Chapter 5

While I look for the keys in my wallet to open the lock of the house where I live next to my mother and sister in the slums passing Puente de Vallecas (Districts of the city of Madrid), I die of fear for how dark the streets are.

It is a land where there are several small houses, conventillo style, where we rent two bedrooms and a communal bathroom. It is the option left to us after being evicted after we ran out of the poor unemployment insurance money we collected following dad's death. 

I still can not get out of my mind the image of Black Hamilton moaning with pleasure, but then treating me as a simple employee who can exploit with ease. 

I think of paper, I think of the photo I keep on my mobile and a feeling of chills shakes my form. 

The strange sensation of being watched strikes me.

I look back and nothing, for Christ's sake! 

Until, I find a parked black car across the street. The dark glasses are up to the top and it gives me a bad vibe, so I quickly return to the door. 

I'm looking for the keys. My hands are shaking. I drop the bunch, I realize that they are not the ones from my house but that I have brought the one from the offices, great, now I will have to be the first to go open tomorrow before someone else arrives and Hamilton kills me. Once I pick up the keys again, I hear a noise. It's the car. The door has opened. 

I look slowly turning around and fearing the worst. Two people came out and approached in a hurry. My heart is about to burst. For some reason, I have a horrible feeling that they know what I know. 

Through streetlight, I distinguish the face of the one who has come down from the place of the passenger seat. Also, from the driver. He's Black's partner who once walked away with hate knocking on the door of the private secretary where I work. 

My mobile

I think of the photo.

I think about the paper.

I remember reading something I shouldn't have.

And it's too late when the guard of Hamilton's partner raises his gun to strike me with the butt of the revolver in the center of my forehead.

There are times when life passes before your eyes in a jiffy. It seems that everything has been too short, it seems that those days that you begged to end at once are no longer so bad. You feel brave to go out looking for opportunities and hate extreme points who have taken them away from you.

You just need one more moment, a hug from someone you love, a smile from that person who at some point filled you with happiness. The look of Mom, The Voice of my little sister, the memory of dad. 

Those limited moments cause everything you lived to seem too brief because you know that some fact could cause you to lose everything. 

Like that severe oppression in my chest that I felt when the agent came home and told mom that dad passed away back to work. 

Suddenly you know that you will be a wretch, that you will be adrift, that you will not be able to give a hug to one of the most important people you have and the whole world breaks down to never compose itself again as it was before.

One more day, just one more day you want to tear from the routine, to God or to whom it should be asked, to take advantage and believe that you did not enjoy enough with that person you love. 

But hours of Love were replaced by hours of work that I had to invest so that I could continue studying. That feeling, that horrible feeling that the world thickens its walls to crush you is the same that went through me the moment that Hamilton's partner put his revolver in my head.

And the nightmare is over. 

I still wake up, I don't keep getting the feeling out of me and I wonder if at some point this could really happen to me. How would I deal with it?

The mobile alarm sounds before the blow hits me and I wake up from a jolt in the bed of my house. I have to look everywhere to make sure I'm not dead. 

Was it just a nightmare...or not? 

The nightmare was just the attack, not all the above. I find it hard to distinguish reality from fantasy while trying to wake up. 

Hamilton made me stay up late last night and I have to rub my eyes well before I see what's going on my cell phone screen. 

Alarm.

The top bar says two missed alarms. Well...no I usually activate more than two. There is also a missed call. And two messages. The messages are from my partner in the secretariat. 

The call is from my boss.

I haven't rested a damn thing... I fell asleep! 

"He... Hello." I answer with fear in my voice as soon as I get a new call from Black Hamilton.

"Where the hell are you, Mina?! And where the hell are the keys to my office?!" Hr roared.