Page 32 of Violent Attraction

When it does, I’m surprised by the number of missed calls that come through with Camila’s name. She must have been super excited to talk to me.

Or something is wrong.

I shake that thought out of my head and hit her name and wait for Cam to pick up her phone.

“Isabella?” She finally answers after the fourth ring.

“Hey, sorry I didn’t answer earlier. I was about to walk into my interview but guess what? I got the job! You are now talking to the new in-house designer at Boutique B! Isn’t that awesome?”

I squeal into the phone.

“Isabella.” My sister’s voice comes through the phone and instantly all the joy that I was feeling, flushes out of my body.

This is why she called so much.

“What happened?” something is wrong, I can feel it in my gut.

Camila lets out a sob and I want to reach through the phone and just hold her. I don’t say a word, just wait for her to speak.

“Cristiano Reyes was killed this morning.”

11

Death is a hard pill to swallow.

An even harder one when you witness it firsthand and there’s not a fucking thing that you can do about it.

You can’t pull out your gun fast enough.

You can’t run over to the person falling to the ground, with a pool of blood forming at the chest, because you feel numbness over what you just witnessed.

You can’t do a fucking thing but hold your dying father in your arms and pray to any God that would listen to save him and to take you instead.

But that’s exactly what I did.

I witnessed my father get shot right in front of me and I couldn’t react fast enough, and because of that, he’s dead.

I watched as all the life left his body. I heard the words he said telling me to do anything to stay alive and keep my mother safe.

Watching him die the way he did, was the hardest fucking thing in my life. No matter how hard I screamed, or cried, nothing was going to bring him back.

But just because he’s not coming back, that doesn’t mean that I can’t go after the fucking bastards that took my father away from me.

I don’t give a shit how much blood I will have on my hands, but I will find the cowards that shot the bullet, and I will make them pay with a slow tortured death.

“Té vas a matar.” You’re going to kill yourself. Leo’s words come, taking me out of the blood thirsty head space that I’m in.

I look up from the screen that is currently taking all my attention, to my friend.

It’s been nearly ten hours since I held my dead father in my arms. Eight hours since I had to go to my mother and tell her that the love of her life was dead and I didn’t save him. Four hours since I started looking through all the camera footage that I could find to track down who the murderer is.

“If you were older and had the resources we have now, you would have done the same thing when Rosa Maria was killed.”

If it wasn’t for Ronaldo stepping in and putting a stop into Leo's crusade of finding his mother’s killer, he would probably be in a box six feet under right now.

“I would have, but his body isn’t even cold. Put this shit on the back burner and go be with your mom.”

He’s right.

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