Chapter 60 In The Middle Of A War
We were back on the road.
The longer we drove, the sicker I felt. My back ached badly, my stomach kept turning, and a wave of nausea rolled through me, but none of that compared to what was in my head. I couldn’t stop thinking about last night—what the guards had been talking about, what I had seen in my dream, and how my thoughts still believe that Carlos was a bad guy.
I trust Carlos. I don’t believe he would ever hurt me or do something horrible, but at the same time, I could only say that for now. I couldn’t say it about the past, because before, he wasn’t like that. He had been horrible, and if anything, Carlos had made me hate being around him.
But still, we are together now, and if he had done something horrible to me or my family in the past, he should have told me, right? I know he would, but at the same time, a part of me is telling me otherwise.
My thoughts broke off when I noticed the car speeding up. I turned to Carlos, who looked tense but not alarmed.
"What’s going on?" I asked, looking between him and the tinted windows. I could see a bunch of cars following us.
"Your family is here," He said, a bit of anger in his voice. "I expected them."
"So what now?" I asked.
"They want to fight us, we will fight them," He said, looking at the driver through the rearview mirror.
Without a word, the driver nodded. He reached out, tapped on his speaker, and said, "Fire them."
"What!" I gasped, looking back at Carlos. He didn’t seem bothered at all. He looked serious. "You’re gonna hurt them?"
"I don’t have an option. It’s either this or they take us down," He said, his tone flat and serious.
"No." I shook my head. "You can’t do that to them."
Before Carlos could respond, I heard a gunshot followed by a spark. The car beside us exploded.
My heart stopped. "No," I whispered to myself, unable to believe it. We had just destroyed a whole car and killed the people inside.
Again, a shot went off and the second car blew up. It flipped into the air and fell back onto the road, burning.
"No!" I yelled. "This is wrong." I was almost about to cry. It wasn’t like I wanted them alive; I just didn’t want anyone dying because of me.
I turned to Carlos. "Carlos, we agreed. No killing. You promised me that it wasn’t going to happen."
He held my hand, gently caressing it. "I know."
"Then why are you doing this?"
"It’s the only option. If we don’t take them down, they will take us down," He said. I shook my head, telling him no, but he cupped my face, trying to make me understand. "This is the only way. I don’t like it, but we had to do it to protect you. To protect us."
"But…" I started to speak but stopped, unable to process what was in my mind. Carlos pulled me closer and embraced me.
I felt like crying. I hate murder. Why couldn’t it just be a peaceful mission where no one got killed, where everyone went home alive? I didn’t like it. I hated it.
Carlos rubbed my back for comfort, but I still wasn’t having it. My heart felt too heavy. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Carlos was not supposed to hurt anyone, and now a bunch of people were dead only because they had wanted to protect me.
I didn’t even realize when we got under the bridge until the car stopped and Carlos asked me to step out of the car. I did, and we got into another one while the driver drove away with the first car.
We started driving behind, and suddenly the car exploded. Again, Carlos wasn’t shaken by it. It was almost as if he had known it would happen. He turned to me and said, "See, I told you. If we don’t burn them down first, they will burn us."
I gulped heavily, my heart racing. The next ride went by in a blur. We kept changing cars now and then. Carlos was very serious about it and, just like he had said, the Menendezes were really serious about making things hard for us. They didn’t care about who lost their lives or not; they just shot anyone.
Finally, we got to the end of the map. It was in the middle of nowhere. Carlos climbed out of the car and I did too. He held my hand and the guards started walking toward us, crowding us.
I turned to look at Carlos, who smiled to reassure me that everything was fine. He moved closer and said, "It’s gonna be chaotic from here. I need you to be with me at all times. Don’t listen to anyone."
I nodded.
We walked for another minute and found a small cabin in the woods. A smile curled on Carlos’s lips as he said, "It’s definitely in there."
The guards headed toward it while Carlos and I stood back with the other guards. Suddenly, we heard cars coming through. Carlos’s men pulled out their guns, prepared, but stopped when a bunch of men came out of hiding and held Carlos’s men at gunpoint.
Susan and Mario stepped in from nowhere.
"You shoot us, we shoot you!" Susan said, glaring at the guard who had his gun on her.
She turned her attention to Carlos as she took a step forward. "I expected you to be here yesterday."
Carlos laughed. "So you knew the Ore code was here all along."
"Oh yes, I did. Did you really think my father would hide something this important and I wouldn’t know where it is?"
I frowned in confusion. If she knew, then why hadn’t she just gotten it long ago? Why did she wait till now? I know she could have had access to me so why didn’t she do anything?
The more I started thinking, the more I became confused.
Susan’s face turned to me and I saw her eyes soften. She looked like she wanted to say something but stopped herself. After a moment, she said, "I see you finally turned my daughter against me. You must have fed her so many lies that made her believe you."
"The only thing I lied about was that you still have some decency," Carlos said.
Susan hardened at him. "You’re not the one to talk about that."
Carlos smirked. "Fire!" He declared.
Susan’s car exploded, and that was how everything started to go down. Before I knew it, I was in the middle of a war.