Love, Betrayal, and Vengeance: My Second Life novel · Chapter 1 of 12
Chapter 1: The Night of the Deal
The last thing I felt was water rushing up my nose.
The last thing I saw was my son's oxygen hose floating away from his mouth.
Then there was darkness, and then there was a crystal teardrop chandelier above my head.
I took a deep breath, and the air burned my lungs like it was the first time.
I was sitting at a long table with a yellowish lace tablecloth.
Bastián was asleep against my chest, his stuffed crab clutched in his fist.
He was heavy, and warm, and alive.
I smelled his hair and started crying silently.
"Zoraida, are you feeling unwell?" Hermelinda Fontalvo asked from the head of the table.
I recognized the Fontalvo dining room before I recognized her.
The worn velvet curtains, the portraits of the hotelier grandparents, the chandelier missing two arms.
And I recognized the night.
It was the night I had placed my son on that table like a poker chip.
"I'm fine, Doña Hermelinda," I said, and my voice came out hoarse.
Beside me, Uriel was watching me with a raised eyebrow and that half-smile of a well-bred man.
He was thirty-one, in a white shirt, with calm hands.
Those hands had ripped the air from my body, and now they were playing with a teaspoon.
I felt my chest tighten until it hurt.
My father had ordered this dinner, and he had ordered me how to speak.
I had agreed, because three years earlier I had fallen in love with this man in a single night.
I had believed he never came back because he was proud.
He never came back because he already had a girlfriend.
"So," Hermelinda said, cutting a piece of snapper with precision, "we're here to talk about the boy."
"The boy," I repeated.
"It's obvious whose he is," she said. "He has the family chin."
"Mom," Uriel murmured, without conviction.
"The Fontalvos have lost the hotel, the house in Bocagrande, and the patio mortgage," she continued. "We're not going to lose a grandson too."
There was the trap, served on a porcelain plate.
Last time, I had answered: "If he doesn't marry me, my father will call in your debt tomorrow."
My father owned that debt.
I had asked him for the favor of using it.
I remembered how my chest had swelled with pride when I said it.
I remembered the wedding at the Fishing Club, and the dress I could barely breathe in.
I remembered a farewell letter that someone read aloud among the guests, because a woman named Nubia had thrown herself into the sea that same morning.
I remembered Uriel smiling at the altar, his eyes empty.
And I remembered the anniversary dive, the boat's propeller, his hand on my hose.
Bastián, kicking in the green water, staring at me without understanding.
I set the napkin down on the table very slowly.
"Doña Hermelinda," I said, "thank you for dinner."
"We haven't discussed the arrangement yet."
"There won't be an arrangement."
There was a silence in which I heard the wall clock.
Uriel set down the teaspoon.
"Zoraida," he said, "we're not talking about money. We're talking about our son."
How well he pulled off the word "our."
He almost fooled me a second time.
"My son," I corrected. "His name is Bastián Mendivil, and I've raised him alone for two years and ten months."
"And now I'm here to help you."
"Two years and ten months ago, you weren't."
"I didn't know."
"You knew the same day. Your mother paid for the hotel, didn't she?"
I said it without thinking.
In the other life, months later, I found a receipt from the old hotel in her name in a drawer, and I never knew how to read it.
Hermelinda's fork froze in midair.
Uriel blinked once.
That was enough for me.
"What are you insinuating?" she asked.
"Nothing," I said, and stood up with Bastián in my arms. "Insinuating is for people who don't know. I'm not going to marry your son."
"Your father..."
"My father doesn't know I'm here saying this. He'll find out tomorrow."
I grabbed my purse and walked toward the door.
My legs were shaking, but I walked.
Bastián stirred and opened his eyes, dark like mine.
"Mommy, water," he whispered.
I almost fell right there.
"We're going, sweetheart," I told him. "There's no water here."
Someone caught up with me in the entryway.
Uriel, one hand resting on the doorframe.
He didn't touch me, and that was his first difference from the man I remembered.
He didn't have the hatred yet.
He only had the calculation.
"Zoraida, think it over," he said in a low voice. "A family is better than a fight."
"Sounds good."
"We can be good for Bastián."
"Sounds better."
"So why are you leaving?" he asked.
I looked him in the eyes, straight on, for the first time in two lives.
"Because in this dining room, I've already seen you do it," I said.
He didn't understand, of course.
He frowned, and I stepped out into the Cartagena night, with the smell of salt and jasmine from the wall.
When I already had my hand on the car door, I heard his voice again, without any softness.
He was talking to his mother, who had followed him to the gate.
"It's fine," Uriel said. "If she doesn't want to, it'll have to be the way we discussed."
"And Nubia?"
"I'll tell Nubia to wait for me."
I closed the car door and pressed my son against my chest.
I had one name left alive, and one decision.
I was no longer going to be the woman who drowned.
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