The funny thing about life is when something bad happens, it feels like it will last forever. Until it all ends, as if it never existed in the first place. 

Gloria lay on her bed. 

The ceiling fan spun round and round as she stared back at it as if it were an abyss. 

A thousand thoughts swirled in her mind as she recalled all that had happened in the last 48 hours. Like a broken record, her mind replayed the same scenes over and over again.

Suzu and her rescue.

The shootout.

All the chaos and the bullets raining down.

Green eyes and tan skin.

A face staring at her in shock as he touched his hand to his bleeding abdomen.

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Lino.

He had been both her angel and her devil. El diablo, as his men and all of Tijuana had called him. 

Rough and snarky in the beginning, she had found him slowly starting to grow on her. She even welcomed his company and felt excited every time he came near her. Butterflies swam around in her stomach from fear and nervousness. 

A rush. 

His bright hooded green eyes staring at her intently . The way his hands had felt when he had trained her to use an AR-15. Warm and rough as they trailed up and down her thighs towards her center-

She shook her head. She was ridiculous for remembering all of that. For feeling warm and affected by a dead man. Not just any man, but a con man.  

A con man he may have been, but the stories of his childhood and the future plans he had revealed a softer side to him.  A side she wished she could get close to. The man she wished he could have always been, but deep down inside she knew he couldn't exist that way. 

Lino Esparza was both a devil and an angel and he couldn't be one or the other. He was a man too entangled in a system that was determined to overpower him, but it was one that he had devoured and used to his advantage. A man torn between two worlds ever since he was a young boy at the tender age of six.  

Both guilt and sadness tore through her when she saw Suzu's crescent moon tattoo and she soon realized there was no other choice but to kill him and find a way to start her life over.

His betrayal tore through her when she realized that he had lied. 

"La bala. the bullet. The bullet settles everything." He had told her and he was right. 

The bullets she had fired into him had ended him. 

Gloria held the old burner phone to her chest. It was the last item connecting her to Lino Esparza and while it was just an object, some part of her was still hesitant to let it go. 

Lino was dead. No matter how much she had regretted killing him and leaving him, she knew she had to move on. There was no use reminiscing about the past. His voice and promise still rang through her mind, however. 

"You're gonna be my queen. Turn your back on me and I'll kill you myself."

Little did she know, the devil always kept his promises.