Total pages in book: 67
Estimated words: 80391 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 402(@200wpm)___ 322(@250wpm)___ 268(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80391 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 402(@200wpm)___ 322(@250wpm)___ 268(@300wpm)
My hands went to my eyes and I rubbed them. Hard.
“Goddammit. This is such a fucking clusterfuck. I’m so out of my league.” I rasped forlornly.
Silas, who’d been quiet up until this point, spoke. “There’s more son.”
My hands dropped, and I looked at Silas blearily. “How much worse could it get?”
Do you know that saying... never borrow trouble? With that one statement I’d just uttered, I’d completely fucked myself. I’d opened a can of worms and they were all spilling out wiggling in opposite directions.
“The woman they transferred it to was named Rosalie Espinoza.” He said quietly.
I sat back in my chair, closing my eyes.
They all knew what happened to me when I was younger. Knew I’d lost my daughter. Knew about Rosalie. I’d never told them in detail, but they knew what had happened just by listening to the town gossip.
“That’s just perfect. Transfer everything over to her. She dies like she’s supposed to in a few months, and he gets it all back. Easy as pie.” I growled in defeat. “How the fuck did she get tangled up with him?”
Jack spoke for the first time. His deep voice resonated off the walls of the clubhouse’s conference room where we held all our meetings.
“From what I can understand, she was married to him. Has been for over a decade. They stayed married all through her time at the women’s correctional facility in Huntsville. She was released a year and a half ago. Gustavo was there to pick her up as soon as she got out, according to the guards.” Jack’s explained in low tones.
I’d known she’d gotten released. They’d invited me to the parole hearing, yet I’d declined to go. I didn’t want to see her for the rest of my life. She was dead to me, and always would be.
What I hadn’t known was that she was married.
However, now that I did, things started falling into place.
Things that had never made sense all those years ago.
Like why she moved on from me so fast. Why she let that happen. How she’d let that happen to our child.
Then a thought occurred to me. “Wait a minute, when does it say she got married?”
Jack started flipping through a pile of pages in front of him before stopping, when he’d gone through nearly half the stack. “It says here October 3, 1998. Why?”
A sick curdling feeling of dread started to swell in my stomach.
“My daughter died August 12, 1999. She was three weeks old.” I said woodenly. “Her boyfriend of nearly a year killed her. But it’s not making sense. If she was married, why would she have a boyfriend? Gustavo’s not the type to let that pass.”
When the last sentence slipped from my mouth, I stood and started moving towards the safe on the far wall.
It was a large safe nearly as tall as me. The keypad was the old-fashioned type that you had to turn with a dial.
Grabbing the lock between my thumb and pointer finger, I started the painstaking task of spinning the dial and stopping at the appropriate numbers.
After the third was inputted, I stopped, turned the large lock, and swung the door open.
The letter I’d set in my file folder at the top shelf was exactly where I’d put it.
Flipping it open, I began to read.
Tiago,
If you’re reading this, know that I’m too sick to say it to you in person.
I’ve been agonizing over this for sixteen years now, so I’m just going to tell you.
Gustavo Amadeus is the man who killed our child, not Mario Martinez.
I fell in with the wrong crowd before you left.
I can’t tell you how sorry I am for doing what I did. I didn’t know what else to do, I swear to God. I hope one day you find it in your heart to forgive me, but I know that I will be gone from this place when that happens. I’m sorry.
When you left for boot camp my parents welcomed me back home. I’d told them I’d lost the baby. They said I could move back in if I agreed to marry my father’s business partner’s son. Not knowing what else to do, and having nowhere else to go, I did. I moved back in with them, and a month later I wed Gustavo.
I never told them that I was still pregnant, and thought that if I got married fast enough, I could just act like I was pregnant by Gustavo.
I was naïve. I didn’t think he’d figure it out. I didn’t think about you sending any presents for our baby. I was just thinking about myself. I was being selfish, and I will forever pay for that mistake.
He had his suspicions when she was born. I never said anything, but when the package arrived that you sent for our daughter, he flipped. I had to tell him then what happened. When he left, I thought it was going to be okay, but he came back drunk, and so very angry.
He killed her in a fit of rage, and told me that if I told, he would find a way to kill every single person I’d ever loved. My parents and you included. I played along with the story that it was my boyfriend who’d done it. He made up a scenario to where my new boyfriend did it, and you know the rest.
God, I’m so sorry.
Please know that I have never forgiven myself, and never will.
Rosalie.
The piece of paper slipped from my hands and fell to the floor.
I watched it in dismay as my fear was confirmed.
That man had killed my daughter. Killed my sister. Attempted to kill my woman. What else could he take from me?
All this time I thought the rightful person was serving a life sentence after he’d killed my baby. My precious, innocent child. She never got to take her first steps. Never got to crawl. She’d be nearly sixteen right now. She’d be driving.
My heart hurt. It was like reliving the moment I’d found my child was dead all over again.