Eva had some inclination of his life through what the press had written about them over the years. Their life, like so many others, was not stacks of cash, yachts and expensive things. Survival was normal; Eva rationalized that in her head. She didn’t know what to expect but it certainly was not what came next.
Trafficking drugs, weapons. The realization began to sink in any rationalization she could have made was gone. Too tongue tied to speak -her head and her heart tripping and fighting one another- she silently listened and let the images long absorbed through years of a twisted media known as film and television implanted images her head of the life that he led.
To take what the other two families had meant that they two lived a double life. One photogenic and the other hidden away. There was more in this city, more than she’d have ever thought possible. A life like this was more fiction than reality. The age of mobs and mafias, which is what this all sounded like to her, was no longer at its height. Eva had never thought herself as naive but maybe she was. The harsh reality of cartels was one she knew of through second hand stories but it was never her reality. Until now.
She needed to sit. No. She needed to pace back and forth over this. No. Her feet were rooted to the spot where she stood. This wasn’t happening. Eva had spent a lifetime fighting against this… Someone like him. While it never made up the bulk of her causes it was always there. A shadow that lingered on anyone or anything that knew of the brutality that followed a cartel, a mob or whatever name they gave to this.
Her entire world, the one she had built with the Aleman family, with him was crumbling around her. The drug trafficking had her stomach churning. The weapons trafficking had her head spinning. Joaquín’s admission, ‘I do bad things to people, Eva. I’ve killed before. I’ll have to kill again’, left her empty and cold.
Out of all the things she could have said after his confession -which is what that was, a confession of doing bad things to people. She expressed what she needed. What her body thought it could not have after the blow dealt. “I need some air.” An odd thing to say considering they were standing outside under the night sky but for Eva she felt the strong and consuming grip of the weight of his words around her throat. Joaquín has killed and he’ll have to do it again.
Joaquín wasn’t particularly surprised whenever she didn’t say much. It was a lot of information to take in. She’d been in the dark for seven years. Maybe now she’d finally understand why he wanted to keep his distance. They weren’t compatible. Things had escalated between the both of them in recent months, but Joaquín had every intention of cutting things off as cleanly as possible. Only Eva was adamant, and she demanded answers – so Joaquín gave them to her.
"Take your time.”
Joaquín dug into his coat pocket, pulling out a cigarette and a lighter. Might as well smoke while he waited for... whatever happened next. A breakdown. Anger. Yelling. He didn’t know, and that was fine. He wasn’t going to tell her more, though. Not until she was ready, not until she asked for more. That was enough to start with.
So Joaquín popped the cigarette in between his lips, lighting it in the opposite direction of Eva.
