The Paper Swan(53)

“A woman for a woman,” said Damian when he returned to the table.

“A what?” asked Rafael.

“A woman for a woman. He kills my mother, I kill his daughter.”

“What are you talking about?”

“See that over there?” Damian pointed to Warren’s booth. “That’s a father who adores his daughter. There is no greater pain in this world than losing a child, Rafael. And I’m going to make sure Warren feels it, for as long as he lives.”

Rafael’s eyes darted from Skye to Damian. “Violence? Do you really want to go there? We’ve spent our lives running from it.”

“Not violence, Rafael. Justice. Skye Sedgewick for MaMaLu. Una mujer por una mujer.”

“I thought you were going after his company.”

Damian pulled out the Lucky Strike box from his coat. “I changed my mind.” He traced the worn, gold letters and thought of the newspaper article inside, of the lies, lies, lies Warren had spewed about his mother. “I’m going after Skye Sedgewick.”





“AND THAT’S HOW ESTEBAN BECAME Damian,” said Rafael. “When you prayed for him and MaMaLu, you threw him off. He couldn’t bring himself to kill you, but he could make your father think you were dead. And now,” Rafael raised the gun, “your time really is up, princess.”

It was almost dark. I could hear the waves crashing on the beach, the squeaks and flutters of night insects stirring around us, the piercing cry of an island bird—like some kind of nature CD: Sounds of the Jungle.

Close your eyes. Relax. Don’t fight it. Let Rafael shoot you in the head.

I was dead already. The truth doesn’t always set you free. The truth can kill you, slice open your innards and turn everything inside out. Everything I believed, everything I thought was real had been turned upside down. My father wasn’t the man I thought he was, Damian wasn’t the man I thought he was, and MaMaLu wasn’t living in a white-walled house with a backyard full of flowers.

“You’re lying,” I said. “MaMaLu isn’t dead. Damian was taking me to see her.”

“He was taking you to her grave, so you could see what your father did. It was important to him that you understood why he did what he did. He goes every year. This year he thought he was finally going to keep his promise and complete her tombstone. He was finally going to find his peace, but you . . . you turned out to be the chink in his armor. I knew he was cracking. The more time he spent with you, the harder he found it to distance himself. I could hear it in his voice. So f*cking torn. I should have intercepted him sooner, but I’m here now, and it’s time to end this.”

Rafael’s hands were unsteady as he took aim. I turned my face away. I wanted to go back to that late afternoon, to the dusty road, to Casa Paloma receding in the background. I wanted to part the haze, to make out my best friend’s form, to stop the car and run to him.

Esteban. I wish the rains had come.

“Let her go,” said Damian.

I opened my eyes and saw him, a dark, staggering form standing before us. He could barely stand, but he was holding his ground.

“We both know you won’t shoot. You can’t,” he said to Rafael.

“I will.” Rafael kept his gun trained on me, clamping one hand over the other. “For you, I will. I’ll get over my f*cking fear of guns and shoot her brains out. It’s either you or her, Damian. She called her father. Check the log on your phone. You know what that means, right? They’re coming for you. It’s only a matter of time.”

“I said let her go.” Damian drew a gun and pointed it at Rafael. He swayed unsteadily on his feet.

We were immobilized in a tense triangle: me on my knees between the two men, Rafael pointing a gun at me, Damian pointing a gun at him. Their bond was apparent to me now. The guns were props. They were working out something much deeper, each trying to keep the other from making a wrong move. Rafael was ready to eliminate anything that compromised Damian, and Damian knew that taking a life would haunt Rafael forever. When Damian looked at Rafael, he saw the one thing that he had done right. He saw a sliver of redemption. And Damian had shielded Rafael for far too long to let him get blood on his hands now.

But there was another factor at play. Me. Damian had swung me out of the way on the boat and taken the blow himself. I knew he was also doing this to protect me. I knew why I had instinctively turned to him when I thought I was surrounded by sharks. Some part of me had recognized that soul-deep part of him, the part that was still alive but buried under layers of hurt and rage.