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“I don't give a fuck about any of your damn reasoning,” Iglesias interjected, cutting her off her sentence, seething. “Even if you fell in love with him, you lied to him from the very start. Your whole relationship was built on a lie. If you loved him so much, you would have come clean with him. You would have told him the truth, before he got on the wrong end of the receiving stick. You would have been honest with him, no matter what it meant for you and him. Even if it meant letting him go to protect him. You wouldn't have let this happen.”

Iglesias rattled his fists again, his eyes bloodshot, his veins pulsating their way to the surface of his skin.

Each word that came out of his mouth was nothing but the brutal truth. And it reminded me even more of what we’d lost as a family. Donte, our rock, our foundation. And Maya was here trying to defend herself, instead of trying to make amends. The only thing that would make all of us feel better about this would be her getting Donte out of jail. Not any of this lovey-dovey fairytale bullshit that she was feeding us. Real life wasn’t a fucking fairytale. She was a cop, and Donte was a criminal. There was no more fucking to it.

“I know I can't erase the things I did,” Maya pleaded, her chest heaving upwards and downwards, tears rolling down her cheeks. “I'm so sorry… I don't know how I'm going to live with myself. I just wanted you to see things from my point of view. I just want you to forgive me…

“I didn't mean for any of this to happen.”

She let out a deep sigh, and I continued to feel my heart twist into knots. I couldn’t even be angry. All I could feel was pain and emptiness. Anger wouldn’t solve this…

Screaming and shouting wouldn’t bring Donte back to the family…

“Please forgive me,” Maya breathed.

“I really liked you, Sapphire,” Pedro murmured, a timid expression on his face. “I preferred you over all of the other women he'd brought home before. You made my brother so happy… But my brother isn't here anymore. So for that reason…

“I can never forgive you.”

Pedro turned on his heel, walking out of the room. Maya’s hurt expression was now replaced with a terrified one.

“Me and you never really saw eye to eye, like Pedro and Arturo did,” Iglesias sneered. “So I can hardly give you a good judgment of character. The way I see it, you had a chance to fix this. You had a chance to come clean with him. But because you didn't, maybe you didn't love my brother like you claim you did. You were just too fucking selfish to do what was best for both of you. And now my brother is in jail… And I'm going to live the rest of my life without him.

“And therefore, I can never forgive you.”

Iglesias turned on his heel too, seething as he joined Pedro and stormed out of the room, leaving the rest of us dithering here, feeling like our souls had been ripped out of our bodies.

Feeling like nothing.

Maya turned around to face me, her tear-stricken eyes burning into mine in an attempt to guilt-trip me and make me feel bad for her.

But I wasn’t going to allow myself to be swayed over by her.

She was a bitch.

A complete and utter fucking bitch.

“What about you, Arturo?” Maya pleaded timidly. “Please? Me and you got along...

“You knew how much I loved your brother.”

It felt like my heart was in my throat. I couldn’t even compose a sentence properly, because my voice box felt so fucking dry. I could hardly get a word out.

“I -” I stammered shakily, my body trembling, “I – I have nothing to say to you, Maya.”

Maya stared back at me with a wounded expression.

Admitting defeat.

Giving up all of the little hope that she had left.

“I once loved a woman very dearly, and despite how much I loved her, I let her go because of my involvement in the Mafia,” I breathed, my heart feeling like it was tearing into shreds as I remembered my ex-girlfriend Sofia Martinez. “I didn't want any harm to come to her. If you loved Donte…” I trailed off my sentence, a tear sliding down my cheek. “You would have let him go.”