Marcos
How dare you.
The hurt I’d always carried around escalated from a dull throb to a bright, brazen pain. It was profound enough that not a single word in a single language could even begin to define it.
How fucking dare you.
Every unstable beat of my heart was like a drum in my chest, beating against my lungs and the ribcage that protected them. My hands curled into fists, spine curving as I bowed forward. My mouth opened, and I shuddered against a scream that was so pronounced, it was silent. My tears were hot as they slid down my cheeks, and I tasted their saltiness against my cracked lips.
I just… didn’t understand.
My brain couldn’t compute the cruelty or the unyielding contempt I’d always had for my father. He’d been using me as a pawn, but he’d been using Manny too.Thatwas unforgivable.
Every sliver of sympathy my heart had bled for him was burning somewhere with all of my guilt.
“How dare you?How dare you hide behind your children, you fucking coward?”
My voice was like a bullet, and he stiffened the second it touched him, stumbling over a dip in the carpeting. Wrapping his fingers around the door frame to steady himself, he blinked against the dim overhead lighting.
“Marcos?”
Ihatedthe way he looked at me then… like I was a stranger.
His expression was slack, lips parting. For a moment, I thought he might try to speak, but he only grimaced as though he could taste the resentment that pulled against the air.
Breath trapped in his lungs, I watched the color drain from his cheeks and pool into the base of his neck. He placed one shaky foot in front of the other, shoulders tight and throat rigid like maybe he thought the floor was going to collapse beneath him.
“What are you doing here?” He asked me, but there was no actual emotion in his voice. They were just words, and the disinterest they held only made me angrier. “Did you do this to my office?”
The lock on his filing cabinet was busted, and the bottom drawer sat crooked on its rails. It was empty now; its contents spread out across the floor. Luis bent and ran his finger over an old statement. Manny’s name was stamped across the top, the evidence of what he'd done glaring up at him.
Placing a hand on the back of his neck, he grappled with a deep breath and then crumpled that piece of paper inside his fist. It fell to the floor as he stood, and he adjusted his glasses before looking up at me with a muddled gaze.
“You’ve been using Manny’s name.” With the heel of my palm, I swiped at a tear that raced across my jaw. “His name is one of the few things he left behind, and youusedit. You covered it in blood to pay off a debt to a man who will never let you go.”
“Marcos—”
“Don’t.” I thrust a shaky finger at him. “Don’t you dare try to make me feel sorry for you.”
His lips rolled in on one another, and his chin trembled a little as he took another step forward. It was late, and the shadows that surrounded us now were similar to the ones I once took refuge in. A desk stood between us, but it might as well have been an entire lifetime.
That’swhat he missed out on—what he wasted while he used me to protect himself.
“Are you looking for something?”
Proof…
… but I’d found it.
I’d fought against the hardening of my stomach and scrambling of my thoughts, but it was all futile. Deep in my bones, I knew what Ivan told me was true, but the pull of hope I couldn’t ever seem to escape tore at me just enough that I had to come look.
“I found what I came here for,” I said, but I really wished I hadn’t.
Not this time.
“You asked me how I could live with myself if I walked away from my family.”
I laughed, but it was dry. Flat. My anger had ebbed into a resignation that left me weary. For most of my life, I’d questioned why my father made the choices he did and why I wasn’t enough to be an option.