Page 73 of Cryptic Curse

My heart races.

“You say it was taped to your door?”

“Yeah.When I saw it, I thought it might be from you.”

“No,” I say.“It’s not from me.”

“I know that now.After I read the message.”

“Does someone have a key to your door?”

“My door has a passcode.No key.”

I grab my keys out of my pocket and charge toward my car.“Change your passcode right now.I’m coming over immediately.”

“Hawk, you don’t have to.”

“Daniela, no arguments.You called me for a reason.I don’t want you to be alone right now.I’m coming.”

I end the call and look at Eagle.

Then I start schlepping bags of cocaine into one of the black trash bags, along with the red bandana.

“We’re leaving.”

Eagle bites his lip.“Should we throw dirt back in the hole?”

“No.I don’t have time.If you’re worried about it, you do it.”

“I came with you.Don’t have a car.It’s a day’s walk back to my house.”

I let out an exasperated sigh.“Then come with me.We’ll come back and deal with this tomorrow.There’s somewhere I need to be.”

We gather our shovels, and I drag the garbage bag full of cocaine and stick everything in the back of my truck.

I drop Eagle off at his place, and then, with a shit load of cocaine in my truck, I drive to Vinnie’s.

24

DANIELA

Idon’t talk about it.Not out loud.Not even to myself, not really.But sometimes, in the quiet moments—those strange, hollow stretches of time where nothing’s happening and everything hurts—I feel it.

The absence.

The knowing.

I’ll never have children.Not biologically.Not with my blood, my breath, my DNA tangled up in a tiny, perfect thing that calls meMama.

Because of him.

He claimed I carried a bad gene.Maybe I do.Maybe I don’t.I never saw any paperwork.

Now I see other women hold their babies and I smile, because that’s what you do.But inside, there’s a cold ache.Not jealousy, not even grief.Just emptiness.

Some part of me still wonders what it would’ve felt like—creating something soft and alive.Something that came from love, not control.A daughter I could have named after my grandmother.A son who might’ve had my father’s dark eyes, but without the cold rage behind them.

But he took that from me.

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