“I’ve always been taller than most other people my age, so I was able to see over the crowd. I was able to see my mother running from the hall on the other side. She was running to break up the fight. I don’t know where the hell any of the male teachers were, and I don’t know what possessed my mother to think she could stop a fight between two boys, but I could see that was what she was going to do. I hesitated, not wanting to leave Melanie, but I could see she was going to try to break it up. I waited too long.” His face was a tortured mask.
Ria ached for the young boy that Nicholas had been to witness his mother endangering herself.
“I ran through the kids to try to stop her, but I was a few seconds too late. One of the boys had a knife. He was swinging it around to kill the other boy, but instead, my mother was stabbed. It went straight into her side and into her heart.”
“Oh, my God, that’s horrible,” Ria exclaimed. She held his hand tighter.
“Melanie and I watched our mother bleed to death,” he said.
“Oh, no,” Ria said to him. “I’m so sorry you had to go through that.”
“After we watched her take her last breath, I looked for the boy that killed her and looked him in the eyes. He showed no remorse and no indication that he cared for what he had done, so I attacked him. The male teachers finally showed up and pulled me off him. When the paramedics and the police came, he still showed no remorse. The punk wasn’t worth one breath my mother took, and he didn’t even care!”
Ria’s eyes started to narrow. Nick knew she was finally figuring out where the story was leading. He felt her let go of his hand.
“You know who it was, don’t you, Ria?”
Her eyes were wide, and he could see the realization and shock coursing through her body.
“You killed him,” Ria whispered as she took a step away from him.
“Yes, Ria. He killed my mother,” Nick said calmly, looking up at her. He expected this reaction from her. He had every belief that she would be reporting him.
“You had no right! It was an accident. He was just a kid,” she yelled at him.
“He was a cold-blooded murderer. If he hadn’t killed my mother, he would have killed the other boy. Either way, someone would have died at his hand.”
“He was only nineteen!” she continued to yell at him.
“I was only sixteen.” His sharp voice cut through her building hysteria. “And I had just watched someone too old to be in high school kill my mother. When I approached him on the street, he had been selling drugs to kids all day and was high himself. He pulled the knife on me first. If I hadn’t killed him, he would have tried to kill me,” Nick said with force and conviction. He refused to feel guilty for his actions that day. “I didn’t have any type of weapon on me; it was his own knife that led to his death.”
“You asshole!” Ria screamed and slapped him across the face.
Nick didn’t try to defend himself.
“You’ve been fucking me, and you knew all along you had killed my brother!”
“I know.” His guilt had been eating him alive every day.
“You know? That’s all you have to say is ‘you know’?” Ria gave a hysterical laugh.
“I didn’t want these feelings for you. I’ve tried to fight them, but I couldn’t. I knew I should have left you alone once I found out who you were, but I couldn’t.” He gave a harsh laugh. “Then Emiliano took you, and I felt responsible when you told me it was because your brothers weren’t around to protect you,” Nick explained, knowing it wouldn’t matter.
“Well, I can tell you for damn sure that there would have been nothing between us if you told me the fucking truth!” Ria continued to yell at him.
“That’s why I hadn’t told you before, but I couldn’t keep it from you any longer,” he said. “You can do what you want with the information; I won’t deny it.”
Ria stared at him, and he waited for what she would do next. At this point, he didn’t care if he spent the rest of his life in jail; he was tired of carrying around the burden.
“I hate you,” she snarled at him.
He hadn’t expected anything different.
“When I first met you, I didn’t know you were his sister.”
“But you knew before you fucked me, didn’t you?”
Nick nodded his head. “Yes.”
Determined to come clean, he told her the rest. “I was there the day your other brother was killed too.”
“You know who killed Alejandro?”
“Yes, I do,” Nick replied.
“Was it you?” she asked, stunned.