The Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba - Chanel Cleeton Page 0,7

health. I kneeled before Berriz and begged him to return my father to me. And now, after releasing my father, Berriz has arrested my father and thrown him in the jail again.”

“I’ve heard that Berriz’s wife will be joining him soon,” Emilio replies. “Perhaps her presence here will help things.”

“And until then? What am I to do?”

Emilio leans closer, running a hand through my long, dark hair. I jerk. Behind us, one of the soldiers says something about a lovers’ quarrel.

“Nothing will happen to you or your father, Evangelina,” Emilio urges, as though he sees the doubt in my eyes, my disappointment over his powerlessness, the anger filling me. When my father told me war was coming to our island, I was ready to fight, but this waiting around for someone to rescue me is torture.

Emilio offers his reassurances louder than he should, perhaps to convince me or to give himself the confidence he needs to act, and suddenly, before either one of us can move, before we remember that any sign of rebellion is met with force, the soldiers are on him, brandishing their weapons, hitting him with their large guns over and over again until Emilio falls silent, pain etched across his face. Tears rain down my cheeks, anger burning in my chest, but I do not speak a word.

Sometimes it is too easy to forget that we must always fear for our lives. The Isle of Pines might be a beautiful exile on the surface, but no matter how long a leash we are given, it is still a prison.

“Emilio—”

“I’ll be fine,” he mouths to me.

The soldiers haul Emilio away unceremoniously. His gaze is trained on me as they exit the house, the soldiers laughing and talking among themselves, leaving me standing alone.

Nausea fills me, the urge to retch overwhelming. The scent of the soldiers’ sweat lingers in the cramped house, the sight of Emilio’s spilled blood on the floor inescapable.

I walk outside, my legs quaking, heart pounding, lungs desperate for fresh air. I can’t get used to the violence, to all of the horrible things people do to one another. Nothing in my childhood or after prepared me for the way we live now, for the fear that is my near-constant companion. I didn’t appreciate how sheltered I was until the night my father was captured and everything changed.

I lean against the front of my house, my heart rate slowly returning to normal. My gaze sweeps across the landscape, and then a chill trickles down my spine.

Colonel Berriz is several yards away, the sun shining down on his dark hair. His men stand tall under his attention, their chests stuck out like strutting peacocks as they listen to his orders, their uniforms like feathers dragging behind them. The soldiers have become more insufferable with each passing day, their arrogance just one of the indignities we’ve been forced to suffer.

Berriz stops speaking, his gaze cutting from the men to where I stand beneath the palm tree in front of our house.

To me.

That he makes no effort to hide the gleam in those awful green eyes, the slow unfurling of his smile, that flash of teeth beneath his dark whiskers, is as unsettling as the leisurely look he takes, his gaze starting at the top of my head and working its way down, lingering on the bodice of my gown with hunger, as though he is a wolf and I am an errant sheep that will soon become his evening meal.

I cannot help but wonder if the men acted on his orders earlier, if he told them to look for any opportunity to attack Emilio knowing he’s my fiancé.

I see a flash of something that looks a lot like satisfaction in Berriz’s eyes.

There is no question about it.

Berriz must go.

* * *

—

After much pleading, my father is released from prison once more, and hope fills me that things will improve, that I can continue to hold Berriz at bay.

But a few days later, the moon bright in the sky, the unthinkable happens.

It must be nearly midnight, but my father has yet to return home.

I walk over to the window for what feels like the hundredth time, parting the curtains, willing the image of my father walking toward our front door to appear.

Surely, I would know if they’d killed him, would feel something in my heart. He’s the only parent I have left now after losing my mother when I was a child, and with my other sisters scattered