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“Say whatever it is you have to say, Lexie. I’m a big boy, and I doubt there’s anything you can say that will surprise me.” At least I hope to fuck not.
She takes my hand, still cupping her chin, and squeezes the fingers as she gazes into my face. Her neck ripples as she swallows. “I might have found a link to your mother.”
It takes me—I’m not sure how long—to process. It’s akin to slogging through a swamp, pitch black, with deadly snakes and other poisonous creatures nipping at my heels as I trod. But I can’t move faster and there’s no escape.
I might have found a link to your mother. I’m not sure what I feel. I’m not even sure I feel anything at all. It’s not the celebratory moment I expected.
She lowers our joined hands to her heart.
My head is swimming and my lungs aren’t functioning in a way that’s compatible with life.
I fed your whore mother to the dogs, my father sneered at me, seconds before his brain was splattered onto his office wall. Even ten years later, it haunts me. Not his death, but his words.
“Might have?” I zero in not on the possibility that I could soon know what happened to my mother, but on the possibility that it’s another dead end. Maybe it’s because I’ve chased so many leads into alleys that went nowhere, or maybe it’s because I don’t want to know. I’m afraid to know.
What if the truth is something more painful than the unknown? Is that even possible? What if she wasn’t the saint I remember? Will the shrine I built, inside my head, implode, leaving craters that never heal? Not even with Lexie’s love.
She nods.
“Let’s sit.” My voice is strained to the point where I almost don’t recognize it. I take her hand and somehow lead her to a chaise, where I sit with my legs up and pull her onto my lap, holding her against my chest. I need her warmth to chase away the pervasive chill rattling my bones.
“Talk to me, Angel.”
“I took over the case file a year and a half ago. Tamar had her hands full and it left so little time to work on anything not directly related to Premier.”
Maybe by design. My subconscious protecting me from news that would wreck me. News that would make me weak. Vulnerable to my enemies.
“I asked to work on the case.” She rubs her palm up and down my forearm as if to soothe me, but it’s not working. “I wanted you to have closure. I couldn’t bear the thought of you ending up like my father, plagued with questions until his last days. Are you angry with me?”
“Of course not,” I reply, because it’s a rational response and the right thing to say. But in truth, there’s a small part of me that is angry.
I’m two men. One furious, aching to lash out, and another who’s numb inside—feeling nothing as he goes through the motions of a conversation he doesn’t want to have. I’m standing on a strip between them, one foot on either side, teetering over a snake pit, and holding onto the word might for dear life—even though something inside knows that I’ll soon have answers. Ready or not.
I run my mouth over her hair. I can’t stop touching her. It’s as though I’m a tiny boy toying with the ribbon on my blanket when my father’s voice gets too loud.
I can’t indulge myself in this way. It’s making me weak.
“Lexie, I need to get up. It doesn’t have anything to do with you. I just need a little space while we talk.”
I ease her off my lap, onto the chaise, and take a seat nearby, resting my forearms on the generous wooden arms and my feet on the flagstone to ground myself. “What did you find? Tell me everything.”
She folds her legs like a pretzel, struggling to get comfortable. “I combed through everything Lucas did—Antonio and his team were thorough and methodical. They left no stone unturned.”
Lucas, on Antonio’s order, searched for the better part of a decade. Antonio looked too, as did Cristiano, and my Aunt Lydia. Later, Zé and I searched, chasing down every clue, but we came up empty. When Tamar got involved, my mother had been gone for so long that it seemed fruitless to examine the same dead leads. Besides, by that point, I was tired of bad news, so I found other things for Tamar to do. That’s the truth.
“Once I retraced everyone’s steps, without any luck,” Lexie continues, her face pale, but every word spoken with respect and empathy, “I opened a new file and started from the beginning.”
Zé and I did that, too. We looked at everything with fresh eyes—took nothing at face value.
“Your mother was well-known in all corners of the valley. So many people loved her. It would have been impossible to send her away without anyone knowing where. Even if your father killed her—someone would have known something.”
The frustration in her voice is one I experienced many times too—we all did.
“I felt strongly,” she continues, “that money had to have changed hands, somewhere, to buy that kind of silence.”
Unless he fed her to the dogs.
“Do you remember Vincente Costa, who worked for your Uncle Hugo and your father?”
