Page 39 of Death By Chocolate

He raises a brow, ignoring Omar’s thrashing. “You like it,” he grins. It’s a statement. One he knows to be true.

We reach the clearing I scouted earlier. The water here is deep and dark, broken by the occasional ripple of scaled bodies moving beneath the surface. Nature's cleanup crew, waiting patiently.

"You can't do this," my father says, his usual command and control cracking. "I'm your father. Everything I did was to make you stronger. I made you—“

My mother's laugh cuts through the night air like a blade. "You sold our daughter to a cartel. Stole me from my family...” She yanks the chain connected to the collar around his neck harder, jerking his head away from his spine. "Keep talking. You’ll be first.”

“You love snakes, right? It’s a rhetorical question he doesn’t answer. I secure Omar to a half-submerged cypress tree, making sure the ropes are tight but won't kill him. That's not theirpurpose. The water laps at his thighs, and he starts to thrash when he sees what Xeno pulls from the glass case. Three very agitated white cottonmouth pit vipers. And just to make sure Omar gets the attention he’s earned, I spray his busted dick with pheromones.

"Your mother was weak," my father spits, desperate now that he knows what will happen to Omar. "She would have made you weak. I made you a warrior."

"No." I turn to face him, letting him see exactly who I've become. "Mom taught me to survive you. Xeno taught me to trust again. You?" I smile, and he flinches. "You taught me what kind of monster I never want to be."

A splash and the strangled muffling behind me as the first snake investigates Omar. I don't turn around. Some sounds you don't need to see to appreciate.

"You think you're better than me, little girl?” my father demands. "You're going to murder your own father?"

"Murder?" Xeno's voice is soft, dangerous. "No. We're family." He produces a phone, moonlight gleaming off the metal case. “We found you a new home. A new family.”

Omar's grunts reach a new pitch. The water churns.

"La familia," I say, echo Omar’s words back to him. "That's what you wanted too, right Daddy? Family ties? Marriage is important to you.”

My mother links the leash hanging from Luis’s neck around a tree trunk, and then moves to stand beside me, her hand finding mine. Her grip is warm, solid, and real. Everything my father's false affection never was. "You have two choices," she tells him. “The swamp, or your new family. But either way, you're going to pay in blood and pain for every single thing you did to our family."

The old man's eyes dart between us, looking for weakness, for mercy, for the cracks he spent years creating and exploiting. He finds none.

"I'll tell you everything about the Dominguez operation,” he says quickly. "Every contact, every deal. Just don't—"

"Oh, you'll tell many secrets,” I agree. "But first, you're going to watch what happens to men who think they can own people."

Behind us, Omar has gone quiet. The ripples are settling. Nature, taking its course.

"Your turn," Xeno says pleasantly, flashing us and my father a picture of Luis Alonzo with a SOLD tag on his chest. “We have a buyer, Mrs. Alonzo. Your ex-husband will make someone a very-happy-wife.”

My father begins to weep.

“The choice is yours, Daddy. The swamp,” Xeno wrestles a Burmese python from a cloth bag in the second case, “or your new home. Just scream for help, and your husband will come for you. Your marriage is ready to consummate your union.”

Sobs rack his entire body. The king has been reduced is a sniveling coward. My mother once said even the devil has a sweet tooth. That devil was my father. Death by Chocolate is the final taste of what he richly deserved.

“Daniella, this is vile, please,” he begs.

“Not please,” I coo. “The word is, thank you. I’m offering you a gift you never afforded me.”

We leave an hour before dawn. Xeno dug the graves and buried the bodies… the swamp has already begun to erase our presence. Luis Alonzo chose to be buried alive, in the belly of the beast, over the fate he condemned me to. Nature is good at keeping secrets, at breaking things down into their essential elements. At turning endings into beginnings.

"You okay, Chocolate?" Xeno asks as we walk back to the car, his arm strong around my waist.

I look at my mother, who showed me that love means never stopping the search. At Xeno, who taught me that strength and tenderness aren't opposites. At the lightening sky, where a new day is breaking.

"Yeah," I say, and mean it. "I'm free."

The swamp whispers behind us, already forgetting our names. Some debts can only be paid in blood and fear, but after? After is for love, for healing, for building something new from the ashes of what was lost.

I lean into Xeno's embrace as we drive away, my mother's quiet humming in the backseat a lullaby I thought I'd forgotten. Ahead of us, the road stretches endless and open, full of possibility.

Sometimes, the most beautiful beginnings start in the darkest places.

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