Page 55 of In a Perfect World

Chapter 28

Kairo~

With no choice but to go to work in a flimsy attempt to keep me grounded, I was sitting at my workstation, hiding in my office not an option.Taking Monday off had put me behind more than I’d been expecting, but in hindsight, that was a good thing since I needed the distraction.

After leaving my father’s house the other day, with no other options, I had done as he’d suggested, reaching out to Sonia for some help.However, all that’d gotten me was an ass ripping that I was never going to recover from.Even if Triana ever found it in her heart to forgive me, Sonia would hate me forever, and that was a tough thing to navigate.Best friends were guaranteed to be in the wedding, brides and grooms not so much.

As for reaching out to her brother, I had decided against it.Knowing everything that I knew about Sonia, I wasn’t worried that she might call the police on me or anything like that.After all, she couldn’t do it without getting Triana arrested as well, so it’d been easier to reach out to her versus Tomasco Medina.All I knew about him was that he was fiercely loyal, but being a man, I could see him calling for my head, and I could hardly blame him if he did.

“Kairo?”

I turned to see Dr.Alimeda standing in the doorway, her head barely peeking inside.“Yeah?”

“Your father’s here, and he’s waiting in your office,” she announced, and she didn’t have to say anything else for me to know that he wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t important.My father was big on respecting our careers, so it wasn’t often that he just showed up like this.

“Thanks,” I said.“I’ll go see what he wants.”

After putting everything away responsibly, I walked out of the lab, then towards my office, and sure enough, my father was waiting for me inside, and my stomach sank a bit at the sight of him.

“What are you doing here?”I asked as I hung my lab coat on the coat rack before heading towards my desk.

Getting straight to the point, he said, “All the Administrators got a courtesy call from Benicio Cortez to let us know that they’ll be airing a news segment about Mexico arresting a young woman for trying to cross into their country.”

“No,” I said, denial hitting me swiftly.“It can’t be her.”

“It is,” he said, not pussyfooting around.“He named Triana specifically, Kairo.”

Blood began rushing through my ears, and all I could picture was Triana sitting in a Mexican jail cell, and I could feel myself getting sick.Unlike America, she had no Constitutional rights there.In their eyes, she was a criminal and was owed nothing.

“What else did he say?”I asked once I accepted reality.

“Mexico won’t release her,” he answered, stealing the air from my lungs.“She has no political influence, so she doesn’t warrant any bargaining efforts.”

“When is he...when is the story going to break?”

“It’ll go public in about an hour,” he warned, and while there’d be no coming back from this once it became public, there was still a positive in all this.

After the new movement had finally taken shape, all governing parties had agreed to outlaw opinion pieces that had masqueraded as news.Slanted propaganda was no longer aired to the masses as facts of news, and anyone caught doing so faced a hefty fine and/or imprisonment.Now, while freedom of speech was still a very valued Constitutional right, opinions couldn’t be delivered as facts to the people of our country, and that made all the difference.After wading the dirty waters of internet nonsense and conspiracy theories, facts were the only thing that news outlets were allowed to report, and in my opinion, that was a good thing.

“So, she’s going to spend the rest of her life in a Mexican prison versus an American one,” I scoffed humorlessly.“That’s comforting.”

“Kairo, I’m sorry,” he said, but all that did was piss me off further.

“Sorry for what?”I asked, my emotions hitting me hard.“What’s there to be sorry for?According to you, she’s a grown adult who made her own choices, so what are you sorry about, Dad?She got what she deserved, and since she’s no more special than anyone else, she needs to pay her dues, right?”

“I’m sorry that you got hurt by all of this,” he clarified, and I had to give him credit for keeping it real.“I’m sorry that you’re having to go through something this...this big.”

Suddenly, my eyes were wide open, and I didn’t like it.

Triana had spoken about not being free, and she’d never been so right.Right now, it was everything that I could do not to lose my shit, but that’s because I wasn’t allowed to.I wasn’t allowed to rage or curse the situation because I didn’t have the right or thefreedomto do that.If I lost my shit in public, then I’d be announcing to the world why I cared so much, and while my father was fine with Triana paying the consequences for her actions, he didn’t exactly feel the same way about me.