Oh, no. When I make my move, it will have been planned, rehearsed, and executed with intentionality. When I strike, he will look into my eyes and see his death at hand.
For now, I sit perched on the edge of the bed, eyes on the floor, spine straight, shoulders back, head high, pulse calm and steady.
He sighs, as if disappointed. Crouches on the floor just out of reach of my feet, should I decide to try and kick his teeth in; he draws that ridiculous gold-plated hand-cannon of his and angles it in my general direction.
"Iwillhave my son, Sophia Sousa."
I lift my eyes to his. "My name is Sophia Bruna Santos de Silva. I am not your wife. I am not your anything. I never was and I never will be. And that child will never know who you are. To him, you will only ever be the villain responsible for his mother's death."
He seems genuinely puzzled. "But you are not dead yet."
I laugh at this. "Not me, you idiot. Beatriz. That pompous fool, Pugli, murdered her in front of him."
"Which means I did not kill her."
"It was at your behest, and he knows it." I don't know if this is true, but I'll see that it is. "He doesn't know who I am either, Rafa." I meet his dark, cruel, vicious stare. "And so it will remain. Do your worst. There is nothing you can do to me whichI have not already endured. You cannot break me. Torture me, beat me, set your thugs upon me—I have survived it. I survived my father's worst. I have survivedyourworst. I will survive this, too."
He shakes his head. "I have no wish to harm you. I just want my heir."
“He is not your heir. Find a woman who wants you, Rafa. There has to be some brainless, greedy tramp out there stupid enough to let you violate her into having your sick whelp. The child you seek will never,everbelong to you. He will never,everknow your world. He is innocent and he will remain so, no matter what you do to me or any of us who have been caught in your twisted web of vengeance and greed."
"Sophia, you leave me little choice. I was hoping we could resolve this with some civility."
"We can, Rafa. Go back to Brazil. Run your pathetic criminal empire as you wish—I could not care less what you do, as long as I, my employer, my men, and their partners are left alone. And the boy, obviously. Forget us, Rafa. Leave us alone."
He stands up, paces away, and then abruptly whirls on me, jamming the gun barrel into my wound, ripping a cry of pain from me, despite my best effort to remain silent. "Iwillhave my son, Sophia."
"No, Rafa," I growl through gritted teeth, meeting his furious stare with one of my own. "You willnot."
He jerks the gun away, bizarrely calm once more, the fury buried as if it never was. "You have never called me Rafa. You know I dislike it." He spins on his heel, pries my jaw open with cruelly strong fingers, and shoves the cold, hard barrel of his gun into my mouth. "I should kill you now and be done with it."
I gag against my will, but my stare is as cold and calm as ever. I lift my chin, daring him to pull the trigger.
After a beat, he yanks it out of my mouth and paces away again, pistol dangling at his side. "That would be too easy. Too fast. Perhaps I've been going about this wrong. Perhaps you need a different kind of motivation."
"I don't know where he is, Rafa," I say, truthfully. "I don't know, and I can't tell you what I don't know even if I wanted to."
He tips his head to one side, ceding the point. "Perhaps. But you know how to find out. "
"Just have another child, Rafa," I repeat. "One you can twist and manipulate into your evil little clone."
"You are missing the point, Sophia. I do notwanta different child. I wanthim. He is cartel royalty. He ismyson. He isyourson. He is the grandson of Bruno de Silva."
"He is none of those things. He is the son of an innocent Colombian woman named Beatriz. He is just a boy." I lay down and turn away from him, facing the wall. "Do as you wish, Rafa. I have said all I will say. Just know that unless you forget this silly, petty, childish vendetta, you will die, soon, at my hands."
He hisses in disgust. "I really fucking hate you, do you know that?"
I turn my head enough to make it clear he's gotten my attention back for a moment. "I spent a long time hating you. I have resolved to waste no more of my life on the emptiness of hate. I will kill you because you require killing. Because I made a vow ten years ago as I bled my way across the jungle that you would die at my hands, and that is a vow I intend to keep. But I no longer hate you. I have freed myself from the bondage of hatred."
He snorts. "A pretty speech, Sophia. Very inspiring." He crosses the room slowly, leans over me, and whispers softly in my ear. "We shall see how your resolve holds up against what I have planned."
Fuck.
That doesn't sound good at all.
Three days passin a haze of stultifying boredom, hunger, thirst, and pain. I am fed once a day, allowed to drink once a day, and, obviously, am given nothing for the pain of my wounds, not that I want or need it.
I hear a helicopter approach around midday on the third day since waking up. It lands, idles for a few minutes, and then departs. Someone getting on or off, I imagine.
