The envelope opened, and a thick stack of cash spilled across the concrete floor.
"But there's a condition."
She produced a small brown pill bottle from her bag and twisted off the cap.
"Take this sterilization pill. After you swallow it, take that child of yours and leave the country. Don't come back."
She smiled at me.
"You understand, Oswald is about to run for a position within the group. Someone like you showing up again and again isn't good for his reputation."
"All I need is your guarantee that you'll never appear in his life again."
I stared at the money on the ground, then at the pill bottle in her hand.
"I'm not taking that. I can pay the money back. I'll sign an agreement..."
Before I could finish, the pill bottle slipped from Wanda's hand.
"Oh! My stomach!"
Oswald rushed over.
He jerked his chin at the bodyguards behind him.
"Pin her down over there."
Four bodyguards closed in. Two seized my arms; the other two forced my shoulders to the ground.
A pair of leather shoes filled my vision.
Oswald crouched down, grabbed a fistful of my hair, and wrenched my face upward.
"See the mud on Wanda's shoes?"
"Lick it clean. The five hundred thousand is yours. Go save that bastard of yours."
Wanda stood six feet away. A few specks of mud were spattered across the toe of her heels.
I stared at those shoes.
The phone in my pocket buzzed violently.
The caller ID showed the children's hospital ward.
I reached for it, but the phone was snatched from my hand.
Oswald held my old phone with its cracked screen, his brow furrowed tight.
The ringtone drilled into his ears, and his first reaction was disgust.
"What a piece of junk. That sound is grating."
He flung the phone away.
The old phone I'd bought five years ago hit a concrete support column in the garage and shattered into pieces.
The battery popped out and spun twice across the floor.
That phone had all of Carissa's photos.
I bit down on the arm of the bodyguard pinning me.
He screamed and let go. I scrambled off the ground on all fours, shoved past the other bodyguard, and stumbled out of the garage.
It was raining outside.
The children's hospital was on the south side of the city.
Six miles from here.
She weighed barely four pounds the day she was born. She spent two weeks in an incubator.
The first time she called me Mama, I cried the whole night.