Page 150 of Forbidden Fate

I would cut off my own hand to hear it again.

“Never say never,” she said.

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

“You think I’m going to save humanity?”

“No.” She touched my cheek. “That’s not why I loved the name.”

“Then why?”

“Because life is made at the crossroads,” she said.

I frowned.

“When roads meet, choices are made. One way or another. Good or bad. Toward light or away from it. You may not always know where a road leads, but you will know something about why you chose it.”

I crossed my arms. “That sounds like church.”

“It is bigger than church.”

I rolled my eyes again.

“You will have decisions to make, Cruz. All your life. Some small. Some so large they will feel impossible.” She squeezed my hand. “When you stand at those crossroads, you must try to make the right ones.”

“What if I don’t know which ones are right?”

“Then listen harder.”

“To what?”

“To God. To your conscience. To the voice inside you.” She smiled. “To me.”

I didn’t understand.

Not then.

I only understood that she wouldn’t tell me my father’s name. That there was a man somewhere in the world who might know about me or might not, might care or might not, might come someday or might never come at all.

“Leaving without saying goodbye, Cruz?”

I stand beside the stolen car with my hand still on the door handle.

For a split second, I’m twelve again at the kitchen table, Mamá’s hand around mine, her voice telling me life is made at the crossroads.

Then I’m a grown man with blood still visible under my nails, a fake passport in my pocket, a dead grandmother inside the house, and the woman who helped mold me into a criminal standing at my back.

A crossroads.

Of course.

I should have known.

I turn.

Adriana stands near the side gate, one hand resting lightly against the iron latch.