Page 7 of Falling with Grace

Jorge's chest bowed, his eyes widening as he dropped the makeshift bat.

"Jorge?" I wrapped my arm around his body as he slumped. "No. No. No. Come on."

"Find my sister." His lower lip trembled as my heart stuttered, his weight too much for me.

He crumpled to the ground as the men advanced around me.

I stepped backward toward the ridge behind me.

"Don't come any closer," I commanded in Spanish.

An off-road vehicle without doors approached and stopped in the clearing in front of me, illuminating Jorge's crimson-splotched shirt.

Miguel, Andrés' right-hand man, stepped out of the passenger side with his hand on the roll cage, bracing himself as he exited.

"Cariño, come back with me." He stepped over Jorge's body and held out his hand. "We'll tell him they took you."

I shook my head and stepped closer to the edge.

If Sarah could do it…

"I'll never go back there."

Exhaustion clung to my body like an oppressive weight.

In the passing days, our spirits flickered with a fragile hope fueled by the belief that freedom awaited us at the end of this tumultuous journey.

I glanced around at the death at my feet. Little did we know the price we'd pay for our fleeting taste of freedom.

I shook my head, a rebellious tear trickling down my cheek and curling under my chin as I tucked Jorge's rosary into my pants pocket. My heart stampeded in my chest. "I want to be free."

Miguel stepped forward, his head cocked to the side. "Don't do it."

My heel hung off the edge.

"Come back, and we'll explain it all as a misunderstanding.Por favor, cariño."

His jaw pulsed, and the fist at his side clenched and released, the skin around his knuckles whitening in the vehicle’s headlights.

I shook my head. "I'm not afraid anymore." I sucked in a deep breath, spun on my heel, and let gravity take me.

3

Elias

Ihung my head and shook it as I pinched the bridge of my nose, the scent of embalming fluids wafting into the air.

Javier held a knife to Joaquin's calf, his body pinned to the autopsy table—his blood dripping through the drain holes and into buckets. "Tell me again,pendejo."

"I have nothing to say—" A shrill scream bounced off the walls as Javier ran the blade down Joaquin's flesh.

Blood beaded to the surface, tainting the fatty layers below.

He bellowed, his cries reverberating in the cemented room.

I stepped away and sat in the far corner next to the table and unwrapped a soft taco from the local fast food joint. "The path to your death isn't easy, that's for sure." I sat back in my seat, propped my ankle over my knee, and bit into the succulent meat and salsa. "But, if you tell me who you gave my shipment information to, I'll tell him to end it humanely."

Joaquin's blood dripped into the bucket, mixing with the acrid urine.

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