In the summer rain [NARCOS] ON HOLD

XIII

If it weren't for the out of sync fork scrapping on cheap China plates, Lucia probably would have gone crazy from the silence.

After she had arrived home to a pitiful looking Javier, Lucia understood there were two options to move forward; the first being to tell Javier the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. It would be the hardest but if the stars aligned—the most rewarding truth. The second option was to continue the neglectful, cold-shoulder attitude which would make work and life, so much more difficult.

So the decision remained to tell Javier the truth, which is how they ended up at Lucia's barely-standing kitchen table eating in silence with a looming umbrella of questions hanging over their clouded minds. Under the cheap lights of the apartment in Bogotá, Javier remained looking like a million dollars wrapped up in a fatigued man. Even in the silence he radiated a demand for attention—a need for it.

Maybe that's why he was standing at the ready when he heard Lucia arrive from the states.

Two glasses deep into the now half-empty bottle of whiskey on the table, Lucia plucked up the small courage she had remaining to begin the conversation that would carry everything forward or worse, behind.

"I didn't devote my life to some silly cause; defeating the so called "war on drugs" just to be accused of being a traitor to my country."

Javier could barely sit still from the nerves that had built up inside him from the moment she told him they needed to "talk." From all his years of womanizing and preventing anyone from trapping a sliver or gold band on his finger, one thing always remained a constant in "female code": "talking" wasn't just any conversation.

"Talking" meant that something was either very wrong or very right and there was no in between. Javier was not an idiot. He knew from his relationship with Lucia that this was not the kind of "talk" that occurred when things were going right but very much wrong.

Therefore, he watched her twirl the fork in her hand slowly, not threatening, but not oblivious to the fact it could be used as a weapon if she angered herself (or if he angered her) enough that it could be used that way. But Javier didn't try to interrupt. This wasn't his call to make—even if he wanted to shake any sense of insecurity out of her. He had been the one, after all, to place the doubt there in the first place during a moment of thoughtless relapse into his paranoid state.

"My mother didn't raise a traitor and I highly doubt the United States Government would do such a poor job in vetting me that being a sleuth is something they missed."

Lucia pursed her lips and dropped the fork onto the table with a ringing clang as it nicked the side of the plate and the metal met the wood in an unwelcomed ding. Its sound reflected louder between two people who should be sitting so close, but whose hearts were too far away to become one.

"There is nothing I want more than Pablo Escobar behind bars—in the ground, six feet below my shoes. I don't think you understand, Javier, what my life was like before I met you or before you joined the DEA here."

Lucia's eyes met his sunken brown ones that looked as though life was running by without a stop. Tonight the whiskey made him anxious, not subdued and lax in a nightly rouse. This wasn't one of those nights and her piercing stare was accusing—rightfully so.

"Pablo has never made life easy. He's always been a trick of the hat, trying to rise above his status with a menial task that would eventually get him some recognition on a market desired by those without a soul. That's what Pablo is, a soulless monster and he always has been." Lucia stated with a definite fury in her gaze. It was hatred without a second thought.