Tia Barbi
“Everyone feared her, even those who loved her. Especially those who loved her.”
Chapter One
The Los Angeles heat beat down onto the cracked asphalt as two heavily muscled men walked out of a warehouse in a seedy part of town toward an immaculately restored, bright red 1978 Chevrolet Impala parked nearby. The car's windows were open, and the doors were unlocked, unusual for this neighborhood where state-of-the-art alarms were an everyday part of life. For this vehicle, such precautions were unnecessary. People here knew better than to go near this car, much less try to steal it. The threat of what might happen to anyone who touched it worked better than any alarm ever could.
The younger man dropped into the passenger seat, slammed the door, then pulled a large, silver-plated automatic pistol from his waist and brandished it.
"Ready to go smoke this fool?" he asked the driver, checking the gun's clip with an aggressive click.
The man in the driver’s seat, Manuel "Manny" Hernandez, started the engine, then looked at his younger brother, Rico, as if he were insane.
"Sure, why not? Let's go commit murder in broad daylight in Pop’s Impala, the most recognizable car in the entire neighborhood."
"C'mon, 'mano, ain't nobody gonna say a fucking thing if we put two in that fucker Pedro's head, you know that."
"Maybe, but why take chances? Didn't you learn anything from Pop?"
At the mention of their dead father, Rico’s jaw set. He waved the gun without thinking. "Damn right I did! Pop would have got that asshole a long time ago, and you know that!"
Manny reached over and pushed his brother's hand down so the gun fell out of sight. "You're right, he would have. Pop would have flown off the handle and done it in front of the entire neighborhood. That was the kind of man he was, and look what happened to him." He shut the engine down and turned to face his brother. "Listen, lil’ bro, this ain't like the old days. There’s cameras everywhere, you know that. Drive-bys are a thing of the past. You might get Pedro, sure, but you might also kill some abuelita with a stray bullet, or worse, a little girl riding her bike. We do that and we get all kinds of heat. And why do we have to smoke Pedro anyway? We gotta deal with him, but there are other ways to make things happen. Ways that don't end with us getting the needle or rotting in prison."
Rico started to speak, thought better of it, and kept his mouth shut.
"You got something to say?" Manny asked. "Then say it."
Rico looked at his brother, concern on his face. "C'mon, bro, you know what the streets been saying since Pop died, right? They say we got soft. Soft. That's why that pendejo Pedro did what he did. You think he would ever disrespect Pop like that? Hell nah. We gotta make these fools know our family didn't turn weak just because Pop and the twins ain’t here.”
Manny rolled his eyes. Living up to their father's reputation would be impossible unless you were a complete psychopath. He remembered the story everyone still told. Pop, back when he was just a bodyguard, sitting with his jefe in a neighborhood restaurant. The jefe complained that the menudo was under seasoned. Pop stood, went into the kitchen, and shot the chef stone dead. He stepped over the bleeding body, seasoned the food himself, and brought it back to the table. The jefe tasted it, smiled, and nodded. That was the day Jorge, El Cocinero, The Chef, was born. He rose to run the neighborhood and kept it with blood. His reign ended the day eighteen months, the day he and his oldest sons, Lencho and Lucho, the twins, were cut down by federales on the other side of the border.
Manny, the third of six Hernandez siblings, had never wanted that life. An excellent student, he earned a full scholarship to Stanford. He burned through a bachelor's degree in two years and an MBA in three. His father pressured him to come back and help run the family drug empire, but Manny was the only one of the Hernandez children able to stand up to their father. He defied Jorge’s wishes and stayed away from the neighborhood with plans to open an investment firm. Then Pop and the twins died, so Manny came home, took the keys to a machine he never wanted, and tried to drive it without running people over. Every day, Rico tested that plan and so did their Tia Barbi, Jorge’s sister, who shared Jorge’s taste for blood and stepped in to help run things when her brother and nephews were killed.
"How many times are we going to talk about this, Rico? I have plans, 'mano, plans that don't include murder. In six months we will be completely legit. We can get the hell out of L.A. and live without looking over our shoulders every minute of every day."
Rico looked away.
"What if I don't wanna leave, Manny?"
"Rico, you want to stay here? For what? There’s nothing here for us. We got no future here. Look how Pop and the twins ended up. Wanna go out like that?"
"At least they died with respect. With glory. They went out like men."
"Respect? Glory?" Manny turned fully to him. "Idiota. We didn't even get to bury them; we can't even put flowers on their graves. The federales threw their bodies in a hole like roadkill. Thank God Mom wasn't alive to see that, it would have killed her. What respect or glory is there in that?"
Rico held Manny’s gaze, eyes flashing. "That what that fancy college taught you, bro? To be a coward?"
"My God, is that what you think I am? I'm trying to keep us alive, Rico! I'm trying to make sure we have a future. Christina knew there was no future here. That’s why she ran away from the only home she ever knew after Tito did what he did to her. You think she wanted to leave? She had no choice."
At the mention of their missing sister, Rico made a face.
"Yo, man, don't even talk to me about her. Fuck her," he said. "She abandoned us. She didn't give a shit about you, me, or our family."
Manny was about to respond when his phone rang. He shot Rico a look, then answered.
"What's up, Berto?"
Roberto "Berto" Hernandez, fourth of the six Hernandez siblings, was a quiet genius with a keyboard. Their father saw it early and commandeered his skills, washing the family's money through legitimate front companies and multiple accounts around the globe. A gentle soul, Berto hated the violence like Manny did, but unlike Manny, never had the courage to go against their father’s wishes.
"I got something you need to see," Berto said. "Come to the office. I don't want to talk about it over the phone."
"Okay, sit tight. We’ll be right there."
"What's up?" Rico asked when Manny hung up.
"Berto wants to show us something,” he said, starting the car.
Twenty minutes later they turned into an industrial park miles from their neighborhood, in a much nicer part of town. One of the first things Manny did after their father was killed was rent this place and move Berto's gear away from neighborhood eyes. Far from the noise and the threats of the neighborhood, Berto thrived.
"What's up, bro?" Rico said as they entered. He dropped into a chair and put his feet on a desk.
"What did I tell you about putting your feet on the furniture, fool?" Berto said, smiling. He swept Rico's boots off the table and cuffed the back of his head lovingly. He hugged Manny, then returned to a desk partially surrounded by several huge high-definition monitors mounted on the walls.
"What's so important we couldn't talk about it over the phone?" Manny asked.
"Remember when Christina disappeared? I set my facial recognition software to scour the Internet. If she ever posted a picture anywhere, my bots would find it."
"We know that, Berto. It never worked. We figured she was too smart to post any pictures; she knew Pop would put you on the case," Manny said.
"Exactly. It’s been years and nada. After Pop and the twins were killed, I stopped checking and forgot all about the bots. Well, about an hour ago I got a hit."
Rico stopped scrolling on his phone and leaned in.
"Somebody in New Jersey posted pictures on the Dark Web. Turns out Christina is now Veronica. Whoever posted the images says they know Christina's identity is fake, figures someone is looking, wants money to give her up. Check it out." Berto tapped keys. One monitor filled with images of the same woman. In one, she walked down the driveway of a suburban home while a voluptuous redhead waved goodbye. In another, she pushed a stroller in a park. In a third, she stood in a coffee shop line. In the last, she sat in a car waiting as large metal gates to a property slid open.
"You sure that’s her?" Manny asked.
"Look again." Berto zoomed.
Manny exhaled through his nose. "Berto, I still don't think... Wait. Hang on. Holy fucking shit."
"Coño," Rico said. "I think that's her."
"It is her. It’s Christina," Berto said, leaning back. "Feel like taking a trip to New Jersey, guys? I think we just found our little sister."
"How much does this person want to tell us where she is?" Rico asked.
"We have to contact her to find out, but she ain’t as smart as she thinks," Berto said. "I tracked her IP. I used that plus the metadata from the images and ran the EXIF through a...”
"English, Berto,” Manny said.
"Sorry. I found where the pictures were taken. Christina lives in a town called Willows in New Jersey. Her new name is Veronica. Veronica Castillo."
"Veronica," Rico said with contempt. "She has some nerve using Mom's name, that bitch. We need to get to this Willows place and find her.”
Manny kept his face blank, though his pulse spiked hard. For years he’d told himself Christina was probably dead: either their father had killed her for stealing his money or Tia Barbi had done it for killing Tio Tito, her husband. In some ways, that story had been easier to live with. Dead people didn’t need rescuing. Dead people didn’t remind you how badly you’d failed them.
But she wasn’t dead. Christina was alive, living under another name, and all he could think about was how many times he’d let her calls go to voicemail. How many times he’d told himself he’d answer her texts after one more assignment, one more exam. Then one day, his little sister, who he should have protected, was simply gone.
"No," Manny said. "We’re not taking any trips to New Jersey."
"What?" Rico almost jumped out of his chair. "Fuck you talkin’ about,
bro? We need to go get this bitch. You know what she did."
Manny looked at his younger brother, and something in him shifted.
His expression didn't change, but Rico and Berto exchanged a glance,
because they knew that look. It was the one Jorge Hernandez wore when he
decided a man's fate. Where Jorge would have erupted, Manny's calm was
sharper, and deadlier.
"First of all," Manny said, "that 'bitch' is our sister. Our blood. Call
her that again, Rico, and me and you got a problem. Second, we all know
what she had to endure. We know what all the women in the family had to
endure."
Rico bristled. "I don't know what the hell you're…“
"Stop, Rico," Berto said. "You know what he means."
Rico stared at the floor. “I don’t believe that for a minute. I know Pop
and
Tio Tito and them treated the women like shit, but that doesn't mean that they …did that. And that sure doesn’t mean Christina gets a free pass."
"Treated them like shit doesn't cover it," Manny said. “Not even close. Me and Berto walked in on Tito groping cousin Lucy when we were kids. Her bra was on the floor and his hand was down... well, you can imagine the rest. He saw us and laughed. She ran out crying. She was his niece, Rico. Family. That wasn’t the first or the last time. You heard the stories. We all did.” Manny clenched his fists. “Christina was the gentlest one of us. I don’t even want to think about what Tito did to her to make her do that to him."
"That ain't right, Manny. Tito was Pop's brother-in-law, our Tio! He was family too. He wouldn’t do that to her. I don’t believe it.”
“Believe what you want. Tito was a pig who got what he deserved," Berto said.
“So what about the money?" Rico asked.
"What money?” Manny asked, although he knew what Rico meant.
"She stole Pop's money. Our money. We need to get it back."
"Consider it payment for what Tito did to her," Manny said. "I wish she had taken more. From the looks of the pictures, she put it to good use. Good for her."
Rico frowned but kept quiet.
"We leave Christina alone," Manny said, looking from brother to brother. "She started a new life. We’re gonna let her live it. We good with that?"
"I got no problem," Berto said.
They both looked at Rico.
"We good with that, Rico?" Manny asked.
"Fine," Rico said, but his face said something else.
"Berto, can you do something about the post this person put up?"
"Way ahead of you. I hacked into the server and…“
"I don’t need the details, Berto."
“They’re gone. It’s like they never existed."
"Good. Delete all the stuff you downloaded," Manny said, pointing at the images on the screens. "We don’t need it."
"I gotta take a piss," Rico said. He stood, slipped behind his brothers, and quickly snapped several photos of the screens with his phone before Berto could wipe them, then hurried to the bathroom. He locked the door and checked his phone. The shots were hurried, but they showed Christina clearly. More importantly, they showed the address Berto found. He attached the pictures to a text message addressed to a contact labeled Barbi. His thumb hovered over the screen. Barbi had that effect, part saint, part executioner. Everyone feared her, even those who loved her. Especially those who loved her. He hit send before he could think twice. The soft whoosh of the text being sent cut through the silence but outside Berto and Manny kept talking, unaware.
Rico pocketed the phone, his heartbeat loud in his ears. When he rejoined his brothers a minute later, the monitors were dark and the images of their long-lost sister were already gone as if they had never been.
A few minutes later, a phone chimed beneath the low hum of dryers and the sharp scent of acetone in a local nail salon. The woman in the corner chair lifted a finger, a silent cue for the technician to pause. The young woman froze instantly, brush in mid-air, waiting.
The owner of the phone picked it up with her free hand, glanced at the screen and tapped it with long dark red fingernails, careful not to smudge the wet lacquer catching the light like blood.
She read the message once. Then again.
When she set the phone down, the mirrored wall of polish bottles caught the reflection of her slow, deliberate smile. It wasn’t joy. It was recognition. A predator scenting a trail it had been waiting for.
Something in her customer’s demeanor unsettled the technician, but she swallowed hard and went back to work. She tried her best not to think about her customer’s cold, predatory smile, but her brush trembled, nearly smudging the polish. The customer didn’t so much as glance down. She continued to smile her first genuine smile in years, savoring thoughts of what was to come.
Chapter Two
EIGHT MONTHS LATER.
The first whispers of the light were just creeping into the sky as three teenagers abandoned their bikes just beyond the tree line of the Delaware State Forest in Eastern Pennsylvania. In the hush before dawn, the familiar woods seemed different. The air smelled of wet, churned earth and something faintly sour, carried from the nearby river.
“Guys, this is crazy. We shouldn’t be here,” Jeffrey said as his sneakers sank half an inch into black, sucking mud.
An eye roll and a grin passed between his friends Jamal and Stephanie as they unfastened fishing gear from their bikes with practiced ease.
“Will you relax!” Jamal said, clicking his flashlight on as he walked toward the tree line. “We’re not exploring the Amazon, bro. We’re in the woods, like, two miles away from home.”
Jeffrey only frowned. Every sfew feet, the clinging muck dragged at his Nikes. Every few feet, his gut told him to turn back.
“Dude, we’ve been fishing this spot since we were five,” Stephanie said. ”One little flood and suddenly the governor’s son is scared of some mud?”
Jeffrey glanced behind them, back toward the road.
”Little flood? Little flood?” he said, trying unsuccessfully to hide his rising fear. “Look at this,” he said, gesturing toward the thick sludge sticking heavily to his shoes. “It’s never been like this before. It’s not right. My dad says…”
“Your dad says a lot of things,” Jamal interrupted, already stepping into the woods, flashlight swinging. “And most of them have to do with keeping you in a bubble.”
Jeffrey didn’t reply. Every few feet, the clinging muck dragged at his boots. Every few feet, his gut told him to turn back.
“Seriously,” he called after them, his flashlight beam trembling as he walked. “This is a bad idea. We’ve never gone fishing after a flood like that. My dad said this was the worst flood in over a hundred years. My grandfather is, like, ninety years old and even he says he never saw a flood like this.”
Stephanie turned and shone her flashlight in Jeffrey’s face. “Chill, Jeffrey. We’re gonna catch some catfish, that’s all. We’ve done it like, a million times.”
“Yeah, but my dad said that you never know what can happen after a flood like this. You guys saw it. The river came all the way up to the road just the other day. People rowed their kayaks to Walmart, remember? My dad said you never know what…”
“And my dad said this is the best time to get those giant big daddy catfish,” Jamal said. “The floods rearranged all those big old rocks and stuff from the bottom of the river, so the fish have to find new hiding places. It’s the perfect time. I bet you won't be complaining when my grandma fries up catfish for us later.”
“I do love your grandmother’s fried catfish,” Jeffrey agreed.
“We all do,” Stephanie said. “So man up, Jeffrey, we’ll be fine. Quit bitching about a little mud.”
Jeffrey opened his mouth to respond but thought better of it and closed it again. He picked up a stick, wiped the worst of the mud from his shoe, then hurried to catch up to his friends, flashlight flickering across rocks and exposed tree roots.
The river came into view, swollen to over twice its usual width and flowing much faster than its usual languid pace. The half-light of dawn washed everything in cold, steel-blue shadows. The boulders that normally lined the bank, slabs of stone and thick, gnarled long-dead trees, themselves almost as hard as stone, were nowhere to be seen. They had spent countless afternoons climbing and leaping between them, as comfortable and confident on those surfaces as other kids were on jungle gyms. In their place, cold, rushing water the color of old pennies. The world around them sat in that in-between moment. Not quite night, not yet morning, with everything washed in shadow. A massive tree trunk came drifting into view, carried along by the swift current. Half-submerged, it moved slowly, but with undeniable force, its waterlogged bark slick and black in the dim light. Thick, torn roots stretched out behind it like twisted limbs, rising and falling with the motion of the water. In the faint glow of approaching sunrise, the roots looked like a tangle of skeletal fingers, clawing at the riverbank as if the tree were trying to drag itself out.
“Okay guys, let’s not waste any time,” Jamal said, when the tree had floated silently past. “The sun will be up soon.”
Together, they found promising-looking pools away from the swift current where they hoped giant catfish would hide, and one by one they dropped their lines in and began fishing in silence. For a while, things almost felt normal. Jamal landed a heavy one. Stephanie soon followed suit. Even Jeffrey managed to reel in something big enough to brag about.
By sunrise, Jamal hauled in the largest catch yet. “My dad was right,” he said, beaming, struggling to hold up the heavy fish for his friends to admire. ”This was the best time to catch these guys. We’ve never caught any this big before.”
Stephanie checked their baskets, half-submerged in the shallows, fish tails flicking lazily. “We’ll be eating for days. Feel better now, Jeffrey?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, you don't have to rub it in,” Jeffrey said, grinning, his earlier paranoia forgotten.
Stephanie looked up at the sun. “I think that’s it, guys. It’s gonna get hot pretty soon, and the fish will head to the deeper water.”
“Give me a couple more minutes,” Jeffrey said. “I see a pool over there we didn't try, and I bet the granddaddy catfish is hiding over… wait… what’s that?”
“Where?” Stephanie asked.
“Look! Over there!”
Jamal and Stephanie followed the line of his outstretched arm to a muddy bend in the riverbank and they watched as the river nudged a half-submerged car to the surface, pushing it forward inch by inch. The vehicle’s front end breached the surface first, caked with muck, twigs and leaves stuck to the grille. Then came the roof, dented and tangled with river grass. As the front end rolled further into view, it wedged against the bank with a heavy, sloshing sound, the windshield cracked like a spiderweb.
“That’s wild,” Stephanie said. “I guess someone lost their car in the flood. Sucks to be them.”
“Guys… look,” Jeffrey said, his voice low and trembling.
As the sun climbed higher, golden light sliced through the trees and struck the car’s windshield just right. Behind the grime-streaked glass, something pale lurched.
A face.
Bloated and gray-green, it slammed against the window with a sickening wet smack. The waterlogged skin hung in sagging strips peeling like soggy wallpaper, barely clinging to the bone underneath. Its lips were rotted or eaten away to expose a row of yellow and cracked teeth fixed in a grotesque, permanent grin. One eye socket gaped open, empty and black like the mouth of a cave. The other eye, a swollen, milky, pus-filled orb, seemed to gaze directly into their souls, its lifeless stare radiating malice. Strands of slick, blackened hair clung to the scalp like seaweed, drifting with each subtle pull of the current that flowed through the broken window. The corpse floated just beyond the glass, limbs loose and rubbery, swaying with the river's rhythm like some grotesque marionette.
Then the knocking began.
Not a conscious knock, but a steady, rhythmic thump that sounded like a plea, as the water rocked the corpse gently forward and back again and again, its forehead tapping against the glass with a soft, hollow thud. Once. Then again. Then again. Over and over as if it knew they were there. As if it wanted out.
Or for them to come in.
Thump.
Jeffrey's breath hitched. His eyes went wide.
Thump.
He stumbled backward, knees buckling, and dropped to the ground. He doubled over and vomited into the weeds.
Thump.
The sound kept time with the river, steady, hollow, wrong. A thin ribbon of decay slid from the broken window, curling into the current like black ink. For a long moment, none of them could speak. The forest was silent except for the rushing water, and the dull, rhythmic thumping of the corpse’s head knocking against the glass, again and again and again.
Stephanie stepped back so quickly her boot slid in the mud. She nearly dropped her fishing rod, catching it by the handle at the last second. Jamal stood frozen, his proud catch forgotten, eyes locked on the window.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
The corpse's face slid slightly sideways now, lips parting wider in the water, making it seem as if it was trying to speak.
Thump.
Its ruined forehead struck the glass harder this time. A faint crack threaded outward from the impact point, traveling across the pane like a bolt of lightning. The next thud came slower. Deeper. Wetter. A sound that didn't just land in the ears, but in the gut. The sound of something insisting.
Let me out.
Or worse…
Come inside.
Thump.
Every instinct screamed at them to run. Run now, before whatever was inside that car decided to come out.
But they couldn’t.
Their legs refused. Their hearts hammered in their chests. The world seemed to shrink to that one terrible sound.
No one spoke. No one breathed.
And still...
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Chapter Three
Veronica
Willows should have been asleep.
She had timed it that way. Wheels down at Teterboro a little after three thirty, bags in the car by three forty-five, into Willows by four fifteen and home by four thirty, with nobody awake to see her return.
At the center of town there should have been one light, the back of the bagel place, the ovens going and nothing else open for two hours. Instead, the square was lit up like brighter than a night game. Trucks were parked nose to tail down the avenue, box trucks and trailers with their sides rolled open, cable running in fat black bundles along the curb and taped across the crosswalk. A generator hummed behind the bank. Two men in shorts and headsets walked a light stand up the sidewalk, one at each end.
Veronica slowed to a crawl and looked in the mirror at her toddler, Isaac, asleep in his car seat. His head lolled to the side, dark curls damp with sweat from the ride. He shifted at the change in speed and settled again.
A cop came into her headlights with a flashlight down at his side and a coffee in his other hand, MALONE on his name tag. She put the window down.
"Morning, ma'am. Road's closed till six. You live down this way?"
"On the lake."
He looked past her at the car seat, then stepped back and pointed the flashlight at the side street. "Take Chestnut around. Go slow over the cable."
"What is all this?"
"Some TV thing." He sipped his coffee. "Two weeks they been here. Six more to go, is what they're telling us. Pain in the ass."
"I'm sure it is. Thanks, officer Malone.”
She took Chestnut at ten miles an hour. Through the gap between two trailers she could see the coffee shop, bright as noon inside, a canvas awning hung over the real one, a woman in a folding chair with her face tipped back and a man working on it. A camera on a shoulder swung out toward the street. Veronica turned her head and kept driving.
“We’re home, sweetheart,” Veronica said to Isaac a few minutes later. She entered a code on her phone, and the high, wrought-iron gates to her property opened smoothly and silently. The tires of the Mercedes crunched the gravel of the long, tree-lined driveway, birds chirped in the canopy above, and the air smelled like wet grass and honeysuckle. The house came into view, the familiar white brick glowing faintly in the pre-dawn light. Ivy had clung to the corners of the attached garage while she was away, and the security lighting blinked on automatically as she pulled up. She sat for a moment, cut the engine and soaked in the silence.
She was home, after six months in Bali. Six months of warm breezes, ocean tides, temples, and turmeric teas. It had been the perfect escape. Necessary, even. After everything that had happened in the last few years, the lies, the betrayals, the violence, especially the violence, she needed to get as far away from Willows as possible. Needed to remember who she was, to breathe air that hadn’t been thick with suspicion or fear. But even paradise had started to feel like a holding pattern. Like she was living someone else’s life.
Isaac stirred again, this time with a yawn and a soft, confused mumble. Veronica turned and reached back, brushing her hand along his cheek.
“Wake up, honey. We’re home.”
He blinked at her, disoriented but smiling. “Home, mama?”
“Yeah, baby,” she said, smiling. “We’re home. Come on, let’s go inside.”
Veronica unbuckled his car seat and kissed the top of his head, then held his hand as he walked up the front steps. Her house key felt cold in her hand as she slid it into the lock. A turn, a click, and the door opened with the same familiar, barely audible creak it always had.
She carried him inside, the familiar scent of lavender and wood polish greeting her like an old friend. The cleaning service had kept things up while she was away, but still, there was something deeper, something more intimate, about the scent of her home. She tucked him into his bed, watching him settle instantly into the safety of his room.
She watched him sleep for a moment before she went back to the car, retrieved their luggage and brought it inside. Once back inside, she locked the doors, then went to the console that controlled the security of her property to make sure all was secure. The act of checking the property, something she had done a hundred times before her trip to Bali, made her think about David, her late husband. Mindful of his emotionally troubled ex-wife, Laura, David had spared no expense to install the extra security. At the time Veronica wondered if it was excessive, but time had proved David right about Laura’s unstable mental state.
She yawned. The trip back to the United States had taken over twenty hours on the very expensive private jet she’d chartered. She needed to rest, but knew that sleep wouldn’t come, so she opened her suitcase and carried an armful of clothes to the walk-in closet.
As she opened the closet she saw something that made her heart beat faster.
The go-bag.
She had packed it eight months ago, when murder seemed not only necessary but inevitable. A few changes of clothes. Fifty grand in cash. New IDs. Credit cards. Birth certificates. And in the bottom of the bag, the Glock that was going to make it all possible.
Yet another new beginning made possible courtesy of blood and death.
She sat on the closet floor, the bag open in front of her, hands resting on her knees. Her mind pulled her backward, whether she wanted it to or not.
She remembered sitting in the Adirondack chair outside, the summer sun dipping low into Willows Lake. A comforting shot of bourbon on one armrest, the loaded Glock on the other. The bourbon was for courage.
Not that she lacked courage. She wasn’t new to this.
She had killed before. Twice.
The first was her Uncle Tito. A sweating swine of a man who took what wasn’t his. Her virginity. Her childhood. Her peace. He’d stolen it and then fell asleep like it meant nothing. Less than nothing. So she’d washed his stink off her skin, sharpened abuela’s old knife while singing a Mexican folk song about liars, and went back to the bedroom, where she straddled him. Tito woke up smiling with her in top of him but the smile died when he felt the kiss of the cold steel on his jugular.
She hadn’t flinched. She hadn’t cried. She’d done what had to be done.
Then she’d washed his blood off, taken a backpack, stuffed it with her father’s drug money, and disappeared into the night.
Christina reborn as Veronica.
Years later, when Laura Green slithered into her life, drunk on rage, privilege and entitlement, trying to destroy everything Veronica had built in Willows, she acted again.
Laura had been in the tub in a drunken stupor after a pleasure party where she held Veronica and some other women hostage. Veronica had kept her cool and bided her time. A broken bottle, a few jagged slices, and silence. Laura would never bother her again.
Two lives. Two deaths. And Veronica still slept well.
Because it was her or them. That’s what she told herself.
The gun was for Delilah, an evil woman who had found out Veronica wasn't Veronica and was bent on extorting her. She could still remember the dark thoughts that had clouded her mind that day, when she was set to carry out her plan. To take Delilah’s life, to end that chapter and walk away, untouched, free.
She had everything in place.
Everything.
But then it all fell apart. Or so she had thought at the time. Turns out that fate had an even better plan. One that didn’t involve her leaving the country and living under yet another identity. Delilah’s daughter Jessica had had enough. Yet another broken bottle, a few jagged more slices, a few screams, then silence.
Veronica looked down at the go-bag, at the gun tucked beneath the clothes, then zipped it shut and threw it into a dark corner of the closet and resolved never to think about it again.
She moved through the house in silence, folding and putting away clothes in drawers that hadn’t been opened in months. The mundane rhythm of the task kept her hands busy but did nothing to quiet her mind.
By the time she finished, the first rays of sunlight had crept across the hardwood floors and into the corners of the house. Morning had officially arrived, but sleep still refused to come. Her body was tired, but her soul was restless.
So she went outside.
Barefoot, she walked the familiar stone path through the backyard until she reached the lake. Willows Lake. The same lake that had watched her cry. Had kept her secrets. Had swallowed bloodstained clothes beneath its glassy surface.
She paused at the edge, the grass cool beneath her feet, the sand soft on her skin. Then she closed her eyes and lifted her face to the sun.
She stepped forward. One foot, then the other, into the lake’s shallows. The water was warmer than she expected. She stood ankle-deep, still, breathing in the rising day, asking for something wordless.
Forgiveness for what she had hidden in its depths.
Permission to stay. To rebuild. To be someone new. Again.
She didn’t cry. She didn’t pray. She simply stood in the water as the sun climbed higher, casting long golden lines across the surface, washing the world in light.