Total pages in book: 161
Estimated words: 149338 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 747(@200wpm)___ 597(@250wpm)___ 498(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 149338 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 747(@200wpm)___ 597(@250wpm)___ 498(@300wpm)
Knowing I failed my mother.
All I could do was mouth “I’m so sorry,” from a distance, burying my face in my hands. The memory of their distraught faces added to the images that would forever haunt me. There wouldn’t be one day where I wouldn’t remember them like that.
Falling apart in front of me.
Not. One. Day.
I sucked in air, my chest heaving from my own sobs. A sound so foreign, yet so real. My heart hurt, and I felt a pain I’d never in my life felt before, a part of me gone.
“Mamá,” I whimpered one last time, peering back at her through a cloud of tears, through a branded memory burning painfully deep in my soul.
“I promise you they will pay for this. I will make them pay,” I whispered in her ear as I softly closed her eyes and did the sign of the cross over her beautiful lifeless face. The way she’d done a million times to me, kissing her forehead one last time.
I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs through the dark streets, I wanted to die, and… I wanted what all Martinez men wanted.
Revenge.
The feel of blood on my hands that wasn’t my mother’s.
She wasn’t the only one who died that day…
We all did, too.
“How many guards are outside?” I asked, getting the security handled before the mass.
“We have fifteen set up in the front of the church, ten in the back, and five at each side entrance,” Victor, my head of security replied.
“No press is to get past those gates. Do you understand me? If they do, it’s your ass,” I ordered, pointing a finger in his face.
He nodded, not taking my warning lightly. The past week had been a fucking shit-storm. Between the newspapers, news stations, reporters, and cops wanting answers in regards to the shooting. Our lawyers were working day and night to get this problem out of the public eye.
Fucking failing at doing so.
I was the last one from our immediate family to arrive at the church. Sophia, Amari, and Michael drove together, escorted by bodyguards. My father came with his men, saying he had some stuff to take care of before the mass. I spent the entire week planning the wake, funeral, and reception that would follow at our house. We were all watching our asses, more so now than ever before. The Martinez name was being thrown in the line of fire for the first time. My father handled the business, making sure to keep everything in order while everything around us seemed like it was falling apart.
He looked like he had aged twenty years overnight, the loss of his wife almost too much for him to bear. It was the first time I ever felt sympathy for him. An emotion I wasn’t used to when it came to my father.
I walked into the empty cathedral, needing a minute to sit before the guests started to arrive. My shoes echoed off the tile beneath me, mimicking my heart, as I walked over to the last set of pews. Wanting to be the furthest away from my mother’s body as possible. She was lying in an elegant red mahogany coffin beside the podium.
In the last two days, family and friends paid their condolences, saying their goodbyes to the body that lay resting. I hadn’t made it up to see her yet. A part of me wanting to remember the woman that used to be so full of life, not the unrecognizable one laying there lifeless.
I watched from afar.
The image of her dead body was the only thing that I saw in my mind every day. I felt like I hadn’t slept since the day she died in my arms. I was emotionally and mentally drained, my body physically spent. I just kept moving like I was on autopilot.
If I stopped, I wouldn’t have been able to get back up.
“Hey,” Sophia announced, coming up behind me. Rubbing my back as I blankly stared out in front of me. “You look exhausted. Have you been sleeping? At all? Even if it’s just for a few minutes? You were shot, twice. You need to rest. When was the last time you took your medications? You’re going to get an infection if you don’t start taking care of yourself.”
“Where is Amari?” I replied, ignoring her questions. I suffered minor wounds during the altercation. Just a few grazes to my shoulder and the side of my stomach. A few stitches, some medication, and I was good to go. My body would heal with time, but my heart was never going to mend itself.
Sophia sighed. “She’s in one of the backrooms with Michael. A few of your family members just arrived. Do you need me to get—”
“Make sure Amari eats today. She looked as pale as a ghost all day yesterday. I don’t trust Michael to look after her.”