Malo - Page 23

And so, I took it. The study I was working on was focused on the gut microbiome, and how it might impact the development of certain diseases; pretty cutting-edge stuff, but it held the possibility to provide a lot of help to a lot of people who needed it. I felt called to go there, to see if I could make a difference, but looking back…

Looking back, I wish I had stayed right where I was, and not flown all the way across the world to London, leaving my father behind and vulnerable to the kidnapping that would take him from me.

Arriving in London, I had been so nervous. My English was good, but I was still worried they would judge me on my accent, thinking I was from some backwater town in the middle of nowhere. But the lab I was working at was full of international researchers, and I found myself settling in quickly. My daily calls with my father began to drop off to weekly ones instead, as I was so focused on my work that I didn’t have time for much else.

I had been heading back from the lab, planning to get washed up and head out with a couple of the girls I had met at work, when the call came in. I felt my phone buzzing against my hip, and when I saw it was my father calling, I answered it at once. Looking back, I should have clocked that there was something up right away, given that he would normally have been at work when I was finishing up, but it didn’t even cross my mind that evening. I had been so focused on my studies and research, I’d hardly had time to think about my life back in Mexico.

“Hola,” I greeted him, ready to hear his warm voice down the line, the voice that always sounded like home to me. But, instead of that, I heard something else—some kind of commotion. Voices overlapping each other. His was somewhere in there, yelling something, but it sounded so distant, I couldn’t make it out.

“Papa?” I tried again, but there was nothing. No reply. A few seconds later, the call went dead and a cold wash of panic rushed through me. I stared down at the screen of my phone for a moment, waiting for him to call back and apologize and tell me that he had butt-dialled me or something, but there was nothing.

I hurried home and fired off messages to everyone I could think of who might have been close enough to check on him. Trying to convince myself it was nothing more than my own paranoia. I had gone out that night, but I had spent the evening distracted, compulsively checking my phone, waiting to hear back from him. I kept telling myself I was overthinking it. That when my father called me back I would laugh at how ridiculous I had been, and I would be able to return my focus to my studies in no time.

But there was nothing the next day. Or the day after that. I called up some of my tios, hoping to find him there, but they told me they hadn’t heard anything from him. I even reached out to a few of his coworkers, but they were confused, assuming he’d had to deal with a family issue and that was why he hadn’t been at work for a while. Wherever he was, he was in trouble, I was sure of it, and I needed to get out there and do something about it.

I took a leave of absence from my job, knowing I wouldn’t be able to focus enough to do any good around the lab, anyway, and flew back to Monterrey. I can still remember sitting on the plane, pulling into the airport, and inhaling the familiar scent of the air, but feeling, in the back of my mind, that there was something terribly wrong. That there was something I needed to fix.

I caught a cab back to our part of the neighborhood and headed up the street, to the far end of the road that led to our slightly out-of-the-way house. My father liked it there because it was quiet, less snooping neighbors asking questions about when he was going to get remarried. Normally, home was a sanctuary to me, but now? Now, I knew there was something off and I just couldn’t figure out what it was.

I slipped my key into the door, and pushed it open. I called my father’s name into the house, praying he would call back to me, emerge from the kitchen with a towel over his shoulder, so we could laugh about how far this silly misunderstanding had gone.

And then, Rayo stepped out into the hallway and lifted a gun level with my head, my heart dropping into my shoes.

“You’re coming with me,” he told me, his voice eerily calm. “If you want to keep your father safe.”

I lifted my hands slowly above my head, not daring to protest.

He grabbed me and shoved me into the back of a waiting car, the gun pressed to the small of my back the whole time. I could remember, all too vividly, the bite of it against my skin, the knowledge that with one pull of the trigger, he could end my life.

I had never faced something like that in my entire life, not once. I knew there was a dark side to Mexico, just like there was to any place in the world, but I had never imagined I’d have to see it.

I was driven to a compound outside of the city. I sat, wondering if any of the people who glanced over at the car as it drove past had any idea of what was going on inside of it. I felt numb. I still didn’t know what had happened to my father, if he was even alive. I couldn’t stop playing the sight of that gun through my mind, wondering if that was the end he’d met when he had been least expecting it. Had that been what I’d heard on the call? I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

What would they even want my father for, anyway? He was great at his job, of course, but I was too naïve to think of what they would need someone like him for. He wasn’t a violent man, or a dangerous one. He wouldn’t have hurt a fly, having dedicated his whole career to making the world a better, safer, healthier place for people.

I was yanked out of the car and pulled inside a large compound—a villa that stretched around a large garden, filled with dogs who looked as though they would have ripped my throat out at the barest hint of danger.

And that was when I met El Serpiente.

I was forced into a small room, where two guards were poised at either side of a large marble desk. Sitting in a huge leather chair on the other side was a man who looked to be around my father’s age, his head shaved, and a tattoo of a snake curling up around his neck, spitting venom across his throat.

He clasped his hands in front of him once I was pushed down into the seat opposite him, eyeing me with what looked like amusement.

“Do you know who I am?” he asked, speaking slowly, confidently.

I swallowed heavily and then shook my head. “No,” I whispered. I was telling the truth. But I knew to be careful with him. He exuded a power I had never sensed from anyone before, and even Rayo, who had, up until that point, been happy pushing me around and making me do whatever he wanted. Now he seemed to defer to him, dipping his head down with respect when he entered the room.

The man smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. When he grinned, he looked like a wolf bearing its teeth—a threat before he pounced.

“You don’t need to know my name,” he replied. “You just need to know that I have your father. And if you don’t do exactly as we say, he’s dead. You understand?”

I swallowed down the heavy lump in my throat, and nodded. I didn’t have a choice. They had me right where they wanted me, and they knew it. I had been backed into a corner, and the best I could hope for was making it out on the other side in one piece.

And ensuring that my father didn’t get a bullet in his brain for my mistakes.

From there, they had flown me out to Houston and forced me to gather information on the Kings for them, kept me up in that room, forced me to parade around the streets like I was some kind of whore. It was a miracle I hadn’t gotten myself killed already, and I could only pray that the same went for my father.

My father.