Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 71701 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 359(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71701 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 359(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
I understand now that home is not just a place but a feeling. And I’m going to make a home for my baby and me. Somewhere safe. Somewhere violence has never touched. And I will do it without the man beside me, no matter how much my heart aches.
It’s funny how time changes one’s perspective. For years, I have waited for the Morenos to be brought to justice. In one horrific night, I lost my father and brother Leandro to the explosion linked back to this family. Santiago barely survived himself, crawling from the flames, his flesh forever marred by the events. I clung to the hope that he would live, begging God and every other deity that might exist to save him as he faced a brutal recovery that most would not be strong enough to endure. And then came the news that our mother died—a result of her grief, no doubt.
What was left behind in the wreckage of those months were a brother and sister who’d had everyone they’d ever loved ripped away. We vowed revenge. We plotted it, and we relished it with a fervency that burned the blood in my veins, twisting and gnarling me into something I didn’t particularly like.
We wanted every Moreno to pay. It didn’t matter the cost. It didn’t matter their involvement. They all needed to suffer as we had. It was the only thing that made sense. At least, that was what I thought until Santiago fell in love, and the truth began to slowly unfurl.
I now understand who was responsible, and as I sit through Abel Moreno’s trial, listening to all of his sins and misdeeds, two things become evident. The first is that I was becoming just like him. So twisted up in my grief and desire for revenge, I couldn’t see wrong from right. And the second is that I just don’t have the energy to carry that burden of hate anymore. All it’s managed to do is poison me, and for the sake of my sanity, I understand I have to let it go. But I also understand that, on some level, I already have. Because there are bigger things on the horizon now. I have a life waiting for me, and I still don’t entirely know what that life will look like, but I know I don’t want it to be tainted by these memories.
Yet as I listen to The Tribunal sentence Abel to death, I can’t help the uneasy feeling that settles over me when his eyes move to mine. Today, I will wash my hands of him and never want to think of him again. But I can’t help wondering if he has concessions for that. I don’t doubt he would have revealed my plan to The Tribunal in an effort to save his own skin. He probably told them of my involvement in trying to lure Santiago to adultery, which inadvertently got him poisoned. That was never my intention, nor my plan, but Abel schemed and made it so.
Regardless, I know it doesn’t matter how it happened. The fact is it did, and I could still be held responsible for it. By the evil glint in his eyes right now, I don’t doubt that’s exactly what he’s trying to tell me.
A shudder moves over me, and then the room falls to silence as the final word is passed down, and we are all told to adjourn to the courtyard. I move in a daze, Judge pressing his hand against my lower back in a silent show of support. The night sky is black when we step out and gather before the gallows. We’ve been here for many hours, and it’s late now. The normal raucous crowd surrounding the IVI compound is absent, and instead, there are only soft murmurs that fall into silence as the process begins.
Every Society member who has been wronged by Abel is given an opportunity to speak, and there are many of them. It goes on for what feels like hours, and another wave of emotion crashes over me, exhaustion mingling with finality. I haven’t witnessed a Society execution before. This will be the first I’ve attended, and hopefully my last. They do happen, though not commonly. It takes a lot for The Tribunal to hand down a sentence such as this. I only know I will be grateful when it’s over. Despite my resolve to keep my emotions in check, my eyes sting with unshed tears as the weight of it all settles over me. This is it. The culmination of all my grief—all the tension between my brother and me, the painful memories, and the past we didn’t know we’d ever be able to leave behind. After today, there’s no doubt in my mind we will. We’ll have no choice.