Chapter 9: Breathing Lessons
The chair creaked.
He hadn't dragged it. He'd lifted it and set it down a foot from the bed, careful not to scrape the floor, and the care was worse than noise would have been. The warm tungsten light above the cabin door hummed. I could feel it on my closed eyelids. The air conditioner pushed cold air across my bare shoulders and the satin of my camisole, and I told myself to breathe like someone who'd swallowed what he'd given me.
My name is Mara Villanueva and that night I learned how to pretend to be drugged while my husband watched.
I'd tucked the phone against my chest under the thin blanket, screen down, its heat barely there between my skin and the fabric. The two white pills were taped under the lip of the sink in the head, where I'd pressed them after palming them from his hand. He thought they'd dissolved in my stomach with the glass of water he'd held out and said, "Drink it, my love, so you can sleep peacefully." He thought the clock was working for him.
Adrian sat with his forearms on his knees, his black long-sleeve shirt cuff pushed back just enough to show the silver watch on his left wrist. I watched him through my lashes. He wasn't on his phone. He wasn't reading. He was watching my face, my chest, my hands, the way you watch a pot you're waiting to boil.
I counted. In for four, out for six. The way the attorney had told me on that second call when I'd gotten through after he'd stepped into the corridor — keep your voice down, keep him thinking you're out, keep breathing, keep the line open if you can. I couldn't keep the line open with him in the room, but I kept her words looped in my head so the panic had somewhere to go. Inheritance only transfers if I'm declared lost at sea. Don't give him a body he can explain. Sixteen billion pesos was a number so large it didn't feel like money anymore. It felt like a reason to learn how often a sleeping woman twitches.
I let my mouth fall a little open. I let a small, slow exhale push through my nose. I kept my hands loose, fingers not curled, one hand near my collarbone where the blanket covered the phone.
"Mara," he said softly.
I didn't answer.
He waited a beat, then said it again, closer. "My love, wake up, you need some air."
The words were gentle. His tone was the same one from the hallway when he'd held the glass. That was the point. He reached out and his fingertips brushed the slope of my shoulder. Just a light press, not a shake. A test. My skin jumped before I could stop it and I turned that jump into something else — a slow, drugged roll of my head away from him, a faint sigh, my eyelids fluttering but staying shut. My heart was hammering so hard I was sure the blanket was moving with it.
He let his hand linger. I could smell soap and the faint metallic smell of the water glass that had been sitting on the counter. He slid his thumb once, lightly, across the strap of my camisole, as if adjusting it, as if caring for me. I kept my breathing slow. In for four, out for six. I made myself twitch — not a jerk, just a small, irregular flutter in my left hand, the way a real sedative might make a muscle fire. My face stayed slack. I felt a tear that had been sitting on my lash line finally slip, warm, down the side of my nose. I didn't wipe it.
The digital clock on the nightstand clicked.
12:47.
Then 12:51.
Time didn't move in minutes that night. It moved in breaths. Adrian shifted in the chair. The leather made a small sound. He stood and I fought every instinct to tense. Through my lashes I saw his shadow cross the wall. He took two steps to the small dresser, picked up the glass of water I'd pretended to drink from, and set it back down emptier than I'd left it. He was keeping the story straight, even for an empty room.
A soft knock came at the cabin door. Two taps, low, careful.
Adrian didn't answer right away. He looked back at me. I kept my eyes closed, kept the slow rhythm, kept one hand light on my chest as if I were deep asleep and clutching the blanket for comfort, not a phone. I heard his bare feet on the wood — he'd taken his shoes off — moving toward the door.
He opened it three inches. Hallway light cut a thin blade across the floor and stopped before it reached the bed.
A man's voice, hushed. "Ready below. You want me to—"
Adrian cut him off with a quiet shush and stepped into the door frame sideways, so his body blocked the view in and he never fully turned his back on me. I could see the side of his watch catching the hall light.
"Not yet," Adrian whispered. "She's out, but she's light. Give us to one."
"One's tight," the other man said. "We need—"
"We will take it out at two," Adrian said, and the exact words he'd said earlier, "Today at 2:00 AM, we will take it out," came back with the same calm, and I felt my fingers go cold under the blanket. "One we move her. Understand?"
The accomplice — I never saw his face, only the dark shape of his shoulder in the hall — nodded and stepped back. Adrian stayed in the doorway another second, his hand resting on the knob, listening to my breathing. Testing it from a distance.
I gave him another one of those small, uneven twitches, a soft exhale through parted lips, and stayed still.
He eased the door shut until it was ajar again, the same two inches he'd left it all night. He came back and lowered himself into the chair.
12:58.
May you like
The watch on his wrist ticked loud in the quiet. I breathed in for four, out for six, and thought of the attorney's voice saying stay where he can see you breathing, and I did.
He leaned forward again, elbows on knees, watching me watch nothing with my eyes closed, waiting for one o'clock to become two.
