“Is everything okay, uncle?”
This isn’t the first time since winter break started that he’s forced me into his office with no explanation.
“Your grades have slipped this year. What’s going on?”
I shrug. “Does it really matter what grades I get at The Syndicate Academy?”
His jaw clenches. “It’s does when I pay one hundred thousand dollars a year.” He bangs his clenched fist on the desk. “I want those grades back up to where they were or we’ll have some serious issues.”
I clench my jaw and nod. “Yes, uncle.” As always, I’m forced to bow to the Don Hernandez, and I’m sick of it.
My father is pathetic and weak and tends to Hernandez’s every will and desire. It makes me sick to my stomach. I hate my uncle almost as much as I hate my father, because in my eyes he was complicit in my mother’s death.
They’re both self important assholes, and my uncle is a disgrace for ever standing by my uncle after what he did. A flashback of that night we left Mexico makes me shudder as I remember the scenes when my father beat my mother so badly she couldn’t recover.
She tried to stop him from taking me to America, and I’ve never forgiven him for it. He always had a drinking problem and when she got hysterical about him taking her son, he beat her over and over until she was bloodied and dying. Shame hits me as I was thirteen years old and should have fought him off, but instead I was scared and cowered in a corner, watching while he took the one person who mattered in this world.
I clench my jaw, struggling to believe that my uncle didn’t care that his sister had been beaten to death for something so trivial. She was an Estrada, a good woman, and my father is a waste of fucking space and always has been.
My uncle sighs. “What is bothering you?” he asks.
I shake my head, brow furrowing. “What do you mean?”
“It’s not like you to let your grades slip. Why aren’t you focused?” he asks.
I shrug. “Couldn’t say.” I know deep down it’s because my obsession with Natalya Gurin has overtaken everything else in my life. She’s become all I care about.
Hernandez glances at his watch. “Tomorrow marks the anniversary of your mother’s death.” New Year’s eve was when he beat her to death, and it’s why I’ve always hated new year. There’s nothing happy about a new year coming in, especially after you’ve lost someone.
I clench my jaw, as it’s rare my uncle ever speaks of his sister. “What’s your point?”
“Do you wish to visit her grave in Mexico?” he asks.
It feels like he’s punched me in the gut as I stare into his dark, soulless eyes. Never in the six years since her death has Hernandez offered for me to return to Mexico and visit her grave. I nod in response. “Yes.”
“I will arrange a jet to take you in the morning.” His jaw clenches. “I will come too.”
I narrow my eyes. “Why now?”
“It was wrong of me not to let you visit before, but it was dangerous in Mexico for us.” He sighs heavily. “I know how much you miss her. I miss her too.”
I glare at him, rage coiling through my veins. “You can’t be serious. My father beat her to death, your sister, and you tell me you miss her when you’ve stuck by him ever since.”
A muscle in my uncle’s jaw contracts. “Of course I miss her, but she was being unreasonable. We all had to move to America.”
“I don’t see why I needed to move or her.” I shake my head. “We were perfectly content.”
He chuckles. “You remind me of her, Elias. Stubborn and headstrong.”
I watch as he stands and walks over to a small display cabinet in the corner of the room. He unlocks it and then pulls out a small gold trinket, locking the cabinet and returning to his chair with it. “This necklace belonged to your mother,” he says, holding it up. “I think it’s about time I pass it on to you.” He holds it out across the table.
I take it from him and turn the small trinket over in my hand, brow furrowing when I notice the catch on the front. It opens to show a picture of me in my mother’s arms as a little toddler. A tightness constricts around my throat as I stare down at it.
“Why didn’t you kill him for what he did to her?” I ask, blinking away the tears forming in my eyes.
“There’s a lot you don’t understand about that night, Elias.”
I look up and meet my uncle’s gaze. “Like what?”