I just have this gut feeling that the death of Vincent Santos doesn’t mean Ria isn’t safe.
Not yet.
Not until Penelope is behind bars. That woman tried to kill my wife right in front of me.
I shudder involuntarily when I remember everything that happened in that basement. The sight of Ria with a gun will haunt me for the rest of my natural born life.
This shit is messing with my wife. She’s been disoriented and closed off.
Aside from that first night when she let me kiss her, she’s been otherwise quiet and reserved.
It kills me, knowing she’s hurting. It guts me that I can’t do anything to help her deal with the pain and trauma. It sucks that she thinks because of all of this, I’m somehow better off without her.
I’m itching to talk to her about us more, but Ria needs time and space to work out her demons and figure out how to deal with the aftermath of what we went through. She needs time to deal with her father’s death, his crimes, and her role in it.
Thankfully, we found a therapist she actually likes, but I worry that being cooped up in this apartment is reminding her of the safe house.
She barely looks at me-- not even when it’s just the two of us in our room.
The only person she smiles at is Adrian. And sometimes she’ll even smile at Mina.
Those two have become closer as they spend more time together in our temporary home.
I look around at the open space of the apartment Gabe’s DEA friend put us up in while we awaited Penelope’s trial. It’s impersonal and bare. There are only two rooms in this place: the master bedroom, which Ria and I occupy with our son, and the guest room, which is being used by Mina. Ben has been relegated to the couch but he doesn’t seem to mind. All his technology is situated in the living room, and he has easy access but now things seem to be different.
In the beginning, Ben had been away a lot while he took part in the take down of the Sotnas cartel, leaving Mina to handle the paperwork aspect of the investigations from here. I helped as much as I could but given my connection to the case, anything I do to assist them could be construed as obstruction of justice.
Thankfully, most of it is behind us and we have one last hurdle to get over.
Ben has now been delegated to assist Mina in protection detail, so he spends most of his time here in the apartment and it’s been nothing short of interesting.
The dynamic between the four of us is easy, with little to no tension. But the tension between Mina and Ben? Well… let’s just say if I cracked an egg and placed the pan between the two of them, I’d cook the sucker in under a minute.
They think we haven’t noticed, but quite a few times we’ve seen Ben do a hilarious walk of shame out of Mina’s bedroom.
In those few moments of camaraderie, Ria looks at me with a hint of amusement coloring her cheeks before she looks away and her mask comes back on.
Once again, we have found ourselves living under the protection of the FBI.
I would laugh at the irony if it didn’t remind me constantly of what we’ve had to go through to get to this point and what we’ve had to lose to regain even the smallest modicum of freedom.
Sighing from the direction of my wayward thoughts, I push off the dining table. Across the room Ben is shutting off his monitors. Mina is in the bedroom with Ria and Adrian, so we took our time going over a few more things before Penelope’s arraignment tomorrow.
Ria will not be required to show up to court until the trial starts and she takes the stand, but both Ben and I will be present tomorrow to ensure everything goes smoothly.
I press a cool hand on the back of my neck, rubbing my aching muscles. Tossing the stack of folders on Ben’s desk, I round the couch and ease myself opposite him on the armchair.
“Everything good on your end, Walker?”
Nodding, Ben tips his chair back, his arms crossed behind the back of his neck.
“It’s not much, but at least it’s something. Homegirl is looking at twenty years minimum.”
Not enough time if you ask me, but voluntary manslaughter is all we can charge her with given the lack of evidence.
I grunt in response, pissed that we can’t do more.
A few minutes pass as we both stay silent. We’re lost in our own worlds. In an attempt to alleviate some of the tension, I get up and grab a few beers from the fridge. Snapping the caps off the bottles, I stride over to him and offer him the cooler one. Ben looks beat. He’s carried a lot of the brunt work of this case after Gabe’s death and my removal. With Mina also being sidelined to serve as Ria’s personal detail, everything has rested on his shoulders. The weight of everything must be getting to him.