Two weeks later.

I paced around the dining table. We had fully moved back into our house a couple of days ago.

Valentina walked in from the garden. She had taken care of it while we were gone.

"Why are you pacing dear?" She shut the glass door behind her.

"Rosa is meeting my brothers today."

She placed new flowers on the table. "She knows how to be polite if that's what you're worried about."

"Yes, but they don't." I twirled a strand of my hair nervously. "I mean, what if she doesn't like them. They're practically the only family I have."

She placed her hand on my shoulder. "Everything is going to be fine."

I sighed. She had become a mother to me recently.

"But-" I started.

"If you say 'what if it's not', I might hit you." She smiled.

Rosa walked to the front door.

Her hair was perfectly tied up as always. She smoothed out her pants as she glided through the doorway even though there wasn't a single wrinkle. Her heels clicked on the floor as she walked into the kitchen.

She looked as she always did. Absolute perfection.

Meanwhile, I was wearing sweatpants, an oversized T-shirt, mismatched socks, and my hair was a frizzy half-up mess.

She was talking to someone on the phone. Based on her tone of voice it was probably someone important.

She smiled at the new flowers in the vase as she walked by.

Well, it wasn't really a smile. The corners of her mouth slightly twitched upward for a millisecond.

Someone who didn't spend most of their time studying her face wouldn't have noticed it.

I doubt she would've noticed it herself.

She did smile at me though. It was a brighter smile than usual. She was probably trying to make up for the fact that she was on the phone.

I looked between the two of us. Nobody would've guessed I was the one regularly compared to a goddess.

Maybe it was how we were raised. Rosa was meant to be a decoration. Something for people to marvel at beside her father.

I was meant to be modest. If I was showing my knees I was asking for a man to catcall me or assault me.

It was my fault for making him think such heinous things.

I never believed any of that. I knew my worth didn't change based on how many people I'd been with.

But others did. That was partially why I didn't want to say anything to Rosa.

I knew deep down she was better than that, but I didn't know how deep.

She still sees herself as a monster. She gets up early in the morning and just stares in the mirror.

She just stares.

It's almost as if she's reminding herself of who she thinks she really is. I know it can't be good because she only does it when I'm asleep.

I try not to think about it. Whenever I confronted her about things like that it seemed to make her feel worse about it.

Who knows what other 'morals' stuck with her over the years. I didn't want to risk losing her over something as stupid as that.

I walked upstairs to get ready.

My mind wandered as I showered and dried my hair.

What would she think of my brothers? What would they think of her?

Jesús was bringing Cat. What would she think?

How were my Luis and Sam doing? I hadn't spoken to them in a while.

Did they still have contact with Mom? Did they still have contact with anyone from the church?

The questions burned in my mind as I finished getting ready right until we arrived at the coffee shop.

I looked over at Rosa. "Are you ready?"

She smiled at me. "What's the worst that could possibly happen?"

"What happens if you don't like them?" I grabbed her hand.

"Depends how much I don't like them. If we have a small disagreement, you will hear about it later. If it's something huge, I'm always armed." She squeezed my hand lightly then got out of the car.

Part of me wanted to believe that was a joke.

The rest of me knew that part was stupid and wrong.

All of me loved her for it.

I stepped out of the car and walked to her side. She wrapped an arm around my waist. "Everything is going to be perfectly fine."

"Please don't shoot anyone." I laughed nervously.

"No promises." She rubbed my arm.

As if that was going to bring me some sort of comfort.

"Can you promise you'll try?" I pleaded.

"One promise." She gave me a quick smirk before she started talking to the hostess.

The waitress led us to the table and a wave of relief washed over me.

They had actually taken care of themselves and weren't a complete embarrassment for once.

Jesús even stood up to shake her hand.

"Am I underdressed or are you overdressed?" Cat laughed as she shook Rosa's hand.

"I always say you can never be overdressed." Rosa smiled. "I also had a lot of meetings today so I didn't want to change."

"I know you've just gotten a chance to sit down. But, may I ask are you getting married in a church, or did I read the invitation wrong?" Sam looked between us.

I gave him a look but he ignored it.

"No, you read it correctly." Rosa took a small sip of her water. She lifted up her necklace slightly. "I was raised catholic and I guess it stuck."

Jesús stared at me for a moment. I looked away from him. I knew what he was trying to get at.

"The church is beautiful, I don't think I could choose a better place myself." I looked at Cat.

Maybe she would say something to him later.

"Are all the drug lords extremely religious?" Luis mumbled.

I kicked him under the table.

"I wouldn't call it extreme, but every one I've known goes to church on Christmas Eve." Rosa pretended to wipe something off her face to hid her smile.

Luis looked at her with wide eyes. "I'm sorry, that was very rude." He stuttered through the sentence.

Jesús smiled a little.

"It was only a little rude. I would've found it funny if you said it as a joke instead of a snide comment." Rosa looked at him.

Luis was literally shaking. Her stare wasn't even that intense, it was just a normal stare.

Jesús broke the tension with a laugh and then he froze.

"Dear God. You already know I like you." She looked at him.

"If she wished you harm, you would probably already be dead right now." Cat said as she took a bite out of a croissant.

Rosa reached into her purse and pulled her gun out. Then she handed it to me. "Does this make you feel safer?"

Cat's eyes went wide. "Why the hell would that make anyone feel safer. Are you always armed?"

"I just handed my gun to someone else, therefore I am not armed right now." She put her arms on the table.

Sam looked around. "Is nobody else seeing this?"

"I could kill you right now and nobody would bat an eye as long as I left right after. I'm a Sanchez." She placed her head in her hands.

I put the gun back in her purse. It was safer for everyone that way.

Sam and Luis just sat there silently, Cat made a nervous squeak, and Jesús opened and shut his mouth multiple times like he was trying to say something but couldn't find the words.

I leaned forward in my seat. "She's not going to hurt you unless you hurt me. Even then if I ask her to stop nicely, she will. So let's just pretend we didn't see the gun and have a normal conversation."

"What's a normal conversation in a setting like this?" Sam stared at me.

"Like questions about our relationship or something. Get to know her." I took a sip of my coffee.

"Uh- how did you- meet? I don't know." Luis looked at her.

Rosa almost choked on her water.

"Maybe questions you don't know the answer to." Sam hit his shoulder.

"No no, I can answer this one. Besides you asked how not where." Rosa laughed. "So picture this, I'm at a wonderful camp in the mountains where I get tortured daily, but I think I'm getting fixed because I've been brainwashed my whole life. I think I was reading a letter from my mother, it confirmed the death of my best friend, she had killed herself a few days prior. So I'm obviously very upset and then Ana walks in. You have to remember I think I'm getting the help that I need here, so I definitely wouldn't call it love at first sight. So I look over at her and she's a complete mess. I mean, she's just breaking down sobbing. At that point, I had been there for a while and I knew she wouldn't last a day acting like that. So I went over to her and I offered to help her."

"That's... intense." Jesús said.

"I don't remember being that much of a mess." I crossed my arms.

"Do you also not remember when you broke down in the courtyard and I punched someone for you?"

"I wouldn't say I broke down. I had a reasonable reaction to being cornered by a bunch of scary people in a scary place." I huffed.

"It was a reasonable response, but you had a panic attack after they left." She gave me a look.

"Anyways, any more questions?" She turned back to my brothers and Cat.

"How the Hell are you two getting married." Luis laughed.

"Opposites attract?" I shrugged.

"This feels a little too opposite." Cat smiled.

"You gain the right to judge when Jesús takes a bullet for you." I joked.

"You took a bullet for her?" Sam leaned forward.

"Not really. I just got shot trying to kill someone while she was in the room." She leaned back in her chair.

"You left out the part where you were attacking him because he called you a bitch. Also, they were going to kill me. Then as you were bleeding out on the floor you told me to run." I stared at her.

"That's badass. Who were you attacking?" Luis smiled. We were opposites, he liked violence as long as the right people were getting hurt.

He wouldn't hurt a fly unless that fly purposely hurt someone he loved.

"My brother." She finished her drink. "He probably shot me on instinct too. I'd make fun of him for it if it wasn't such a good fucking shot."

"You're still on speaking terms?" Jesús was following the conversation relatively well, but he couldn't seem to grasp this.

"Unfortunately." She sighed. "It's part of my job for now."

"Damn." He shook his head. "I can barely look at my parents after what they did. I don't know how you'd be able to deal with that."

Cat grabbed his hand.

"I bite tongue and wait for the right moment to strike. Even if I wanted to run away I couldn't, so I wait because if I don't so many people will die." She ran her fingers along the rim of her glass. "I guess people will die anyway, but the people I'm going to kill won't be innocent."

Sam leaned his head back slightly and looked at her. "Do you consider yourself to be a good person?"

She laughed once. "I can say all the people I'm killing deserve to die, and they do. But at the end of the day, they're still people. I'm not stupid. I'm very aware of all the blood on my hands."

"Well, what defines a good person anyway?" Cat sat up.

Rosa grabbed my hand under the table. "I don't think there's such a thing as good people or bad people. I think there are people who are kind, and people who have been hurt so badly they don't care about the pain they cause. People aren't born bad or good. They are shaped by the world around them as they grow. The world is not a kind place and sometimes is too much."

"So people like your father and my parents, you think that they should be forgiven?" Luis shifter in his seat.

"No. I will never forgive any of those people. But I think there was a reason they did it all. I think their behaviors could be explained." She sighed.

"What about the kind people? Have they just been through less?" Cat looked at her.

"No." Rosa shook her head. "In my experience, they've gone through just as much or even more. They just had a reason to stay good."

...
Eh.

I hate this.

Why is it soooooo long?

It's not that long, I've written plenty of 2000 word chaps for this book.

My pinky hurts from how I was holding my phone lmao

<3