I promise. I will.”
“Now, get out of here. You have some shopping to do.”
She nodded again and started out, but Drew stopped her short of the door.
“You find a car you’re interested in, you call me and I’ll come take a look at it before you buy it. Used-car salesmen love nothing more than to rip off an unsuspecting woman.”
She smiled up at him. “Thanks, Drew.”
He offered her a wink, but there was nothing flirty about it. It was sweet.
With the exception of going back and forth to the storage unit to grab me more cash and the occasional dinner, he hadn’t left our sides since the fire. I wasn’t sure if he was using us as a distraction to escape the reality that he’d really lost his brother. Or maybe he was genuinely worried about me and stayed to keep his finger on the pulse. Either way, it was nice having him around.
At first.
For the last week, we’d all been in a holding pattern. The sun rose every morning and set every night, but that was the only thing that seemed normal anymore. Everything else was foreign territory.
Life without the chaos of running the building.
Life without the fear of Marcos and Dante.
Life without the warmth of Penn’s arms.
I was still confused on what had actually happened that night. I’d asked Drew a million different questions, but he didn’t seem to have any answers. Or at least none that he was telling me.
He’d sworn that he didn’t know where the money had come from.
And promised me that he had no idea why Penn had been at the apartment.
He’d looked me right in the eyes and vehemently told me he was just as confused as I was.
But he wasn’t, because he hadn’t spent the last week asking me the exact same questions.
People by nature seek the answers to what we don’t understand. Especially when it comes to our loved ones. When Nic had been murdered, I’d been there and still sought an explanation from the Guerreros for the events that had led up to his death.
While Drew definitely seemed affected by having lost Penn, he wasn’t consumed with grief.
The police had been by the hotel multiple times to talk to Drew. He’d always step out into the hall or meet them down in the lobby. At first, I’d thought it was because he was shielding me from more pain.
But, more recently, I was getting suspicious that maybe he was actually shielding me from the truth.
I’d had my fair share of conversations with the cops too, but they didn’t seem to have any more answers than I did.
After Manuel had gone to jail on a laundry list of convictions, the police had been eyeing Marcos and Dante for years. They were suspects one and two when the city’s famed district attorney, Thomas Lyons, had reported his wife and his child as missing—this bullshit including a tear-filled press conference that made primetime news. Back then, I’d figured that had been the equivalent of declaring World War III. And while I would have loved nothing more than for Thomas to finish what he’d started and take down the rest of the Guerrero family, surprisingly, he’d never followed through. He had the power, but I suspected he enjoyed the national attention, and the mystery of it all definitely hadn’t hurt his career. The label of “grieving victim” had only made his parade of justice that much more impressive while he’d single-handedly plowed through the city’s criminal population.
The cops had never let Catalina’s disappearance go, and watching Thomas, who they considered one of their own, lose his family had only painted a bigger target on the Guerreros’ backs. But they’d never gotten anything to stick on either one of them. Now though, with a video of Marcos and Dante chasing a man into an apartment, that man being my boyfriend and me being their dead brother’s wife, it wasn’t like they were spending a lot of time trying to prove the Guerreros’ innocence.
Especially not after a search of their houses revealed a fresh body buried in Marcos’s backyard and over a million dollars’ worth of drugs in Dante’s house. As far as the police were concerned, everything was tied up in a pretty red bow for them. Case closed.
As for me, I was more concerned with the how this had happened.
Dante and Marcos’s official cause of death had come back as smoke inhalation, but they’d suffered significant trauma to their faces and their bodies before that. The cops had concluded that it was from fighting with Penn inside the apartment before the fire had broken out.
Meanwhile, Penn’s official cause of death had been ruled a homicide thanks to a bullet in his chest.
I’d thrown up for over an hour after Detective Morris had informed us of this.
Even in a state of total emotional upheaval, I kept a close eye on Drew.
He was Penn’s brother, after all. His only response had been to let out a loud curse, thank the detective, and then sit on the floor in the bathroom with me, alternating between rubbing my back and staring at his shoes. It was strange. But everyone handled emotions differently.
Then it got weirder. Drew was still waiting on the city to release Penn’s body, and over the last few days, I’d started planning a small memorial ceremony. I’d never seen Drew so mad as when I’d told him about it. He’d stormed out of the room and sat in the hall with his forearms propped on his knees and his head hanging between his arms for over two hours. I may have (read: definitely) watched him through the peephole for at least half of that time. He didn’t speak as he crawled into bed that night. And the next day, he didn’t mention it at all.
Yeah. It was safe to say something was definitely not right. And while I hadn’t yet been able to figure it out, I wasn’t about to give up.
As the days passed, my patience was slipping with Drew. But if there was one thing I’d learned in the thirteen years since Nic died, it was that anger got me nowhere. However, an unassuming smile and a well-thought-out plan? Yeah. I was in business.
“Anyone else coming today?” Drew asked, flipping the lock on the top of the door after Jennifer left.
I sat beside River on the bed. She moved the laptop to her other side to allow me space.
I shot him an appreciative grin. “No, it was just those two today. How much are we down to?”
He pulled his phone out, his fingers swiping across the screen on what I assumed was the calculator. “I guess depending on how much college costs these days, a little over six hundred left.”
I groaned. I had so much to do. I wasn’t eager to give any of the girls a ton of cash. It’d be all too easy for them to get robbed or blow it twenty dollars at a time until they had nothing left. Instead, I was paying as much as I could to businesses, apartment complexes, colleges, doctors, and, soon, a few different rehab facilities. Seeing as to how this all had to be done via cash transaction, it was incredibly time consuming.
But staying busy was far better than the stabbing pain I felt each time I thought about everything we’d lost.
River looked up at me. “You’re really just going to give away all this money?”
“You got a better idea?”
She turned the computer to face me. “Yeah. We find an apartment that costs more than seven hundred bucks a month. These places aren’t much better than the last one.”
“Baby, we have over a million dollars in cash and I have a record and no job. If we get anything that costs more than seven hundred dollars a month, we might as well hang a red flag on the door ourselves. Besides, you just gonna forget about everybody else? What do you think will happen to them next? Dante is gone, but that doesn’t mean that someone else isn’t waiting to take his place. And who knows? Maybe that guy is worse. We take care of each other. That means me and you. And us and them.”
She shifted uncomfortably and flicked her gaze back to the screen. “Okay. I’ll keep looking.”
I tossed my arm around her shoulders. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll bump it up to seven fifty. Does that make it any easier?”
She started scrolling through apartment listings again. “Nah, seven hundred’s good. We’ll be fine.”
God, she was a good kid.
Drew settled on the bed beside us, grabbed the remote, and aimed it at the TV. “So what are we doing tonight, ladies? You want to rent a movie or something?”
“Why don’t you go out?” I suggested.
His head snapped my way. “You trying to get rid of me?”
Yes, I thought.
“Maybe,” I teased.
His jaw slacked open with mock injury, but before he had the chance to reply, a loud knock sounded at the door.
The humor in his face disappeared as he asked, “You expecting anyone?”
I shook my head, panic erupting inside me. River must have felt it, because she set the computer aside and sat up.
He knifed up off the bed and walked to the door, breathing a curse before pulling it open. “Detective Morris, how can I—”
“Where’s Cora?”
I flew up off the bed, my heart lurching into my throat as the detective—flanked by two uniformed officers—entered the room.
The detective’s dark-brown gaze shot over my shoulder. “River Guerrero?”
“Yeah?” she drawled.
One of the uniforms advanced on her, muttering a, “We got her,” into the radio at his shoulder.
Spreading my arms wide as though I could hide her, I cut him off. “You got who? What is this about?”
The detective’s gaze flicked back to mine. “You need to come with me. Both of you. Now.”
River hit my back, her body already shaking. My heart thundered in my ears as I intertwined her hand with mine.
“Why?” I asked, scanning the room. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end as the officers continued to close in. “What’s going on?”
He planted his hands on his hips and uncomfortably shifted his gaze away. I didn’t know Detective Morris well by any means, but I’d seen him enough over the last week to be on a somewhat friendly basis with him. He’d been kind each time we’d spoken, gentle as though he almost felt bad for me.
And the nerves in my stomach peaked when I got the distinct feeling that he didn’t want to be there any more than I wanted him to be.
“We have a warrant for your arrest, Cora. I’m going to ask you to kindly step away from the child and come with me.”
My lungs seized as my hands started to tremble. “Wh…what for?”
“What?” Drew growled behind him, but I couldn’t find him in the suddenly crowded room.
“Child endangerment,” Morris said. “Now, you come without trouble and I won’t cuff you in front of the kid.”
“Mom!” River cried, the fear in her voice slicing me to the bone.
“It’s okay,” I replied as a knee-jerk reaction. It clearly was not okay. But, then again, it never had been and we’d survived all the same. “What kind of endangerment?”
One of the uniformed officers made a move to grab River’s arm, and I stepped to the side to block him.
“Wait. Wait. Wait.” I lifted my palms. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”
Morris cut his gaze away. “And you can explain that to a judge. But, for now, I need River to go with Officer DeSalva and you to come with me.” He pointedly tipped his chin over my shoulder and the other uniformed officer stepped in, catching River by the back of the arm.
She started crying as they pulled her away, and each tear struck me like the hottest branding iron. She’d been through so much in her thirteen years. We’d never had the cops show up and take her away before, but watching her being dragged out of my reach wasn’t something new for either of us.
But this wasn’t last time.
This was different. We weren’t trapped by the Guerreros anymore.
I was free.
We were supposed to be free.
“Mom!” she called as they carted her toward the door, her brown eyes anchored to me over her shoulder.
“Relax, baby. It’s going to be okay,” I lied, hoping I could make it the truth. “Just go with the officer and I’ll see you in a little while. I promise.”
The panic in her eyes shredded me as she disappeared out the door.
As soon as she was gone, the second uniformed officer moved in on me, painfully wrenching my arms as he forced my hands behind my back. The cool metal of his cuffs cinched tight around my wrists, biting into my flesh. But my mind was too busy trying to figure out my next move to give the pain any weight.
“Drew? Drew?” I yelled, bordering on the verge of hysterics.
“I’m right here, Cor,” he replied from the hallway, where he was standing with two other cops.
Jesus. They’d sent four cops and a detective? That should have been the moment I heard the alarm bells. They had known exactly where I was and I’d been more than cooperative all week, yet they’d sent four cops and a detective after me like I’d been holding River at gunpoint. But I was too focused on how I was going to get River back to even consider the whys.
“I need you to find me an attorney,” I told Drew. “A good one, okay?”
His face was hard as stone as he glared at the cop roughly forcing me down the hall, but he gave me a curt nod and clipped, “I’m on it.”
“Please. Hurry,” I breathed.
“Cora Guerrero?” the cop called.
“That’s me!” I said, shooting off the bench in the holding cell and rushing toward the door.
“Hands,” he ordered.
As he clicked the cuffs in place, I asked, “Can you tell me where my daughter is?”
“Nope. Now, stop talking.”
My stomach dropped. I was growing more nervous by the minute. I’d been there for well over three hours without any word on River or my attorney.
“Is my attorney here yet? I’d really like to talk to him.”
“As a matter of fact, he is,” he replied.
I blew out a shaky breath, intoxicating relief surging through my veins. “Oh, thank God.” But I couldn’t stop worrying about where they’d taken River.
By most people’s standards, the life I’d given her wasn’t great, but at least I loved her.
With my entire being.
I always made sure she was taken care of. Yes, she came from a family of criminals, but I’d taught her the difference between right and wrong. And when she had been little, I always took her to doctors’ appointments and got all of her shots on time. Now that she was older, I couldn’t afford braces or anything, but she’d never had a cavity. Every night she’d watched all the girls head out to work, I’d fought like hell to make sure she understood that she was worth so much more than just her body. I’d never wanted that life for her. So I’d spent every minute, every resource, and every opportunity I’d had preparing her for bigger and better things than I’d ever been able to provide her with.
I was far from a perfect mother, but I tried.
Every single day.
And while I agreed wholeheartedly that she deserved better than that, I knew that the foster care system wasn’t ever going to give her more than I could. I’d had too many girls come through my building eighteen and fresh out of the system to ever believe otherwise.
The police officer slowed to a stop at the end of the hall and then shoved a door on my left open. “Inside.” He didn’t follow me in.
Short of a table and two chairs, the room was empty. There were no windows, no double-sided mirrors. It wasn’t like anything I’d experienced in past arrests.
It was just a white room bleached of all color—and hope.
“Sit down. I’ll be right back.” He let the door quietly swoosh shut, not even clicking it locked behind him.
Searching for a camera or any sign of outside life, I walked over and used my toe to slide the chair out before sinking down.
My leg bounced up and down as I waited. Out of habit, I reached for the star around my neck only to remember they’d taken it from me when they’d processed me in. I had two strikes against me, but assuming no drugs had climbed into my pockets of their own volition, I should have been okay.
It was false confidence like that that made the blow of seeing his face appear in the doorway feel like a knock-out punch.
“Hello, Cora,” Thomas Lyons drawled as he sauntered into the room.
He had visibly aged since the last time I’d seen him. I couldn’t remember exactly how much older than Catalina he was, but flecks of gray now showed in his dark-brown hair. His blue eyes were friendly enough to make him approachable, but I knew all too well how bottomless his soul truly was.
He opened the button on his suit coat as he sat down. My attention was drawn to the wedding ring he was still wearing on his left hand. But it was all for show. Thomas was an attention whore in the worst way.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I asked.
He grinned, full of arrogance. “I heard the cops picked you up. I thought maybe you needed some legal expertise.”
I buried my hands in my lap so he couldn’t see them tremble. “You heard? Or sent them after me?”
He shrugged, turning to the side to cross his legs knee over knee like the pretentious prick he was. “Potato. Patahto. All that matters is I’m here to get you out.”
Negative amounts of hope hit my chest. Thomas had never done anything out of the kindness of his heart in his entire life. He wasn’t about to start with me.
“Oh, yeah? And what’s it going to cost me?”
His eyes narrowed, but his smile never faltered. “Where is she, Cora?”
My pulse thundered in my ears, but I showed him nothing. “I have no idea who you’re talking about.”
“Right. Of course you don’t.” He intertwined his fingers and cradled them around the top of his knee. “But let’s speak hypothetically here. Let’s pretend for a second that there is a certain child who may or may not be in grave danger. See, her mother is a prostitute with several drug convictions on her record, and more than once, she has had the aforementioned child taken away from her. What do you think would happen if, let’s say, a concerned uncle who also happens to be a man of many powers called in a favor to have the child permanently removed from the mother’s care?”
My lungs burned as the air in that room became toxic, but I held his stare and refused my eyes the tears they were calling to the surface. “Well, hypothetically of course, it sounds like that concerned uncle is making quite a few assumptions about the mother and is trying to control a situation he knows absolutely nothing about. If I had to guess, I’d say he was probably compensating for some personal inadequacies, if you know what I mean. However, if I were that mother, which, clearly I’m not, seeing as you mentioned that she was a prostitute, my advice to her would be to stop talking to the asshole and wait for her attorney.”
He laughed. “You mean Frank Esposito? Yeah, I saw him out front. That man is a beast when it comes to family law.”
Oh, thank God. Drew had come through.
“Right. Then please direct all further hypothetical games his way.”
“I sent him home.”
I shot to my feet, the chair falling over behind me. “You can’t do that!”
“Cora, honey. Frank and I play golf every weekend. What do you expect?”
I expected that, for once in my life, someone would actually help me—even if I had to pay them to do it. I should have known better. The law was only fair when everyone followed the same rules.
He rose from his seat and prowled around the table. Panic exploded inside me, and I tried to scramble away, but the room was too small to allow me any space. My back hit the wall as his hand found my throat.
“Stop,” I hissed, clawing at his wrist, but it only made him tighten his grip until breathing became an impossible task. Frantic, I glanced to the door, begging for someone to walk by. But even if they did, I wasn’t sure anyone would care.
Leaning in, he put his lips to my ear and snarled, “You’re in my world now. Losing River is just the tip of how bad I could fuck you. You think Manuel is rotting in a prison cell because he cooperated? Don’t fucking test me, Cora. This is not a fight a woman like you wants to take on.”
The pressure in my chest mounted as the adrenaline and the lack of oxygen made my head light. “What…do…you want?” I choked out.
I waited for him to once again ask me where Catalina was.
I waited for him to hit me or scream at me.
I waited for him to strangle me until I passed out or died when I told him that I didn’t know where she was.
But I never, not in a million years, expected his next words.
“Tell her to stay gone,” he seethed. “I swear to God, she gets one fucking idea about showing back up here to claim her brothers’ estates, thinking she can waltz back in, ruin my career because now she has a dime in her pocket… Fuck her. I will kill both of you before I let that happen.”
My vision was tunneling and my lungs were screaming for oxygen, but my mind couldn’t process his words. It was like he was speaking a different language.
Thomas had spent years trying to find Catalina. The same way the Guerreros thought they owned me, Thomas believed with his whole heart that he owned her. Manuel had all but given her to him as a gift. In his eyes, she was the lucky one. No one walked away from a man like Thomas Lyons. Add to the fact that she’d taken his daughter with her… Forget about it. I’d always imagined he’d be still trying to find her on his deathbed to make her pay. But now he wanted her to stay gone?
“I don’t…” Understand. “know where she—”
He gave me a hard shake, slamming me into the wall, knocking what little air I had left from my chest. Closing in on me, he pressed his large frame against my side. “Don’t you fucking lie to me. You know where she is. You have always known. I was willing to let you keep your secret when it benefited me. But if Catalina thinks for one second that her piece-of-shit brothers being ash is her cue to come out of hiding, she obviously needs a reminder of who she really needs to fear.”
I gasped for air when he slid his hand up to my jaw. His fingers bit into my face as he tilted my head up so I would look at him.
His malevolent gaze locked on mine as he seethed, “If you ever want to see River again, you will pick up the fucking phone and tell that bitch to stay…gone.”
He released me with a shove, pain detonating in my head when it cracked against the wall. Whether it was because of my shaking legs, my blurred vision, or my heaving chest, my ability to balance on my own two feet disappeared. My only options were to eat the tile floor or sink to my ass.
I chose the latter but kept my eyes on Thomas as best I could.
He straightened his suit coat and ran a hand over the top of his hair to smooth it back into place. “I took the liberty of scheduling your hearing with Judge Mayso for next week. Before you get too excited, he owes me more favors than I have time. You get word to Catalina, I’ll make sure everything is dropped and you get River back, no questions asked. But I’m watching you, Cora. I catch so much as a scent of that bitch in this city and you can kiss that child goodbye. Say you understand me.”
With my heart in my throat, I nodded.
“Say it!” he demanded, rushing toward me.
I told my body not to flinch. I wanted to be strong enough to lock my emotions down the way I’d trained myself over the last decade. But in just one week, I’d become so emotionally raw that I couldn’t fake it anymore. In that time, every emotion I’d ever possessed had gone to war inside me, my body physically becoming nothing more than the ravaged battlegrounds left behind.
It was supposed to be over.
I was supposed to be free.
But maybe freedom was nothing more than a delusion to convince people like me to continue working in hell. Without the light at the end of the tunnel, we’d accept the darkness for what it truly was: eternal.
I closed my eyes, bracing for his assault, and rushed out, “I got it. I heard you. She won’t come back. I promise.”
“I hope for your sake you can keep your word on that.”
I peeked up when I heard his footsteps moving away. The door opened silently, the sound of people in the distance being the only proof.
He paused before exiting. “You’re free to go, Ms. Guerrero. Do take care of yourself.”
Then he was gone.
And I was alone.
So. Utterly. Alone.