Page 104 of Shadows of the Past
Consequences don’t matter. Prison doesn’t matter. I’ll make sure he chokes on every last bullet of my machine gun.
“They’ll be okay.” Max’s voice pulls me back.
He wants to comfort me, but I can see the tension in his jaw, the way every muscle is wound tight. He understands better than anyone what those girls mean to me. They’re the last piece of the Julia who first set foot in Russia, the only thread tying me to my parents, whose faces and voices I’m already starting to forget.
Guilt knots in my throat. I was supposed to keep them safe. It’s my job to make sure they have a peaceful life, far from all this poison.
All these years, I kept my distance, telling myself that staying on another continent was the only way to protect them. Now, as the plane touches down in Mexico, a warmth spreads through my chest. The air smells like home, like the place where my parents met and fell in love, like slow-cooked tamales andcomfort. It’s the first time I’ve set foot on my own soil in more than a decade, and I have to swallow hard to keep the tears at bay.
I won’t cry. Not now, not when they need me. There’s only one reason that viper is here...
“I already put your uncle’s address in the GPS,” Max says.
I don’t answer, not because I’m angry, but because if I try to speak, it’ll come out as a sob. Fear coils tightly around my heart, the thought of Aleksandr sending my sisters somewhere I’ll never find them, or worse, touching them, making my skin crawl. The memory of Andrea, all those years ago, flashes through my mind: that monster cutting her while he raped her.
The house comes into view, a two-story, mustard-yellow place with red-flowered shrubs out front. If I remember right, they’re pineapple sage.
The car stops at the gate, and I try to steady my hands. Two more cars full of soldiers pull up behind us, but I don’t want a shoot-out here. This is a family neighborhood. I could never forgive myself if someone innocent got hurt.
Todo va a estar bien, Julia.
But I know it can’t be. Not when I’ve been a stranger to them for thirteen years. Not when, to them, I’m just a ghost.
A warm hand covers mine, steadying my tremble. Max’s scent—rosemary and pine—grounds me, just a little.
“They’ll understand you did everything to keep them safe,” he says softly, and I wish I could believe him.
But I’m not the Julia they remember, and they’re not the little girls with pigtails fighting over cotton candy anymore.
I take a deep breath, glance at Maksim, and open the car door. Two knocks on the gate, and I wait, rehearsing whatI’ll say. I look enough like my mother that my uncle should recognize me, even after all these years.
A minute passes. No one comes. Panic claws at me. Without thinking, I pull the Kolibri from the back of my jeans and shove the gate open.
Inside, the TV is blaring, but the house is empty. Max follows closely behind as we search every room, one by one.
No one’s here.
That’s when I see it: red, splashed across the white tile in the kitchen. My uncle’s body lies sprawled on the floor, a pool of blood spread beneath him, his eyes still open and staring.
A strangled scream escapes my throat as I drop to my knees beside him. Cold blood soaks through my jeans, and finally, the tears I’d been holding back break free.
“¡Por favor, perdóname!” I whisper, cradling his face in my hands.
Strands of gray hair fall across his forehead, but his expression is peaceful, almost as if he’s sleeping. I don’t deserve forgiveness—not from anyone—but this man did nothing to warrant a death like this. He didn’t deserve to die alone on a kitchen floor, to bleed out for minutes that must have felt like eternity.
“Julia, look—by his hand.”
My eyes, raw and red, follow Max’s voice. Through a blur of tears, I see it, written in blood on the tile: K02-BAJ.
A cry of pain rips from my lungs. With his last strength, my uncle wrote down the license plate of the car that took them and I couldn’t save him.
I don’t know how long I stay there, just existing beside his body, memories of family swirling in my mind. My mother’sstories about how my grandmother was horrified when my uncle became a vegetarian and refused to cook tacos al pastor anymore. How he learned to drive a truck at fifteen and ran out of gas in the middle of an intersection. The way he cried when he first held the twins in his arms. All the little things that made him who he was.
“I found the car, Juls.”
Strong hands lift me from the floor. I’m limp in Max’s arms, jelly and grief, and for a moment I want to fight him, to stay with my uncle, to not leave him alone.
“Someone will come and take care of this. I promise he’ll have a proper burial, amor. But we have to go.” There’s so much compassion in his voice, and somehow, that hurts even more.
