Alessio
All night, I had been sitting in the office, making desperate phone calls to find Anson’s location. Call after call, it felt like hitting a brick wall-and I ended up with nothing. It was exhausting to know that after that amateur killed my uncle, he was apparently quite good at playing hide and seek was tiring as well.
Around five in the morning, I finally dragged myself to bed. Not because I wanted to, it was only to Mena satisfied-but once I made it upstairs, she wasn’t even there.
My first thought was that she must’ve gone to Pilar’s room to vent about me and my obsession with Anson-and yes, I was obsessed with the idea of killing him.
There was no point in denying it.
He took my Uncle away from me, he hurt the woman I loved, he showed me why we were not supposed to show any mercy-and I couldn’t relax before I had put him down.
I slept for barely an hour before I was up again, and back in the office to think about my own failure. Once the adrenaline would fade away, I knew I would faint because all that kept me awake were the fumes I was running on.
Still, I would rather sit in my office and crack my brains about Anson than sitting around and doing nothing.
The others would be arriving back from the West any time now, and I had told them the same. No one would close an eye before I knew Anson’s location, and no one was allowed to crack a smile before I lifted his head and threw it on the floor like the dog he is.
Just as I was about to think of another theory about where he could’ve been hiding, there was a knock on the door.
“What is it?” I called out, frustrated. The door creaked open, revealing one of my guys. His face was pale, eyes wide, and his body tensed as if he was bracing himself for his next words.
“Speak,” I demanded, gesturing with my hand to show him I was in a hurry.
“There’s this lady at the gate,” he stammered, “Says she has some urgent news to tell you about…”
“About who?” I frowned, feeling a knot twist in my gut. News at this hour, delivered like this, couldn’t be anything good.
“About Anson. He held her hostage and…”
Anson…
The muscles in my face tensed, hearing that name. “And what?” I growled, demanding the rest of the sentence.
“He has Jimena.”
“And Naty?” My breath caught in my throat.
“She’s here, still asleep.”
A deep breath escaped from my lips. It felt like the earth had stopped spinning, and for a moment, nothing else existed-no sound, no movement, just those three words repeated over and over inside my head.
He has Jimena.
“No word of this to anyone, and let her in-now!” I ordered, jumping up from my chair. I couldn’t believe this. I couldn’t understand.
How could I let this happen? Mena, my Jimena, in Anson’s clutches?
As I paced the room, waiting for this lady to be brought in, my feelings were a mess. Mena was strong, but Anson was a monster, the kind of man who took pleasure in others’ pain, especially women’s, and if he had Mena…
No, I couldn’t let my mind go there.
I ran back to the monitor, and turned on the CCTV. Determined to find something, I skipped back through the footage-and then, there she was. Mena’s figure popped up on the screen, and looking at her, it felt like I was getting detached from my own body.
I knew Anson couldn’t have gotten through here, and my suspicions were right. Mena left of her free will. She pushed a garbage container toward the back gate and climbed over the gates.
I couldn’t wrap my head around it. Why would she go to him? After all the effort, all the sleepless nights we all went through to take him down, track him down, why would she not say a word and just put herself in that kind of danger?
I buried my head in my hands to calm myself down, or count to ten as one might say. The urge to tear the entire office apart, and to scream until my vocal cords weren’t working was overwhelming.
The worst thing was that I couldn’t. Breaking down in front of my men was not an option. If I were to break, it would give them the right to break. I had seen it happen when Stefano died, and it couldn’t happen again.
There was also Naty. None of this madness could reach her. She was just a kid, thrown into all of this, and I wanted to protect her as much as I could.
What would I tell her if she asked for her mommy, who braided her hair every morning?
What would I tell her if she asked when her mommy would be coming back? What would I tell that little girl who was so attached to her mommy, the one person who had shown her love from the day she was born?
Did Mena think that through before she jumped over a fucking dumpster?
The office door creaked open again, and as I looked up, an old woman stepped through. She appeared to be in her mid-sixties.
So this was what Anson was doing right now, kidnapping grandmas?
I noted how tired the woman looked. Her eyes looked nervous and weak as if she hadn’t closed them any more than I had. At some point, it hit me that I had seen the woman before.
She was the woman Mena had spoken to at the ice cream booth.
My memory of their interaction was clear. I remembered asking Mena who she was afterward, but she had dodged the question, and being the fool that I was-I let her.
“Mena spoke to you, at the ice cream booth,” I told her, my words sounding more like a statement than a question. “Who are you and how do you know her?”
The woman stepped forward. “My name is Ana Rodriguez, and I used to be Jimena’s neighbor,” she introduced herself, her voice shaking.
“Ana,” I spoke her name. “I want to hear everything you know.”