Existence

And la gringa has been taken care of.

“If you ever try to contact my son again, I will kill you,” Hayu told her in the hospital room. “Do you understand me?”

“I love him,” the girl said, as if that were allowed, and Hayu nearly smothered her with a pillow. “I said all these hateful things to him, and I have to tell him—”

“You will never speak to him. I don’t like to repeat myself, so I don’t want to have to say this again. Are we clear?”

The girl nodded.

“I’m sending you back home, but be sure: even there, I’ll have people watching you. For the rest of your life, I’ll be watching. I have that much power. And as for mercy … I’m expending all of it right here. This is the only chance you’ll have. Do you believe me?”

The girl nodded again, tears streaming down her face.

She was alone in a foreign country with a flimsy grasp of the native language and a bullet hole in her spine. She’d just been told she would never walk again. She’d lost all will to fight.

Once reality sank in, she would blame Jago. Hayu may have forged the letter to Jago, but she truly believes it’s what la gringa will want to say to him, once she understands the cold facts of her new life. The brilliant dancer, confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her days, and all because she made the mistake of loving the wrong boy. She will most certainly come to hate Jago, Hayu thinks. Almost as much as she’ll hate herself.

Maybe that’s why Hayu takes the risk of letting her live.

Transgressions like hers must be punished.

“Of course, my son can never know about this,” she tells Julio now. “Understood?”

He nods. “Claro, señora. Of course.”

“You know I don’t like to take risks of any kind.”

“I have heard that about you, sí.”

“So you’ll understand, then, why I have to do this.” Hayu slides a very small revolver from her purse and shoots him in the head.

Julio drops to the ground, a neat hole at the center of his forehead. Someone will find the body in a day or two, but the police won’t investigate very hard—not a man like that, in a neighborhood like this.

Not that it matters. The police are in her pocket. All of Juliaca is in her pocket. And now her son is there again too, right where he belongs.

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