Dulcina Calvo ran home in a huff, holding her small body back as she stood behind the window, her teary eyes peering down at the man who still remained below.
Small hands covered her mouth and she stifled a hidden sob.
Why did he have to come and mess with her when she was married.
Now that I thought about it, I didn’t really know Esteban Zaragosa, I didn’t even know who was in his family.
Esteban Zaragosa was an abomination, but it was she who was most confused.
She wiped the tears from her eyes and slammed the curtains shut, she didn’t want to look down anymore.
Whatever happened to that man … it had nothing to do with her anymore.
She was not so low as to be a third party in someone else’s marriage, she had been educated and had the moral grounding in her heart that would not allow her to do so.
Downstairs, Esteban Zaragosa leaned against his car, fumbled for another cigarette and lit it.
The place where he stood was littered with cigarette butts at his feet.
He had always been clean and, as a doctor, had not been much of a smoker, but now, having to survive on cigarettes, he kept looking at the light coming from the upstairs window.
After an unknown period of time, the light went out.
Esteban Zaragosa threw the cigarette butt he was holding with his fingertips to the ground and crushed it with his leather shoe.
Not far away, the sound of a heeled shoe was heard.
I was about to open the car door and get in when a female voice came in.
“Dr. Esteban?”
Esteban Zaragosa narrowed his eyes slightly and looked at the source of the voice.
Eleanora Peña came running up with her high heels and small purse, excited to see Esteban Zaragosa. “Doctor Esteban, what are you doing here? By the way, I sent you a WhatsApp last New Year’s Eve, why didn’t you answer me?”.
Esteban Zaragosa was in a very bad mood at the time and was in no mood to respond to their accusations.
“Is Dr. Esteban leaving now? Isn’t he going upstairs to sit down?”
“No.”
Esteban Zaragosa got straight into the car and started it up, and Eleanora Pena, who had stayed outside, just grimaced and stomped upstairs.
Once upstairs, Eleanora Pena went to Dulcina Calvo’s room, opened the door and asked.
“Dulcina are you asleep?”
Dulcina Calvo, buried under the sheets and crying in a daze, said “yes,” not wanting to speak.
“I just saw Dr. Esteban downstairs, he took you home, didn’t he?”.
Dulcina Calvo huddled under the sheets, biting the corner of her lip, without speaking.
Eleanora Pena saw that she said nothing and thought she was asleep. “Never mind, you go to sleep.”
When Eleanora Peña closed the door, Dulcina Calvo’s eyes were swollen from crying, her little hands clutched at the blanket, and finally, unable to resist, she got out of bed and peeked through a crack in the curtain.
He left.
…
Esteban Zaragosa returned to his apartment in Ciudad de la Costa, drank some white wine, went into his study and took a small metal box out of the closed bottom drawer of his study table.
Inside was a braided piece of thick red string with three little white porcelain balls pinned to it, each with an inscription, Dulcina Calvo.
This braided red rope had been in his possession for ten whole years.
Ten years ago, the organization sent him to assassinate a spy, and after the successful assassination of the spy, he walked into a trap and was shot down by the enemy.
He kept running and managed to escape to a wooded area to hide, but the bullet wound was so severe that he fainted.
When he became conscious again, the clear, childlike voice of a little girl was in his ears.
“Wake up! Hey, wake up!”
It was dark and when the girl seemed to wake him up, she touched the sticky blood on his body and fell to the ground in fright, her little body lurching backwards.
Esteban Zaragosa strained to open his heavy eyelids and saw, faintly, a small, blurry, childish face.
“You’re not dead, are you? I just kicked you by accident, you’re not going to blame me for your death, are you?”.
The little girl was terrified, her big dark eyes widened and her warm little hand kept patting her face, “Wake up!”
Esteban Zaragosa woke up and said faintly, “I’m not dead yet, shut up.”
The man’s large, one-handed hand covered the girl’s chattering mouth and pulled her back into his arms.
The girl was terrified, her little hands rummaging through his big ones, making whimpering cries for help as Esteban Zaragosa pressed a word of warning in her ear, “You scream again and you draw people to you and I don’t mind killing you!”
“…”
The little girl was so frightened that she immediately stopped screaming and her little hands just fluttered and swatted at him, begging him to let her go.
As soon as Esteban Zaragosa removed the hand covering her mouth, the girl immediately ducked her head and opened her mouth to bite the hand that was clamped over her body, he released her hand in pain and the girl got up and ran for her life.
Esteban Zaragosa was in a cold sweat as he covered the bullet wound.
Some time later, the faint sound of footsteps was heard and he immediately went on alert, pistol in hand, ready to fire.
The next thing she knew was the sound of a brittle girl’s voice….
“Hello! Are you still there? Where is everybody?”
Where could she have gone if she was so badly injured?
He hesitated to look away when a large, cold hand suddenly tugged at his ankle!
The girl was so frightened that she thought a ghost had grabbed her foot and screamed in terror, but before she could utter a sound, a large hand covered her mouth again.
“Ooooooooooooooo…”
“Don’t yell.”
“Ooooooooooooooo … you’re scaring me to death! Why are you pulling me for nothing?”
In the darkness, Esteban Zaragosa’s dark eyes bore into her, somewhat incredulous: “How dare you come back?”.
The girl frowned and muttered, “Tough luck, I don’t know what you are, but it’s pretty sad to see you lying here all alone, and … if I really don’t come back for you, in case you die here . . eh, that’s awful to think about.”
Esteban Zaragosa leaned over, panting softly, and asked, “What are you doing here?”
Why was a girl in this forest in the middle of the night? Wasn’t she afraid?
“I came to camp with my classmates, they’re not too far away, and I just … came back to get some food.”
“… Aren’t you afraid of me?”
It was surprising that she had not informed her classmates to come, but had returned alone.
The girl bit her lip and said, “Scared, yes, but with the way you look, you probably won’t be able to kill me.”
Heh.
She did not know that he had a gun and that one shot could have killed her.
Esteban Zaragosa began to feel chills all over his body and fell into a coma.
In a blurred memory, he felt a small, warm hand feel his forehead, and then the girl put her arms around him.
Her arms were soft and warm.
She whispered in his ear, “Don’t ever die, if you do, I’ll be a murderer.”
She creaked and turned her back on him, pulled a small white cotton sling from her dress and wrapped it tightly around his wound.
After an indeterminate amount of time, shouts were heard from students not far away.
“Dulcina! Dulcina Calvo!”
“Dulcina Calvo! Dulcina!”
The girl said anxiously, “My companions are coming for me, so I’ll tell you that when I go down the hill, I’ll go call 120 to come and help you! You have to hold on! Here’s some food! Remember to eat.”
When the girl left, the people from the organization did not take long to find him, and did not wait for the ambulance that the girl had called.
Only, in the tangle of darkness, the red rope that the girl was carrying in her hand fell into her arms …