Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 68858 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 344(@200wpm)___ 275(@250wpm)___ 230(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68858 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 344(@200wpm)___ 275(@250wpm)___ 230(@300wpm)
The background was nothing special, just a basic preinstalled image that told me nothing. There were no apps visible, no clues as to what this tablet was hiding. Confused, I tapped on the browser, hoping it might offer some answers, but it wasn’t connected to Wi-Fi. Another dead end.
That left one last place to check—images. My heart pounded as I opened the gallery, a feeling of dread pooling in the pit of my stomach.
I took a deep breath, bracing myself for whatever I was about to see, and then I tapped the icon.
The first image filled the screen, and I felt the air leave my lungs in a rush. There she was—Eva, vibrant and alive, staring back at me through the screen. She looked just as I remembered, her smile wide and carefree, her eyes sparkling with the thrill of the city she had loved so much. My heart twisted painfully in my chest. For a moment, it was as if she was still here, still the sister I had lost long before she disappeared.
The next few images were more of the same—Eva with some girlfriends, laughing and posing for the camera. They were snapshots of her life; of the world she had chosen over the one we had shared. It was a world I had never fully understood, one that had ultimately taken her away from me.
Then I swiped to the next image, and my breath caught in my throat.
There, with his arm draped casually around Eva, was the man whose severed hand Mateo had sent me. His face was unmistakable, his eyes dark and unreadable as he stared into the camera, oblivious to the fate that awaited him. My sister stood beside him, her smile just as bright, completely unaware of the darkness that loomed around her.
I hesitated before swiping again, a cold dread settling over me. The images so far had been painful, but nothing I couldn’t handle. But I knew Mateo—he wouldn’t have left this tablet for me just to show me happy memories. There was something else, something I wasn’t going to be ready for.
I closed my eyes for a moment, gathering the strength I needed to face whatever came next. When I opened them again, I swiped to the next image, steeling myself for the worst.
And then I saw it.
He looked like Mateo.
The resemblance was so striking that, for a split second, I thought it was him. My heart stuttered the idea that my sister had been with the same man who now claimed me as his own too much to comprehend.
But then, as I studied the image more closely, I noticed the subtle differences—the few silver hairs threading through the man's dark locks, the lines etched into his skin that spoke of years Mateo hadn’t yet lived. And then there was the thick wedding band glinting on his finger, a stark contrast to the way those same fingers gripped Eva’s naked hips with possessive intimacy.
I felt bile rise in my throat as I realized what I was looking at. Eva had taken this photo herself, capturing their reflection in a mirror on the ceiling of whatever fancy hotel room they were in. The entire scene was grotesque in its casualness, the way it turned something deeply private into something flaunted, something to be captured and kept. The reflection was almost artful, but it was nothing more than a twisted trophy of the life my sister had been living, a life I never truly knew.
I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the image. It was disturbing in ways I didn’t have the words to express, a sickening violation of everything I thought I understood about my sister. I had known she was wild, that she had embraced the chaos of the city in ways I never could, but this? This was different. This was dark and dangerous, a world far removed from the one we had grown up in.
The man in the picture, so eerily similar to Mateo, felt like a warning—a sign that my sister had been caught up in something far more sinister than I had ever imagined. And the fact that she had taken this photo herself, that she had been a willing participant in whatever was happening, made it all the more horrifying.
I hesitated, my finger hovering over the screen. Part of me wanted to stop, to throw the tablet away and pretend I had never seen any of this. But I knew I couldn’t.
The next image was worse.
Eva was still there, but this time, her face was different—flushed and vulnerable, eyes half-closed in what looked like a mix of pleasure and pain. This man—whoever he was—had her pinned on a bed, his hand wrapped tightly around her throat, the other tangled in her hair. But that wasn’t the bad part. I had been in a similar position just hours ago. No—the worst part was the reflection in a glass window that showed men watching.