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  "I understand."

  "Would you like some coffee?"

  "Yes, please."

  Marta went back into the kitchen, while Antonio lingered in Alejandro's doorway. When he turned around to see Marta walking from the kitchen into the main living area and setting down two cups of coffee, the light came through the window and caught the ends of her long, dark hair, making them glisten.

  He walked over and sat down in the chair across from her. She smiled, and he knew that she felt as uncertain about this meeting as he was. Yet in an odd way it felt comfortable being together again. The love they’d felt for each other hadn’t dissipated over time. It couldn’t have.

  "Does my son know about me?"

  "Not much."

  "I see. You’ve been saving the money I sent you?"

  "For his education."

  "That’s good. Do you need more?"

  "No, thank you. We do fine."

  "I've missed you," he blurted. “I would have helped you with the baby. Why didn't you come to me?" If only she had come to him.

  She paused before answering. “Is that what you would have wanted, Antonio? Come to you and your wife to tell you both the news that I was going to have your baby. And what would you have done?"

  "Helped you."

  "Helped me how? By seeing that I got out of the country and out of your life. Helped me. I didn't want your help. I did what needed to be done without you."

  "You know I never would have caused you so much pain intentionally."

  "But you did. And you did do it intentionally, regardless of what you say now. You knew I loved you. You made promises to me—promises that you knew you could never keep. You lied to me. And your kind of help is not what my son and I need. The only reason I even accept your money each month is to fulfill a dream I have of seeing Alejandro graduate from college one day.”

  "My love for you was never a lie." She was being foolish. How could she doubt his love? “Your pride stands in your way.”

  "You expect me to believe you about loving me? I may have been naive then, but I am not ignorant now. And as for my pride, all I can say is, if you call honesty pride, then you are the one who is ignorant and shameful."

  "I am not lying to you. I did love you. I still do," he whispered."I've always loved you. You have to understand who I am, and what I represent. I could not hurt my children in such a way."

  "But you did hurt your child. Your son. Do you think it has been easy for Alejandro to grow up without a father? Do you think this has been easy for me? I am both his mother and his father.”

  "The truth is, I felt scared and trapped. I loved you, yes; but I also loved my wife. I wanted to come to you, be with you. But by the time I came to my senses, you had already left, and I had no idea you were pregnant. If I had known, I would have searched for you."

  "But you did find me, and you found out about the baby."

  "Yes, but by that time I realized that you hated me."

  "I did."

  The tears in Marta's eyes betrayed her. She had never hated him. Hatred was not part of who she was. "Did you really?" He leaned in close to her and touched her hand.

  "You bastard." She looked down at the floor and back up again. Tears flooded her eyes. He kissed her gently on the cheek.

  "You bastard," she repeated, balling her fists up.

  "I am so sorry I ever hurt you. I would give my life if I could take away the pain I have caused. I would do anything for you. I have suffered, and thought about you, and longed for you every day since you left. You are the only one who has ever seen my soul. I know now what a mistake I made, letting you go out of my life. I am not happy, Marta."

  "I am sorry. But you made your choice long ago."

  "There is still time."

  "There is no time."

  "Listen. Please. Hear me out." She protested. He placed a finger over her lips. "Life passes quickly each day, too quickly. You are the one who made happiness a reality for me. I want you back in my life. I want you and Alejandro to come back to Colombia with me. I want you to be my wife."

  "You are not thinking."

  "No, it's true. I didn't plan this, but as soon as I saw you again, I knew."

  "You have a wife. Go back to her. Leave us alone."

  "She knows I am not happy. She is not a spiteful woman. She will go easily, once I pay her a lot of money."

  "Money and a great deal of pain. Spiteful or not, I could never hurt someone else to benefit myself. You see, Antonio, I am not like you."

  "Please think about it."

  "There is nothing to think about."

  "Give us another chance."

  "Why? So you can tuck me away in some apartment and make me your prostitute whenever you feel the urge?"

  "You were never that. I have already told you how much I loved you, and love you still."

  Marta grew silent and stared at him. He felt as if she were looking straight through him. She sighed. "I have waited to hear those words for so many years—too many, maybe. Now that I hear them, they don’t mean what I once thought they would. I may live here with Alejandro in this small house in this run-down neighborhood, which really isn't so bad because we all know and take care of each other here. We help one another when it is necessary. I may not possess much, and I work long, hard hours for what I do have. But to be honest with you, I like my life here. I have only myself to depend upon. And my child is happy. We have clothes to wear, and food to eat, and, yes, Alejandro is quite intelligent and getting a good education. As much feeling as I may still have in my heart for you, I can’t go back with you. I will not take another woman's husband. It would be wrong and deceitful. It would ruin any love we ever had or might rekindle together."

  He smiled at her, although he felt like crying—his heart breaking. She was still the good hearted and loving woman she’d always been: never putting herself first, but always caring about what might happen to others. She was the one pure person he'd ever known. "I understand." He wished he didn’t.

  "Thank you."

  "Answer me one thing, truthfully."

  "Yes?"

  "Do you still love me?"

  She folded her hands in her lap and crossed her legs. "Antonio Espinoza, you would have to be a fool not to know the answer to that. But if you must hear me say it, then, of course, I still love you. I always have and I always will. You do not see another man in my house, do you? Nor will you, ever. I gave you my heart as a girl, and that love was true and will be forever. No man could ever take your place."

  Antonio nodded. A mixture of relief, bliss, and sadness engulfed him as her words penetrated his heart. She stood up and walked into the kitchen to stir the menudo. Selfishly, he liked the fact that there had been no other men in her life. But he also pitied her because, like her, he knew what it was to have your heart stolen, so that you could never truly love another.

  "Would you like to have dinner with us?"Marta asked him from the kitchen.

  He wanted to, to see and talk with his son, look into the child’s eyes and maybe in some way the boy would recognize him and simply by seeing him would on some level know that he was his father. “I can’t. I have to go.” As hard as it was to leave her, and not have the pleasure of meeting child, he knew the pain of having to leave Alejandro after meeting him would far outweigh the pain of going now. Antonio wasn’t sure that he would be able to leave after having dinner with them.

  She nodded and opened the door.

  He kissed her on the cheek and walked away, tears blurring his vision.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Emilio sipped a drink and silently counted his blessings: Levine was dead. Antonio was preoccupied, as usual, Javier was the big fat pushover he’d always been; and as for him, he was regularly getting laid by his brother’s beautiful wife.

  “Beautiful but tragic, tragic but beautiful," he muttered. One day his brother’s entire empire would be his. But he realized that patience was a virtue. Meanwhile, he would take all that h
e could for as long as possible.

  He wasn't ready to make any major moves yet. But he did need another player on his side, so he decided to meet with Pedro. If the two of them could get together, it wouldn’t take long before Emilio was running the show. He knew that Javier thought of Pedro like a son; but he also knew that Pedro was a sneaky weasel, a man who’d murdered his own father—a fact that endeared him to Emilio.

  "Señor?"

  "Sí." His thoughts were interrupted by one of his handful of regular whores.

  "Señor Torres is here to see you."

  "Show him in, please."

  Emilio was seated on the balcony outside his large apartment, overlooking the town of Calí leading back into the sparsely populated jungles of Colombia. As usual, Pedro appeared in a charcoal designer suit and tie, attire he had adopted in imitation of his mentor, Javier.

  "Hello! Hello! So good of you to come, my friend." Emilio held out his hand, which Pedro grabbed and shook forcefully. "Good morning." He smiled. "You may go," he said to the fair-haired Spanish girl who had shown Pedro out to the terrace. He took a cigar from a small case on the glass table next to him."Would you like one?"

  "No, thank you," Pedro replied.

  "A drink, maybe?"

  "No, nothing, thanks. I'm curious about why I’m here. You said it was an urgent matter. And more so, I’m curious about why you instructed me not to inform Javier of this visit. I had to jostle my way around his questions, and I’ve reserved a flight back home early in the morning."

  "You see, my friend, I have a proposition for you."

  "What kind of proposition?"

  "Business."

  "We both work for Antonio and Javier. I'm certain that if there were something we needed to meet about, they would have called the meeting themselves. So let me set you straight before you say something that may turn out to have repercussions. I respect my job and I value your family. I honor all the good both Javier and Antonio have done for me. But I know you, Emilio. You are a greedy man who will sacrifice anything or anyone to achieve your goals. But I am loyal, and I will not harm those who have treated me well."

  "My, my, my, but you are suspicious. I only invited you here so that we could get to know one another better. It is my understanding that we will be working more closely together in future. And I agree with you completely. Loyalty is vital. I understand you value loyalty in the same manner you value your family." Emilio watched Pedro flinch.

  "Javier is my family."

  "Hmmm, I see. I'm not trying to harm anyone. I thought it might be a good idea if we became better friends. You do realize that someday all of this will be our empire,” Emilio remarked, gesturing to the streets of Calí. “Right now, our organization is nothing compared to that of, say, the Italians. But in time we too, will be able to compete with each and every organization, until we are the ones on top. We will own South America. There is no doubt in my mind that the Colombian crops have the potential to make us more money than we ever dreamed of, and they will make us the kings of the world."

  Pedro pulled his chair closer to Emilio and got right in his face. "You are as transparent as a guilty woman who has betrayed her man. I will not have any part of this scheme you’ve hatched against your brother and Javier. I have no desire to take down the two people who have put me in my present position. If you were as smart as you think you are, then you would hang onto the coat tails of your superiors. That is the only way you will ever be in charge of this organization. If you'll please excuse me, I have a real meeting in an hour. I would like to go back to my hotel for a few moments. Thank you for your hospitality." Pedro got up from his chair and casually strolled through Emilio's apartment and out the door.

  Emilio slammed his fist against the glass table and took a large swallow of his drink. “Pedro Torres had better watch his back, because the prodigal son will be sorry someday his new loyalty is so goddamned pure!"

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Miguel Carlos Diaz didn’t necessarily enjoy birthdays as much as other six-year-olds did. Everyone always wanted to kiss him on the cheek and pinch him. His mother would fuss over him, slicking his hair back with some kind of yucky stuff. Worst of all, she made him wear a coat and tie.

  Today would be different than those other miserable birthdays, because Isabella Rodriguez would be coming. Weeks before, his mother had told him that Isabella's family would never allow her to attend his party. “They are different from us, Miguel; better, very rich. She’ll never be allowed to come to the village for your party.” Miguel knew that couldn’t be true, however, because Isabella was his best friend.

  They didn't go to school together, of course. Bella attended private Catholic school, while Miguel always made the trek down the road to the small house next to the church, which had been converted into a school. It was on Sundays that Miguel normally saw Bella at church and in the Sunday school. Next week, they would both be in Catechism class and then he would see her every day.

  Miguel liked Bella because she was as weird as he was. She told him that no one at her school played with her. Instead, they teased her because she didn't have a mother, or because she was so small. Their bond formed one Sunday morning during a lesson on the resurrection of Christ, when a precocious Bella kept asking questions, and the liturgy teacher became angry with her for asking them. The teacher finally told Bella to go sit in the corner. Miguel had never known a kid to be so brave, and from that day on, he decided to be her friend.

  They soon discovered they had common interests in jacks, marbles, and much to Miguel’s surprise, collecting bugs. They tried to meet at least once a week, whenever they could get out of the house without being noticed, which was much harder for Bella because she had to get past the nursemaid and the guards. She was a smart girl and had told Miguel that she watched the guards and learned when they took breaks to smoke cigarettes or have lunch and getting past her nursemaid was not so difficult as all Bella had to do was create a giant mess in her room or somewhere else in the house to distract the woman. Once she made it through that maze, she would meet Miguel and they would travel to a swampy pond not too far from Bella's hacienda, and collect crawdads and all sorts of peculiar pond life.

  Bella would talk about her father and Pedro, about the horses she rode, and the animals that lived at her house. Miguel in turn would talk about God. Of course, his mother instilled a belief in God and Jesus every day. Bella was the only one he might consider higher than God, but he knew that was wrong, and that God would think that a sin, so he told himself that God was the most important being of all.

  Miguel’s mother suddenly dashed into his room, wearing a silk type of black dress. Her lips were painted red like a movie star, which Miguel saw once in awhile in one of the magazines Bella would sometimes sneak out of the house and show him. Miguel and his mother didn’t have a lot of extra money but his mother saved any they did have from her job as a maid in the best hotel in Guadalajara where she told him that movie stars sometimes came. After buying the groceries and paying the bills, she then would spend what they did have on her dresses, hair, and makeup. His mother Carlotta was a very beautiful woman, and Miguel thought she could be a movie star herself she was so pretty, but he had never remembered seeing her so fancy before, not even for church on Easter Sunday.

  "Oh, Miguel, how does Mama look? Can you believe that Señor Rodriguez is coming to our home and bringing his lovely daughter to your party? We are so lucky. He is such a handsome man. I saw him look at me in church one morning. Maybe he'll like me. Maybe we'll even go out for dinner some night . . ." Carlotta Diaz glanced down at her son, who was glaring at her, transfixed by how oddly she was behaving. "Don't mind me. I'm being silly.” With a flip of her manicured hand she pushed her long, dark hair back behind her shoulders; hair made all the more beautiful because she’d taken the time to curl it today instead of pulling it tight into a bun. “This is your day, mijo, your day. Now come here and let me fix your tie.”

  He reluctan
tly shuffled over to her. He hated this part. After fixing his tie, she wet her fingers and smoothed a strand of hair that was sticking up on top of his head. She then wiped his face clean until she was finally satisfied with his appearance. “My sweet boy, you look so handsome.”

  Miguel walked out of the room and into the one room, the living room, where his three aunts, two uncles, grandfather and grandmother were gathered, as well as a few dozen kids of all ages, who dashed in and out of their tiny home. It was clear that his mother was determined to make a big splash because Bella was going to be attending his birthday party. Their house was small but his mother kept it clean. They shared a bedroom because there was only one room other than this main one. They each had their own twin bed, and there was a tiny bathroom and a kitchen that wasn’t much larger than the bathroom.