My Tío has two passions: money and cars. It’s really only one passion, winning. He uses the money he makes to race cars. Well, to hire drivers to race the cars he plays with on his private track.
My Tío is a bad man. He does many things I pretend not to know about and worse things I truly do not know about. It takes bad men to amass fortunes.
I am not sure how old I am. Mother lies about her age and thus mine. I am pretty sure I am somewhere between fourteen and sixteen. Old enough to be ripe but young enough that it is awkward to notice. I look like Mother, as she did fifteen, sixteen, seventeen years ago depending on which story she is telling. She is just past thirty and still very beautiful, despite her many addictions. There was a time a time when Mother loved me. I can see it in old pictures of her holding me as a baby. A softness I have never seen in real life.
My Tío is not really my tío. He’s just the guy fucking my mother. Or the guy Mother is fucking. Mother is also fucking Raphael. They think they are being discrete. They are not. My Tío knows. Everybody knows. Mother is just one of my Tío’s women. I sometimes fantasize he only keeps her around because of me. Not that way! Perv. My Tío is even older than Mother. Forty if he’s a day. But he’s kept Mother, kept us, around for almost five years. He is kind to me.
Raphael is not kind. To anyone. Not even Mother. Not really. He lies to her. Pretty lies of power, of what she is owed for all the sacrifices she never actually made. Sometimes, when he kisses her, he looks at me.
Raphael is one of my Tío’s lieutenants. He would be higher if not for his temper. Though his temper is but a symptom of his shortsightedness. He never would have made it so far if he were not so smart. No. Not smart. Cunning. If he were not so cunning. The one area in which Raphael can play the long game is in his own self-interest. This time he has gone too far.
“They plan to kill you.” I am talking to my Tío in the massive warehouse garage in which he keeps his race cars, his favorite toys. As much as he enjoys driving them he likes taking them apart and putting them back together even more.
My Tío doesn’t ask who, or how, or demand proof. He just says, “I know.”
Hopping off the tool strewn table I am sitting on I stand. Hands on my hips, body trembling with all the righteous rage of a teenager. “What are you going to do about it?!?”
“Nothing.”
***
Joy. Chaos. Joyful chaos. Music, firecrackers, laughter, the pounding of feet, gunfire- all suddenly normal. In the green in the middle of the racetrack revelers dance and sing oblivious to the steel death whipping around them. It is madness. It is Carnival.
My Tío is in the stands. Not in the safety of the bulletproof box hanging over his head. In the stands as he always is at Carnival.
My Tío is a man both reviled and revered. He has taken more lives than he can remember and holds himself responsible for more. He has given opportunity to double that number. Now, he is tired.
Blood blossoms across the front of my Tío’s chest. One, two, three roses of death. The crowd surges away as I reach for him. The sounds of Carnival fade and all I can hear are my own sobbing cries.
***
“She tried to sell you to me. Assured me that you were a virgin. She wanted a hundred thousand dollars for you. Tsk tsk. She never understood about us.” The man who used to be my Tío stood over Mother, a gun to her head. Raphael’s corpse lay emptying beside her. “Are you still sure you want to spare her life?”
“Yes.”
“She cannot be trusted.”
“She knows nothing. Nothing she can prove. Just the ravings of a crazed addict.” I count out a hundred thousand dollars and drop it beside her. Some of it is stained by the spreading pool beneath Raphael. “Consider your bargain made.” I turn my back and walk away.
***
The man who used to be my Tío and I stand on the balcony of the hotel room. He looks different. Younger. A product of both the lack of stress and the plastic surgery. He puts his arm around me and I hug him back. “Where to now, Papá?”
He kisses me on the forehead. “Wherever you wish to go, hija.”
Bad people get happy endings all of the time.