The night my father died, the city of Guadalajara seemed to hold its breath. The air was thick with the scent of rain, and the sky, usually so clear and bright, was wrapped in clouds that mirrored the heavy heart I carried within me. I stood at the edge of his bed, my fingers tracing the entangled patterns of the old wooden frame, as if the texture could somehow anchor me to the moment, to him.
Don Carlos Estrada, my father, the man who had given me life but so often withheld his love, was gone. I could barely comprehend the reality of it, the finality of death. He was larger than life, a force of nature, a man who had built an empire with his own hands and torn apart lives with the same force. And now, he was reduced to this-still, silent, and no longer the center of the world that had revolved around him.
As I looked around the room, my eyes met those of my brothers-Miguel, his jaw clenched in that familiar way that betrayed his emotions, and the twins, Javier and Antonio, standing side by side, their faces unreadable masks of resignation. We were all here, the four of us, united in grief yet separated by the vast chasm of our histories, our betrayals, and the secrets that had shaped our lives.
I wanted to cry, to scream, to demand answers from the universe about why our family had to be so broken, why the love that should have bound us together had instead been twisted into something sharp and cruel. But the tears wouldn't come, and my voice was trapped in my throat, suffocated by the weight of all the words left unsaid.
In the silence that followed, I could almost hear the ghosts of our past whispering in the shadows, their voices echoing through the halls of this old, crumbling hacienda. They spoke of the lies we told, the love we withheld, and the wounds we inflicted on each other, all in the name of greed, pride, and the desperate need to prove ourselves worthy of our father's love.
And as I stood there, looking at the faces of the men who were both my blood and my enemies, I knew that this was only the beginning. The storm that had been brewing for years was about to break, and when it did, there would be no going back.
