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Her lips press tight and she glances back at the house. “I’m doing what I can for that boy. He’s a good one and doesn’t deserve this.”
My stomach turns. “Is Ruben hurting him?”
“No, not yet.”
The not yet nearly breaks me. “I can help. Let me go inside. I can turn myself over—”
“No!” She says it sharply and there’s a strange fear in her eyes. “No, you can’t do that.”
“But Tía—”
“Listen to me. You cannot turn yourself in to that monster. Ruben is sick, girl, don’t you get it? He’s sick and always has been.”
I open my mouth to argue, but I stop myself. Always has been?
“You’ve known,” I say quietly as understanding dawns on me. “You knew he was like this.”
“Yes, I’ve known,” she admits bitterly. “From the day that sick child came into my life, I’ve known he’s a monster. He’s always been wrong but he was good at hiding it. I bit my tongue, kept my mouth shut for Nardo’s sake, because I loved that man, but I will not sit idly by and watch that monster ruin what’s left of our family.” She steps closer, voice dropping low. “He killed my husband, Marisol. He killed his own father.” She chokes on the last word.
“Tía, I’m sorry,” I say, thrown off balance. “But that’s why I’m here, because Cruz needs my help.”
“No,” she says again, this time harder. She dabs at her eyes with a black lace handkerchief. Where’d she even get a black one? “If you do that then there won’t be anyone left to help me.”
“I can get you out too. Maybe if we talk to my husband—”
“I don’t want to escape,” she snaps like I’m the dumbest girl on the planet. She might be in mourning, but she’s still Graciela. “I want to kill that hijo de puta.”
My jaw drops. What the hell is going on?! Graciela clearly knows her son is deranged, but he’s still her son. Now she’s talking about murdering him?
“I don’t understand,” I say, shaking my head.
“How could you?” She steps closer, glancing constantly to the house. “How could you know what it’s like for a strange child to come home one day? For your beloved husband to say, this will be ours, and nobody will ever find out that it isn’t? That I’m meant to swallow my pride and raise that thing as though I were its mother?”
Holy shit.
“Ruben’s not your son?”
She makes a sickening laugh sound. “Not even in the slightest. Nobody questioned it, even though I was never pregnant. Who would say anything about Don Nardo’s own family? Those that spoke went missing, and as the years slipped past, the rumors faded away. Your generation never had a clue.”
I feel dizzy. My parents have to have realized. I mean, they were around at the time, and Graciela’s right. It’s not like they could’ve said her pregnancy was hidden away or something. There’s no easy way to explain the sudden appearance of a child, except to intimidate everyone into silence.
Better that than try to say he was adopted. If they pretended Ruben was legitimate, then he could still be the heir to the Escalante business.
“I’m so sorry,” I say, overwhelmed. “That’s… I didn’t know.”
“But now you can understand why I have no love for that thing in my house. Ruben has always been a monster, but I thought he’d learned how to control it. Now the creature is unleashed, and I promise you, girl, it’s worse than you even realize. Unless we stop him.”
That gets my attention. My hand drifts to the gun I have in the holster at my hip. “What should we do?”
“For now, my driver will take you home. You will go to that husband of yours and tell him that I want Ruben dead as much as he does. Tell him we’ll work together.”
“But wait, Tía. Open the door right now. I can go inside—”
“And get yourself killed? No, girl, be smart. Ruben is not without protection. It’s bad enough we’re here speaking. He could catch us at any moment.”
“Please, I have to get Cruz—”
“I’ll keep him as safe as I can. Ruben doesn’t enjoy hurting the boy yet, thank the Lord for that. Please, for now, the best you can do is to go home and talk to your husband.”
