Luisa pulls the trigger.
The bullet gets Ellie in the back.
Blood splatters on my future face, eyes round with shock.
She collapses on him.
And the look the future me gives Luisa as Ellie lies in my arms, dead, is the same look that I’m giving her right now.
Essentially, everything that the Javier of the future is doing and feeling is exactly what I’m feeling right now too.
Shock.
Horror.
Pain.
How could it end this way?
“It can’t end this way,” I tell Violetta, feeling breathless. “How did it get this way?”
“The worst is yet to come,” she says.
I close my eyes. I can’t watch anymore.
And yet, this is my destiny, isn’t it?
My eyes open.
Ellie has been removed by a bunch of people and is carried off in a hurry, and my heart leaps with hope that maybe she can still be saved. Meanwhile, future me is staggering to his feet. Vicente is storming over to him.
Vicente grabs future me by the back of the neck and shoves a gun under his chin.
Holy. Shit.
“You are no longer my father,” he screams in his face. My face. “And you no longer have a son.”
The pain I feel in the future slams into me through the decades until I can’t even breathe anymore.
Then everything goes black.
The scene vanishes with a gust of air that gets colder and colder and colder and suddenly I’m back outside the cabin.
On my knees in the snow.
Shivering.
Violetta is standing beside me, her hand on my shoulder.
“It’s a lot, isn’t it?” she asks softly.
I look up at her, snowflakes gathering in her hair, as if she’s really here with me.
“I can’t lose my son,” I tell her, trying to find the words through the pain. “I can’t…I can’t be that person. I don’t know what happened to lead to all of that, but I can’t let that happen. I won’t.”
“Then you have to make some changes, Javi,” she says, reaching down and hauling me to my feet. “Okay? You have to change the path you’re on. Start with the small things.”
I hear what she’s saying, but my mind is stuck in a loop over what I just experienced. “What happens after that? After that scene? What’s the future? Do I have other children? Is Ellie really dead? Do I forgive Luisa? Do I ever talk with Vicente again? How do I even go on after that?”
“You’re not going to remember any of this tomorrow anyway, so I might as well you tell you,” she says with a sigh. “Ellie isn’t dead. You forgive Luisa because you love Luisa and she was only trying to save your life. You would have done the same for her. You have a daughter, Marisol, with whom you have an opportunity not to fuck things up with. And Vicente, well…the damage is done. You will lose him for good. And when he starts running a rival cartel…”
“He what?” I cry out. “He starts running a rival cartel?”
“You should be proud.” She gives me an impish smile. “Someone has to take you on, Javier. You can’t stay number one forever. Second place isn’t the worst.”
“It is for me.”
“And so you see why you need to change, right?”
“How?” I throw out my arms. “Giving up this life and walking the line?”
“No one is asking you to stop being Javier Bernal,” my sister says. “But you can be a better husband and a better father, and you can start with little things, like stop cutting people’s noses off, or feeding them to the pigs. Things like that. You know, baby steps.”
“I can’t let that happen, Violetta,” I tell her, gesturing to the snow-covered pines, as if the future lies just beyond them. “I can’t let Vicente turn against me.”
“Then do what you can to make sure he doesn’t,” she says, putting her hand on my chest. “I’m going to go now. I think you’ve learned enough.”
“You’re leaving? For good?”
She nods, tilts her head as she studies me. Then pulls me into a hug, wrapping her arms around me. “I was kidding when I said I didn’t miss you, brother,” she whispers into my ear. “I do. All the time. Just know that I’m watching you, okay? Whenever you think about doing something you shouldn’t, think what ‘would Violetta have to say?’ And then think about how it could change your future.”
I’m slow to hug her back, but then I do, and I’m holding her so tight I feel like she’s starting to slide into me.
“Please, don’t go,” I tell her, pleading, my heart twisted in so many directions. “Please stay.”
But the tighter I hold her, the more I feel her slip away.
Until suddenly she’s gone.
And I’m not holding anything but air.
I nearly fall forward onto the snow, stumbling a few feet.
I whirl around.
My sister is gone.
Once again, I’m all alone in front of the cabin, surrounded by a layer of snow.
I breathe in deeply through my nose, the cold burning my lungs.
My insides feel torn to pieces, like I’ve gone through more emotions and pain tonight than I have in all my life. I’m exhausted and wounded and scared.
Scared of becoming that man.
Scared of losing my wife, my son.
My daughter. My daughter!
Scared that all of this will be for nothing.
My dirty empire.
I head back inside the cabin, straight up to the bedroom, and fall right into a deep sleep.
* * *
I wake up before dawn.
Sit straight up in my bed, in the waning dark.
The remnants of my dream are starting to fade, the clarity thinning at the edges, but I’m catching fragments still.
Seeing Ellie as Eden, crying in her truck.
Watching a frustrated and lonely Luisa try to soothe Vicente to sleep.
Experiencing the future in a scene of violence that slowly starts to become senseless, with only one thing remaining.
Vicente. I can’t lose my son.
And I can’t lose my wife.
I have to start now.
By the time I get up and get dressed, the memories are almost all gone.
