Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 72969 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 365(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72969 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 365(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
I don’t know.
Most of my father’s minions are men, but occasionally a woman comes around. I’ve only had to entertain one woman, and she was at least gentle with me. She licked me down there for nearly the whole time we were together, and it actually felt nice, at least compared to what the men did to me.
Dr. Sanchez is not gentle.
She roots around inside my pussy.
When she finally withdraws her hand, she says, “Yes, Señor, I believe she’s pregnant.”
“Very well. You may leave.”
Dr. Sanchez rises, merely nods to my father, and leaves.
Presumably to go wash her hands.
And then maybe to be gunned down in the street.
At least, that’s what I hope happens to her. How can another woman not see the pain and anguish in my eyes, not help me when I’m at my most vulnerable?
Dr. Sanchez certainly isn’t a mother. Of that I’m a hundred percent certain.
“Stand up, Daniela.”
I gulp and obey my father, still naked. I stand in front of him, crossing my arms over my breasts once more.
“So you tried to put another one over on me,” he says.
I burst into tears at that. “Please, Papa. Please don’t take another baby from me.”
My father rises, walks around to me. “I resisted putting you on contraception,” he says, “because my friends and associates like a ripe woman. They’re supposed to wear condoms, of course, but I can see they don’t always obey the rules.”
I simply swallow.
No, they don’t obey the rules.
Most of them do wear them, but some don’t. Diego Vega doesn’t, and those two Americans—Derek Wolf and Declan McAllister—didn’t.
One of those three is my baby’s father.
But it doesn’t matter.
Because I know what’s coming.
My father advances toward me. First thing he does is punch my jaw so hard I fall to the floor, back on the Turkish rug.
Then he kicks my belly.
I cry out, crumpling into a fetal position, but he straightens me out, bringing his foot down on my abdomen again, again, again.
Until eventually…
Everything goes black.
Present Day…
I woke up a day later in the hospital.
The feeling of emptiness overwhelmed me.
Brisa was gone. I knew it before I even opened my eyes.
“You’re awake.”
I turned my head to see my father sitting in a chair next to me.
Of course he was sitting there. Acting the concerned parent. After he beat me and caused me to lose my baby.
“The baby is gone,” he said.
That was no news to me. He wouldn’t have had it any other way.
“Medicine had to intervene.” He shifted his gaze, narrowing his eyes at me. “After that beating you took by a stranger in the street, you were bleeding profusely. I’m afraid the baby couldn’t be saved.”
I looked straight ahead.
The way my father said the words, I could almost swear he believed them himself.
No doubt it was what he had to tell the doctors when he brought me to the hospital.
“And the doctors learned something else very sad,” he continued, a grin flickering behind the mock sympathy in his eyes. “It turns out you carry the gene for Huntington’s disease. You shouldn’t have a child. You would pass on the gene, and the child would eventually die of the debilitating disease. So I did the only responsible thing a father could. I gave permission to have your fallopian tubes tied.”
Did I hear him correctly? Or was I in a drug-induced haze?
He had my tubes tied?
Could he even do that without my consent?
Of course he could. He was Jacinto Agudelo. He could do anything. Wave enough money in a doctor’s face and you can convince him to render a teenage girl sterile.
“So, Daniela. This was your last baby. You’ll never have another.”
Tears well in my eyes as I remember that fateful day.
No more babies.
Not ever.
Which is why I love Belinda so much. She’s the only child I’ll ever have.
And I can’t lose her.
21
HAWK
I keep shovels in my truck.
I mean, you never know when you’re going to have to dig something up, right?
Sometimes seedlings in the orchard, sometimes a rogue cottonwood that threatens to coat the grazing fields in that white shit every spring.
Or sometimes you have a diseased steer that can’t go to the slaughterhouse.
We bury those on the edge of our property if it’s from a nonreportable disease or natural causes. A lot of ranchers actually compost large carcasses, but we don’t. We respect our animals too much for that.
My shovels came in handy that night eight years ago.
And they’ll come in handy now.
So will the leather working gloves and the box of giant black plastic trash bags. And especially the headbands with flashlights on them.
Eagle and I don’t talk as we make the long drive to the border where the barn still stands.
Thanks to Vinnie, the EPA is requiring an environmental assessment before we can raze the barn. Except…according to Vinnie, the EPA had already stepped in when he made contact with his person there.