“Your life is no longer yours to swear upon.” He draws back, almost sobering as he does. He exhales a short puff of air and pulls out of me, and we both look at the bloody mess on him, on me. Not bothering to wipe it off, he tucks himself back into his briefs, his pants.
I sit up. “I swear, Santiago. Please don’t do this to me. Please don’t tattoo me.” My god. Saying the words out loud makes it sound even more terrifying.
“Don’t make you look like me, you mean? Deformed,” he emphasizes the word, and my face heats as I regret the word I’d used. I hadn’t meant to. I swear I hadn’t meant to. I knew that would wound him.
“That’s not…I shouldn’t have said that.”
“How repentant you are now when there is something for you to lose.” He touches my cheek with the knuckles of his hand. “Your beauty.”
I shake my head.
“Did you think you’d seduce me? You think me that weak? One kiss and I’d give in to you?”
“No. No, I wanted to kiss you. I needed to.”
He grows rigid, ice cold. “You’re a liar, Ivy,” he says slowly. “A cold, manipulative liar.”
My stomach turns. “No, Santiago, it’s not like that. It wasn’t—”
“Get out,” he says, turning away.
“I didn’t do it. I couldn’t. I was locked in that bathroom. I couldn’t get the door open. I—”
“No? You couldn’t get the door open?” he asks, moving swiftly behind his desk to pull out a keyboard and push a couple of buttons. As soon as he does, the monitors all light up. I watch the blurred lines come into focus, and I hear the sounds I remember from that night. Loud talking. Glasses clinking in toasts. Jazz music. The gong. I see Colette laughing with someone, a man. Her husband, I guess. And then I see him. Santiago. And I watch as from the corner of the screen a woman enters.
And my throat goes dry. “What is this?”
He doesn’t have to answer, though. I can see. Anyone with eyes can see. It’s me in my black and gold dress and my butterfly mask. Except it’s not. And I—she—walks straight up to my husband, and he seems momentarily surprised when I—she wraps her arms around his neck, but he takes her in his arms too, and when she kisses him, he kisses her back, and then the scene blacks out.
I blink once, twice. When I turn, I find him watching me.
“I…” I croak, touching my throat, then pointing at the empty screen, my hand trembling.
Irrefutable evidence, they had said at The Tribunal.
They must have seen this too.
“What’s that, Ivy?” he asks, all false sweetness.
“That’s not possible.” I take a step backward, shuddering. I hug my arms around myself. “That’s not me.”
“No?”
I shake my head. Back up another step only to stumble over the chair I’d knocked over earlier but catching myself before I fall.
“No,” I say, not even convincing myself as he replays it, and I’m forced to watch it again.
“But I have eyes in my head. The evidence is right here in front of us,” he says finally.
We watch in silence, and when it’s over, he switches the monitors off and turns to me.
“I will mark you so you will never forget what you did. What you tried but failed to do. So that when anyone looks upon your face, they will know your shame, and they will turn their backs on you. You are a traitor. A liar. A Moreno.” My name is like a slap. I flinch. “You make me sick, Ivy.”
“I—”
“And my ink to mark your face, to deform you, is the sentence I decree upon you.”
14 Santiago
"How are you feeling?" Councilor Hildebrand peers up at me from beneath his spectacles.
"I live to see another day," I answer flatly.
He nods and then glances at the file before him. The three councilors of The Tribunal are seated behind the ornate desk on the dais in the courtroom reserved only for meetings such as these.
Since the explosion, I have come here once a month to meet with The Councilors, elders, and other remaining family members who lost someone that day. It was undoubtedly one of the worst attacks on a single IVI sector. We lost ten Sovereign Sons that day and twice as many elders.
Unlike a civilian case, a Society case never goes cold. We have all been assigned our own duties to further the investigation, and regardless of the slow progress, we reconvene here to discuss the findings on the same day every month. A process that will continue until The Tribunal deems the perpetrators have been found and punished accordingly.
Duty would dictate that I tell them I already know exactly who the perpetrator is, and he's lying in a hospital bed, too cowardly to face his crimes. But I decided long ago not to bring my suspicions forward unfounded. I didn't require The Tribunal's approval to punish those who I know in my bones bear the guilt of the blood that was shed that day.
I may never know how many Moreno family members partook in the scheme, but the only fair sentence is that which Eli has given me. An eye for an eye. And perhaps it is selfish, but I am not willing to relinquish control of their destruction, which is exactly what will happen if I were to bring their names forward.
First, there would be a long waiting period while The Tribunal considers the evidence. And then there would be a meeting between the surviving family members and a vote of what should occur. They would all want a piece of Eli and his family. And I am not willing to settle for a piece. Not when I am the only man who left that building, clinging to life as everyone around me burned.
It will be my face Eli sees should he ever wake. My eyes will haunt him in the afterlife when
