I clasped the delicate lace of my bridal gown so tightly that my knuckles turned an ashen white. The pristine fabric, meant to symbolize purity and new beginnings, now enshrouded me like a funerary veil, suffocating the remnants of my former freedom...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
"Miguel! Miguel stop!" Alessandro shouted, stepping between Miguel and Diego's office door. "You need to fucking calm down!"
Alessandro stood like a human shield before the heavy oak door leading to Diego's office. Miguel was a hurricane of rage threatening to break free. I knew him all too well, there was no reasoning with him.
Miguel's eyes, usually warm and inviting pools of melted chocolate, were now ablaze with an inferno of white-hot anger. His hands were wrapped so tightly around his gun that his knuckles had turned the pale ivory of bone. The sight of Alessandro standing in his path, seemed to only intensify the heat radiating off him. If that was even possible.
"I don't give a flying fuck who he is to you, Alessandro," Miguel snarled, his voice a guttural growl laced with raw emotion. "He's a dead man walking, and I'm the one who's going to collect."
A primal fear, cold and sharp, clawed its way up my spine. The world seemed to shrink, the air thinning until it was hard to breathe. Memories, long buried in the recesses of my mind, flooded back in a torrent of vivid images. The chaos, the choked sobs, the crimson stain blooming across Uncle Manuel's chest - it was all there, as fresh and horrifying as if it had happened yesterday.
Uncle Manuel. The man who'd always been there with a booming laugh and a kind glint in his eyes. The man who had sacrificed his life to shield my mother from harm ten years ago. Ten years of unanswered questions, a gaping hole in our lives where his booming laughter used to be. My heart hammered a frantic rhythm against my ribs, echoing the chaotic symphony of emotions warring within me.
"If he is the one responsible," Alessandro yelled, his voice straining to maintain its composure, "Then let me handle it. Blood or no blood, I won't fucking hesitate!"
A tense silence stretched between them, thick enough to cut with a knife. Finally, with a heavy sigh, Miguel retreated, his back ramrod straight as he stepped aside and allowed Alessandro to storm into Diego's office.
Alessandro didn't waste a second and disappeared through the heavy oak door. The door slammed shut with a resounding thud that echoed through the hallway, leaving me alone with Miguel. He paced like a caged animal, a predator robbed of its kill, the air crackling with the raw energy of his barely contained fury.
The weight of the situation pressed down on me like a physical presence, a suffocating cloak that stole the air from my lungs.
I knew the story etched deep within the caverns of Miguel's soul, the festering wound of loss that never truly healed. But the thought of him becoming a cold-blooded killer, mirroring the very monster who stole Uncle Manuel from us, filled me with a dread I couldn't articulate.
"Miguel," I ventured cautiously, my voice barely a whisper above the storm raging within him. "Cómo supiste que era Diego quien...? (how did you know it was Diego who...)" The words stuck in my throat, the accusation too heavy to voice.
