Cecilio stormed forward, pushing through the club's double doors. Two guards stepped in his path.
"Sir, Miss Rosa isn't in today. Please come back another time," one of them said, polite but firm.
"I knew you'd say that," Cecilio replied coldly. "I'm not here for her. I'm here for Parez."
"I'm sorry, sir, but he's not expecting visitors" the guard began, trying to steer him away.
"Let go of me." Cecilio's voice was low and even. Then, without another word, he landed a clean blow to the guard's jaw.
He moved like someone who knew how to fight
swift, controlled. The second guard never got a chance. Cecilio brought both men down and stepped over them as they hit the floor.
(He had been a Taekwondo instructor once. He didn't believe in violence, but something in him had gone hard this evening.)
"Look who's here," Parez said from the back of the room, expression sullen as he rose from a chair.
Cecilio crossed the room in two steps and grabbed Parez by the collar, slamming him against the wall. Glassware rattled on the nearby table.
"I spared you once," Cecilio hissed, breath hot, "and I won't do it again. If you don't give me a straight answer, I'll break your neck and go back to jail. Dare me."
Parez swallowed, eyes flicking to the doorway, to the fallen guards. "Fine. Just, let go. We can't talk like this."
Cecilio released him and slammed the medical report down on the table. The pages fanned open.
"Explain this," Cecilio demanded. "Don't leave anything out. When did this happen?"
Parez's facade cracked. He ran his thumb along the rim of his glass, then set it down with a small, dangerous clink.
"she was diagnosed with alcoholic hepatitis two years ago," Parez said, voice raw. "I was shaken. I tried to make her stop. I tried to make her go to the hospital. I fed her medicine when she would take it. I dragged her there when I could." He laughed, a short, bitter sound. "But she said she wouldn't stop. Said she wouldn't quit, no matter what
for some reason she was so interested in dying.
"You loved her," Cecilio said quietly.
Parez's hands tightened on the back of a chair. "Loved her? Maybe....
I had never had anyone to call my own...never dared to dream. Then she came along. For a while I thought
maybe this is my chance. Maybe I deserve someone. I was stupid." He shook his head, anger and grief tangled. "She had no will to live and I had a will to live for her.
I tried everything. I begged. I locked bottles away. I poured out crates. I told her if she didn't stop I would take her to doctors, to specialists
anything!
She would drink, then wake up and cry and say it hurts so much, and ask for help....
then spit her hand away when I tried to hold it." do you know how hard it was to watch that?
The room narrowed for Parez, and his face went distant. The present fell away.
He was back in that night: the apartment cloaked in the sour stink of cheap vodka, Rosa doubled over on the couch, hair clinging to her damp forehead. Her breaths came like little broken pulls. He had set a glass of water at her lips. "Please," she had whispered, tears carving clean tracks through the grime on her face. "It hurts. It hurts so much." Her fingers had found his sleeve, thin and shaking. He remembered thinking he could save her....
if she would let him.
But when he lifted her face, she had pushed his hands away as if they burned. "Don't," she said, eyes glassy. "Don't touch me. I can't....cecilio I'm so sorry" she yelled breaking to a thousand pieces while he stood there waiting for her to take his hand.
He had held her then and watched her refuse him when help was offered, and the refusal had cut him deeper than any blow.
Back in the club, Parez's voice broke. "I was there when the doctors said 'inflammation'when they told me it could be fixed if she stopped. I begged her. I cried. She told me it isn't worth trying. She told me to leave her alone. I...." He swallowed, the last of his composure gone. "It was like watching someone drown while holding the rope."
Cecilio's jaw ached with the force of his restraint. He looked down at the report, at the neat, clinical words that felt like a verdict.
"I'm sorry, Parez," he said, surprising both of them with the softness of it. "I..." He stopped himself, breathing in the club's stale air. "I didn't know."
Parez scrubbed a hand over his face and blinked hard. "I asked Rosa to go home and talk to you or you'd get the wrong idea. didn't think you'd show up like this."
I'll take my leave now cecilio said calmly.
Lio? Do you think we get what we deserve?
Cecilio looked at him, hollow. This world isn't fair. The kindest souls suffer."
"Then No," Cecilio murmured, almost to himself. "We don't get what we deserve."
He left Parez there with a thunder of thoughts and the echo of that memory.
The drive home was long and cold. The city lights were smeared by the rain on his windshield. The report burned through his gloves like a brand.
He imagined tearing his shirt to staunch an invisible wound, but fabric couldn't stop what was bleeding inside her. What if she left for good? What if she gave up before he could reach her? What if, like before, she refused his help?
He pressed his palms to the steering wheel until his nails bit into it. The words rose like a confession.
"I'm tired of lying that I like it this way," he said aloud to the empty car, the sentence shivering into the night.