05

I knew that tone well; it was the way a man spoke when he was excited.

Even though I would never been intimate with a man, due to the fact that no boy in town had been interested in getting serious with the daughter of the biggest slut in the area, and I was not interested in getting laid just for the sake of getting laid, I knew almost everything about men and about sex. 

I was used to seeing my mother enter her room with up to two men at the same time, sometimes with other women as well. Not to mention the countless times those disgusting people left her sleeping and came into the living room to harass me during the night.

Although it wasn't easy, I managed to preserve myself without being molested by any of them, even though no one in town believed that I wasn't part of that whole orgy. Fortunately, I didn't care much about what people thought of me. 

"Oh yeah, and when is it convenient for you? When you're with the women from the Riviera Club?" I blurted out.

Holy crap! 

Where was I thinking to tell him that?

I could see in the expression in his eyes that my words surprised him.

"So that's where you know me from?" He waited for me to answer. When I didn't, he continued talking: "I don't remember to fuck you."

"Maybe you've been fucking more women than you can remember."

My God! 

Where am I in the head to say these things to a guy who oozes danger from every pore?

This subject was going too far, getting too intimate, but still exciting, engaging, as opposed to how it was when the creeps who came over to the house talked to me like that. With them, I just wanted to throw up,.

"It is not how it works. I choose the women I fuck very carefully, and I certainly wouldn't choose a child."

For some reason, hearing him call me a kid made me feel offended when really, I should have been feeling respected.

"You're not looking right. I'm not a child."

Damn! Why the hell am I acting like this? It looked like I was offering myself!

I breathed a huge sigh of relief as the car moved down the highway, and we approached the diner.

"Can you drop me there, please?"

Athos parked, and we got out at the same time. I followed as he walked to the back of the car and opened the trunk. In the bright glare of the sun, my eyes seemed to be drawn to him as he removed the heavy bike, lifted it with astonishing ease, and placed it on the ground.

Something inside me urged me to observe him closely, noticing details I never noticed in other men, no matter how handsome they were. 

Although the fabric of his expensive suit was thick, you could see that he had strong arms, with pronounced muscles, the silhouette elongated, the hips narrower than the shoulders. For some unknown reason, I found myself wanting to see a little more, to know what he looked like under all that fabric...

When I took the handlebars of the bicycle from his hand, my finger lightly brushed his, and I could almost feel the contact manifesting itself in the most intimate part of my body.

Oh God! What's happening to me?

"Thanks for the ride. Goodbye," I said and walked quickly towards the front door.

I was stunned to see that he followed, walking quietly beside me.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Just making sure you do not pass out again."

"I am not going. No need to follow me."

"Just in case."

He seemed like the type of man who wouldn't accept anything different from his will. Arguing was useless, so I just ignored the tension his proximity caused me, as well as his presence.

I secured the bike to the padlock and entered the establishment, with Athos following behind me. 

There was not a neck in there that did not turn to watch us as we made our way through the space between the counter and the tables full of customers.

People who lived in the city certainly deduced that his company was another scam applied by my family, and I could not even say they were wrong. The others present just seemed curious about the way Athos dressed, too sophisticated for the environment.

The men soon lost interest, while the women continued to stare even after he had settled himself at the counter. 

And who could blame them? The man was a true male specimen. Tall, elegant, and charming, he exuded an irresistible aura of strength and power that made one want to kneel at his feet and beg for a minute of his attention.

Among all the looks, none was more perplexed than that of Marina, who seemed to have frozen behind the cashier, to the point where she did not even notice when I crossed to the other side of the counter, crossed the room, and entered the kitchen. 

There, I found my boss and had to lie, confirming my mother's stories about having missed work those three days due to being sick.

I lingered in the kitchen longer than necessary, hoping Athos wouldn't be there when I left, but he was. Beautifully seated at the counter, exuding that atmosphere of power and wealth that seemed to fill the entire room, making his presence impossible to ignore. 

He was drinking coffee from a cup and talking to Marina, who looked ready to drool over the wooden bar top.

As soon as I came through the door, his icy eyes strayed from her face and locked on me, staring at me so intently that I was tense, intimidated, overcome by the feeling that he could see right into my soul.

"I see you are really all right," he said, not looking away from that look that looked deadly.

"I am okay. You have nothing else to do here."

The corner of his mouth curled into a very soft smile as Marina gave me an astonished look.

“Actually, we have a really good chicken pot pie that you have to try,” she said, giving the guy an ear-to-ear smile.

I did not understand why she was fawning over that guy so much if one of the families he uprooted was her cousin.

"It will be for another time, Marina." He looked back at me and, as if foreseeing that we would very likely meet again soon, added: "See you soon, girl."

I nodded, and with that, he got up and left the diner. All female gazes turned in his direction as he crossed the great hall.

"Where did you find this beautiful thing?" And why did you practically kick him out?" Marina asked, showing a mixture of disbelief and excitement.

"He hit me."

Slowly, the animation faded from her face, giving way to a worried expression.

"My God! How was that? And why did you spend all these days missing? I tried calling you countless times. I even went to your house, but your mother wouldn't let me in, saying you were sick."

I mentally replayed the events of the last few days, and a flood of tears threatened to fall from my eyes. 

Noticing my state, Marina took me by the hand and pulled me towards the back of the establishment, telling our boss that we needed some time.

We went to the backyard and settled down on the small porch, on the sofas made from old car seats, where some of the employees sat when they went to smoke a cigarette.

There, I told Marina everything, every event of the last three days. I talked about forced insemination and the fear that the pregnancy had occurred; about the days trapped in my mother's room and the despicable way she, once again, treated me. 

At the end of my narrative, I was lying on the seat with my head in her lap and my face wet with tears. However, I felt a little lighter, with the certainty that I had someone by my side.

It has always been like that between the two of us. Since we were children, we shared our pains, finding support in each other.

Like me, Marina was also unlucky with her family. She lived in a ramshackle shack with her alcoholic mother and abusive stepfather. The way out for both of us would be our escape to another city, where we would start our lives over again, with each other's help. 

"Losing your virginity to a syringe is definitely a story you'll never be able to tell your grandchildren," she said, in her casual way, after listening to me.

"Losing my virginity like that is what matters least to me right now." 

What terrifies me is knowing that I might be expecting the child of a man I do not even know and, above all, what this man will do to me when he finds out that he is being the victim of a scam.

The mere mention of that man's reaction when he learned everything was enough to make me shudder.

“Take it easy. Do not worry about it when the time comes. Perhaps the conception did not take place, and if it happened, I know great home remedies to abort, not to mention that the pharmacy must have some medication for this purpose."

"My mother must have seen to that." 

She won't let any pharmacist sell me an abortifacient either here or in the surrounding towns.

“They might refuse to sell to you specifically, but I know plenty of people on the outside who can help. If you are pregnant, we will find a way to get that child out of your womb."

**

ATHOS

Two months later...

"Mr. Athos, that lady, Selena, is here again wanting to talk to you," said my secretary through the intercom.

It was the third day in a row that this woman had appeared at the company's headquarters trying to talk to me. What the hell did she want? These lazy people thought I had nothing else to do! 

At the very least, she was there to ask for financial help, like so many others did, as if I owned some charity. 

"Say I am busy." I gave the same answer as the last two days.

"Sir, she said it is urgent. You are insisting too much."

"In that case, tell her to wait."

After a few hours of waiting, surely she would give up. 

I turned off the intercom and turned my attention back to the file on my computer. In the document that arrived a few hours ago, there was one more of that damned man's desperate attempts to disrupt my plans. 

This time, he obtained a warrant from a judge in the capital ordering the interruption of the construction of the pipeline, with the allegation that the current level was already sufficient to move the fuel. 

Of course, the level the oil pipes were at was more than enough to transport the oil across the country, but I wanted more. I wanted to go over everything he had, destroy his home and what was left of his crops, finish him off and take everything he owned. The pipeline was just a pretext, and I cared less about it.

It was not easy to get there. Bribing judges and prosecutors to win government support for this project and with it the right to wipe out that cretin's family. It wouldn't be a crappy judge who would stop me from going all the way. 

Several times over the years, after I left his damned farm when I was a kid, I considered just hiring a hit man and ending that bastard's life as payment for all the harm he'd done to me. 

However, death would be too little. 

He deserved to suffer, as my mother and I did. He deserved to lose everything, as we did, to be on the streets of bitterness, as we were. If there was anything he valued more even than life itself, it was his lands, his material goods, and nothing would affect him more than losing everything.

Throughout my life, that was my only objective, the incentive that motivated me to move forward, to fight to conquer means of destroying it. 

Every step I took in this life, every drop of sweat I shed, was with the intention of getting here and ending that miserable race, as he ended up with me one day. Destroying him, as he destroyed me and the woman who brought me into this world, was what spurred me on to keep breathing. 

This is what I have fought for for years and it was not a shitty little judge who would get in the way of my plans just as they were about to be fully completed.

I would step over him, as I stepped over everyone who stood in my way. It wouldn't be easy, but it never was. 

Ever since my mother passed away, when I was twelve years old – two years after we left the farm – the fight for survival has always been an arduous one. However, even the difficulties encouraged me to continue, because the certainty that I was alone in the world reminded me of who was responsible for things being like this.

Consumed by the hatred that was already part of me, for accompanying me for so many years, I left my place behind the table, went to the small fridge and poured myself a shot of imported whiskey, neat and without ice. 

While I forced my mind to work, in search of a solution for that one more problem, I placed myself in front of the window that faced the street, observing the little movement below.

It was a street in the center of the city, but there was almost no traffic or pedestrians. It was still the backward, sleepy little town it had been when I was ten.

Even the building where I opened my office, temporarily, until the completion of the pipeline, was precarious. Only two stories high, it consisted of an average lobby and half a dozen rooms along a poorly designed corridor, and yet it was the largest in the city.

With a few sips, I drank all the whiskey in the glass and then called the secretary, ordering her to call an urgent meeting with the engineers. They all knew what my real play was, they knew I was not just there to build a fuel transport. 

They knew my true objective and were paid very well to arrange for that project to reduce Arnaldo BiShop's farm to nothing more than a vast expanse of infertile and useless land. They'd be able to overturn that damned judge's warrant. If they could not, plan B would be to bribe him like I have bribed so many others.