Ines

Silvio escorted me home and locked me in my bedroom. Didn't say a word to me, just glared darkly. Then he left. That was hours ago, but I have no idea how many. The sky outside is dark, lights sparkling everywhere, shining in the windows of nearby buildings. In my mind's eye I can still see my father as a young man, the wind in his hair as he smiles at me. I haven't seen him smile very often in the last ten years. Not like I can see him in memory. Not like he smiled when I was a little girl. But he's happy now, so I am too. And that's all I thought about all afternoon.

Silvio meant to frighten me by locking me up and not speaking to me. A week ago, he would've succeeded, but today I feel nothing but a fuzzy, warm, numbing acceptance. I didn't even take off my shoes, just lay down on the bed and thought about my father. About the way it used to be.

The phone Rook gave me is in my purse in the living room. But what good will it do me anyway? He's better off staying away from me now that Silvio is back and has me under lock and key. Who knows what he'll do to me tonight. But I imagine I won't be fit to see anyone for awhile after he's done punishing me. I shouldn't have dragged Rook into this, and I won't call him for help now. I love him too much to see him get hurt. My curse has already killed one of the two men I loved. I won't let it take the second one too.

I can hear Juan pacing in the living room, coughing nervously every so often. He fears Silvio too, all his men do. But I don’t anymore. I just feel as flimsy as air, and I'm happy because my father is safe.

The key rattles in the front door and I hear it open. It's followed by Silvio's curt, cold voice as he tells Juan to leave the apartment, but wait outside by the door.

And for all my fearless lightness, my heart starts pounding as his thudding footsteps approach the bedroom door, fear slicing through the soft fuzzy happiness with its serrated, double-edged blade. He's about to punish me. He killed my father and now he might kill me too.

The thought lights up in my head the second before he opens the door. I'm standing to greet him when he does, my head spinning because I stood up too fast, but my mind is clear.

He knows nothing holds me here anymore now that my father's dead. And he might not stop hurting me tonight. He might not stop until I’m dead too.

"Hello, Ines," he says. "Have you been lonely without me?"

He asks it in an eerie, surreal way like we didn't just see each other a few hours ago, like he didn't grip my shoulder as he forced me to watch my father die, like I haven't been his favorite toy for the last ten years.

"Yes, I've been very lonely," I answer. "Would you like me to fix you a drink?"

I slip past him into the living room before he can answer. While I don't understand how he can speak so calmly, so formally to me, I do know what it means. My disobedience frightened him, knowing he has nothing to hold me here frightens him too, and he's trying to pretend none of that is the case. This pretending won't last forever and he will punish me, but for the moment I'm safe, and I better pretend like everything is just like it was before my father died. He likes me bringing him things, serving him like we're a couple, so he doesn't stop me.

He sits on the sofa, his legs spread wide, and loosens his tie as he waits for me to mix his favorite drink. A gin and tonic with a cucumber slice, which I have to get from the fridge. This could be my only chance of escape. And I will take it.

"It sure is nice to be home," he says while I'm in the kitchen looking for the biggest knife I own. I might not be able to get far when I try to run, but I'm not staying here another night. And I mean to make it very far. All the way to Rook and the future that should've been my past. Our past. But even if I fail, I'm not letting Silvio touch me ever again, and I'm not putting Rook in any danger because of the mess I made. If I strike fast and run faster, I have a chance.

"What's taking so long?" Silvio asks and I shiver, but then I steel myself and bring the knife and cucumber back to the living room.

I have no plan. All I know is that I must escape. My purse with the phone Rook gave me is still perched on the arm of the sofa, where I placed it after we returned from the hospital, right before he grabbed me and locked me in my bedroom.

I need that phone and that's all I need to take with me when I go. All else can burn for all I care.

"Here you go," I say and place his drink on the edge of the bar then pretend to make one for myself.

In my mind, I can already see myself holding the knife between my body and his as he comes to take the drink, then stabbing him in the stomach with it. Then I'll rush to get the purse, tell Juan Silvio cut himself, and run down the stairs to my freedom in the confusion that follows. I can outrun all my bodyguards, and I can certainly outrun Silvio. I just need to get to the sidewalk.

"Bring it to me," he orders, his voice ripping right through my vision of all that.

It's now or never. I don't let go of the knife as I pick up his tumbler and bring it to him. My hand hardly shakes at all as I point the knife at him once he takes it.

His eyes grow wider than I’ve ever seen them. "What are you doing?"

I realize I must look very strange, standing there silently, gripping a kitchen knife and glaring at him so intently, I can make out every one of the enlarged black pores covering his nose and cheeks. But my hand is frozen.

"I'm leaving you, Silvio," I manage.

He chuckles and swings his arm out to grab my wrist. His sudden movement wakes me up, and I move my arm out of his reach, slice open his forearm as I do. He howls in pain, or maybe it's in anger. I drop the knife and snatch the purse from the sofa, but he's blocking my path to the door, and the cut didn't slow him at all. He knows exactly where I was headed.

I don't think, just run in the opposite direction, to my bedroom, to the large marble tiled bathroom with the door that has the only lock in this whole apartment with a key I can use.

I reach it, lock myself in, thanking God for the strong oak door and the real lock on it. He slams into it moments later, but the door hardly budges.

I messed up. I messed up again. I didn't think, just acted, and nothing good ever happens when I do that. I should've learned that by now, but somehow I never do.

"I'll forgive you, if you come out now and apologize," Silvio says breathlessly, yet very harshly.

I know what the trouble is. He's bleeding and is slight of build, while this is a solid oak door. He can't knock it down easily. And if he calls Juan in to help him, his men will know I defied him. Silvio doesn’t want that.

He'll manage to get in here eventually though, but I could manipulate him into thinking I am sorry before then. Say I was mad with grief over losing my father and wasn't thinking straight. Maybe he'll go easy on me, if he thinks I'm very sorry. If I apologize. If I beg him to go easy on me.

"No!" I yell and it's not just his question I'm answering. I will not live in fear of Silvio for another moment longer. I'd sooner die.

But I must say goodbye to Rook first. Tell him I'm sorry. Beg him to forget me, forgive me if he can. Because I'm an unlucky, cursed witch. Nothing good happens to the people who cross my path. And I want to protect him from that. Tell him he is the love of my life, and that I'll see him in Heaven.

I call his number, and it rings and rings but he doesn't pick up.

Silvio calls my name as he taps on the door softly, again exhibiting that psychotic disconnect with the reality of a situation that he'd rather not face.

"You have nowhere to go, Ines, my Dama de las Flores, my love," he says. "You must come out eventually. And I will be waiting for you. I will never let you be alone."

The words send a cascade of chills down my back, colder than ice.

I call Rook again, but he doesn’t answer this time either.

"It would be better for you if you came out now and tended to my wound," Silvio says in that same eerily calm voice. "Much better for you."

Nothing was ever better for me with Silvio around and the sound of his voice is making me nauseous.

He hasn't lost all touch with reality yet, meaning he's making this part of the game he likes playing with me so much. That of cat and mouse. Only this mouse isn't scared of him anymore.

I’ll text Rook, because he needs to know how much he means to me, how much I want to see him again, how much I want to spend the rest of my life with him, and why I can't. I concentrate on typing the words so I won't think of anything else. Won't think of my painful death, which is just a wooden door away.

I write and write, apologize for what I've put him through, tell him not to worry about me, that I'll soon be free forever. That he should try to forget me. I send one text, but then think of more to say. So I send another. Tell Rook that meeting him, and finding him again after ten years, was the best thing that ever happened to me. That I never wanted to be without him.

Silvio is talking to me through the door, but I can't understand the words.

I just keep sending Rook text after text, as I think of more things to say. I've come up with a lot of things to say to him over these last ten years, and then forgot them after I gave up hope that I’ll ever see him again. But now they're all coming back to me. Because for a brief moment, I thought I'd get to say them all to him in person, I thought we'd make them come true together. But I was wrong. I sent over ten texts already, but he's not replying to me.

Maybe it's for the best that way. I don't know if I could stay calm and collected if I heard from him right now. And I want to die with my head held high. I want to stare into Silvio's eyes unflinching and show him that he hasn’t broken me. That I'm still the carefree, freedom-loving wild girl who ran away from him all those years ago. That I never did and never will love him.

Silvio is running his nails down the wooden door. He's still talking too. Saying how much he loves me, how he'll forgive me, how he'll always be with me. And if I just listen to the words, not the voice, it's as though Rook is speaking to me. Telling me exactly what I need to hear, what I yearn to hear, one last time.

* * *

Rook

Sometime after my fourth scotch, I finally feel brave enough to check the texts Ines sent. Ice is chatting to our waitress at the edge of the bar, probably angling to sleep over at her place tonight, since I'm such lousy company. I don't normally drink by myself, but tonight's the kinda night that warrants it. Ines sent more than ten texts. I didn't feel lonely before, but I do now, seeing those texts. I feel as lonely as only she can make me feel by not being around.

But the screen of my ancient phone barely lights up anymore, this bar is poorly lit and she wrote some of the texts in Spanish. She'd start speaking to me in Spanish sometimes, when she was very sleepy, or very angry. A big part of the reason why I asked her to teach me to speak it was so I could understand her even during those times. But I never did learn to read it very well.

I'm just about to put my phone away, deciding to try and read them tomorrow by the light of day, when I click on one in English. She writes that meeting me was the best thing that ever happened to her, but that she has to say goodbye now and asks me to forget her.

Like fuck I will!

She has some nerve dumping me over a bunch of texts I can't even read. A real set of balls, breaking up with me again after feeding me lie after lie for the past couple of days, all the while telling me what I've been dying to hear and promising she'll go anywhere with me.

My heart is pounding as I dial her number, that hot fuzziness that always precedes me doing something rash, crazy and violent filling my head.

"Rook," she whispers and hearing the sound of her voice, the sound I've been dying to hear all day today, and most days for the last ten years, does dissipate some of the unbearable heat in my head.

"What do you mean, I should forget you?" I snap. "You said we're leaving together."

"I tried to come to you today, so we could run away and be together forever, but I failed," she says in a barely audible whisper, her voice sounding like I'm hearing it through a dream. I know that sound well, I heard it often enough in my actual dreams. I never could understand what she was telling me in those, but I hear her perfectly now. "But one day we will be together. In Heaven, we'll be together."

"I ain't going to Heaven, Ines," I snap, her words finally starting to make some sense beyond being just a whole lotta bullshit meant to get me to leave her alone. "What do you mean, you failed?"

"I wanted to stab him so I could run away, but I only cut his arm and I couldn't reach the door," she says. "I'm locked in the bathroom, but he'll come in here soon. Then he'll kill me. Because he can't make me stay with him any longer. I won't stay with him anymore."

My heart and my head are both pounding to a completely different tune now. Not just anger, but terror and urgency too. And the change is nauseating.

"Where are you? At your apartment?" I ask, standing so fast I knock the whole table over. Ice looks at me questioningly, and I wave him over as I rush to the door. He follows without hesitation.

"Yes," she says.

"What floor? What apartment?"

"Don't come here, Rook," she pleads. "He'll kill you."

"What floor? What apartment?" I ask again more harshly.

She tells me.

"Don't let him in," I say. "I'll come get you now."

"No, Rook, please, he'll kill you," she says, louder this time, her voice jagged like she's holding back tears.

"He won't," I say rushing down the sidewalk to the car I stole a couple of days ago. I planned to ditch it tonight and find a new one, but there's no time for that now. "How many men does he have with him?"

"The two of mine, maybe two or three more of his own. Too many, Rook. Don't come, forget me," she says pleadingly.

"No, five's not too many," I tell her more calmly. "I can't forget you, Ines, so I'll just have to save you."

"Finally you make the right decision!" Ice says.

"No!" Ines shrieks.

But there's no force in the world that can stop me.

"Stay on the line, Ines," I tell her, then turn to Ice. "Five men at least, maybe more."

He nods.

"Only if you're sure," I add. "I'll go alone if you're not."

"I wouldn't offer if I wasn't sure, Rook. You risked your life for me often enough, it's time I start paying some of it back. And I’d help you with this even if that wasn’t the case," he says with a very grim look in his eyes. "I have my knife. Are you armed?"

"I have a knife, but we’ll get guns from the bodyguards. We don't have time to stop anywhere."

Not even for red lights. Not even to think.

But I don't have to think.

I just have to know that the woman I love, the woman I'll love always and forever, will die if I don't get to her fast enough tonight.