Chapter 6 - THE EDGE OF THE PRECIPICEThe two men tumbled across the concrete helipad. Guillermo, driven by pure, feral desperation, gouged his fingers into Mauricio’s eyes, fighting with the strength of a maniac.

"You ungrateful bastard!" Guillermo screamed, pinning Mauricio down and wrapping his hands around his son's throat. "I gave you life! I gave you power!"

Mauricio choked, his vision swimming with black spots as his father squeezed the air out of his lungs. He reached out blindly into the dark, his fingers wrapping around a heavy stone lying near the pad’s border.

With the last bit of strength in his body, Mauricio slammed the stone into the side of Guillermo’s head.

Guillermo groaned, reeling backward and clutching his bleeding forehead. Mauricio shoved him off, gasping violently for air.

Guillermo stumbled backward, tripping over his own briefcase. He fell hard against the low safety railing at the edge of the three-hundred-foot cliff. The rusted metal snapped under his weight.

Guillermo slipped, his hands flailing as he caught the very edge of the concrete pad with his fingertips.

Below him lay the jagged rocks and black waters of Lake Valle de Bravo.

"Mauricio!" Guillermo screamed, his fingers slipping on the wet concrete. "Help me! Son! Save me! Please!"

Mauricio stood up slowly, wiping blood from his mouth. He walked to the edge of the cliff and looked down at the man who had brought him into the world—and brought nothing but agony to everyone he touched.

Mauricio reached down his hand.

"Hold on," Mauricio said.

Guillermo reached up, his eyes filled with terrified hope. "Thank you, son... thank you..."

Mauricio grabbed his father’s wrist, bracing himself. But as Guillermo tried to pull himself up, he sneered, pulling a hidden trench knife from his boot with his free hand, preparing to gut Mauricio the moment he reached the top.

Elena saw the gleam of the blade in the helicopter lights. "Mauricio! He has a knife!"

Mauricio saw it too.

He looked into his father’s eyes. There was no redemption there. No remorse. Only endless, dark poison.

"You were wrong, Dad," Mauricio said softly. "Love isn't a weakness. It’s what gives us the strength to cut out the rot."

Mauricio opened his grip.

"NOOOOOOO!"

Guillermo’s screams faded into the dark abyss as he plummeted into the jagged rocks three hundred feet below. A dull splash echoed through the valley, swallowed immediately by the roaring wind.

Silence fell over the mountain.

The helicopter pilot, seeing his employer dead, cut the engines, threw his hands out of the cockpit window, and surrendered to Mateo, who was rushing up the ridge.

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Mauricio turned around slowly.

Elena ran to him, throwing her arms around his neck. They collapsed onto their knees together under the blinding floodlights, holding each other as the distant sirens of federal police vehicles began to echo up the winding mountain road.