He’d left the blanket behind. After washing my face and hands, I grabbed it and wrapped it over my shoulders, not caring how dirty it was, not caring about the stains or the smell. I just held it to me and climbed onto the bed and lay on my side, shivering, knees pulled in to my chest, clutching this foul blanket to me. And no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t make the tears stop. I wept like I had when I’d watched Mateo die. How could there be tears left inside me? How could more come, how could I not be dead of dehydration after all this fucking crying?

They’d shot him in the back of the head after they’d cut out his tongue. They’d made me watch it all. Watch him as he set his face before the block—a fucking tree stump stained with the dried blood of how many others? I’d watched as he had laid his tongue on the stump, his eyes wide, trying hard not to show his fear. Failing. I’d seen Victor’s nod in my periphery, giving the order. Watched the ax come down and blood pour and Mateo fall over, a garbled scream coming from him. From my brother. My vital, loving, crazy brother whom I loved so, so fucking much.

He’d done it to save me. To spare me. He’d made Victor promise. He’d made the deal. He’d offered his tongue in exchange for my life.

And then, after, was it a mercy then that they’d hauled him up to his knees and pressed his head back onto the block until he held it there, chin cushioned in his own dismembered tongue, in the pool of his own blood seeping into the stump of the tree. He’d looked at me once more before closing his eyes. That was the moment he’d given up hope. I knew it. I saw it. Victor pushed the barrel of the gun to the back of his head then. This time, the scream was mine.

There had been so much blood, an impossible amount. My brother’s blood covered me as he fell over, gone, his savaged, beaten body murdered, his life stolen before my eyes, just inches from me while I stood powerless to save him.

He’d made Victor promise he wouldn’t kill me. That was the deal. They’d have cut his tongue out anyway, but maybe they’d have done it after he’d died. Or maybe they’d force him. I didn’t know. I didn’t care. All I knew was that I’d never forget the sound of the ax coming down, the look on Mateo’s face, in his eyes. And then that final, deafening sound of the gun being fired.