I push back from the desk and take the bottle of scotch because maybe tonight I need the numbing. I pour myself a generous glass and drink it all down as I stand at a safe distance from the glinting diamond in the open box. I remember what she said when I gave it to her. That it wasn’t a gift because she’d earned it. More than earned it.

I pour a second glass.

How can the recent past become so distant so quickly? How can things change so fast they leave you unable to breathe? Unable to believe they really happened to you. Because Mercedes having been here, touching her, feeling her beside me, beneath me. Being inside her. Smelling her hair. Watching her sleep. Holding her. It’s as though it never happened. Or like it happened to someone else. How can she be gone so completely, all evidence of her erased from my house? How could I have let Santiago take her away from me?

I drink three more glasses as the drizzle that had begun just a little while ago turns to an angry rain lashing the windows. It’s then I snatch the necklace out of its box and shove it into my pocket. I stalk back out of the house to my car, and I drive back to her house, where the IVI guards are still sitting in their goddamned Rolls Royce watching her door like two hulking machines.

When I climb out of my vehicle, one of them opens his door but must recognize me and nods. He gets back into his car. I guess Santiago didn’t give them a shoot-to-kill picture of me. I leave the car parked half in the street, half in a spot because honestly, I probably shouldn’t have driven tonight. I stalk up to her door. I have a key, but I ring the bell. Well, I more lay my weight against the damn thing until a light turns on, and I see her in the narrow, rectangular window beside the door. When she sees me, she comes to an abrupt stop. I’m fucking getting soaked as lightning electrifies the sky, so I lean against the doorbell again before she finally opens the door, and we stand face-to-face for the first time since that terrible day I lost everything.

13

Judge

Mercedes’s eyes move over me, a small line forming between her eyebrows at what she sees.

“What do you want?” she asks, tone cold. She blocks the entrance, glancing over my shoulder at her personal bodyguards.

“In,” I say when she looks at me.

“Why?”

Thunder crashes, and lightning charges the sky. “It’s fucking pouring, Mercedes.”

“Then maybe you should have brought an umbrella. Or better yet, maybe you shouldn’t have come at all.” She starts to close the door, but I stop it with the toe of my shoe.