By the Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead

or my leukemia, believing my struggling fa

overheard my brother and moth

t have

illionaires in the Syndicate,

hal to the supreme Don could be transferre

I will find the best specialists to

know I had alrea

em, I had just swallowed a vial of leth

on the operating table before

ad committed suicide, my famil

d suicide note and the meager ca

own daughter,"

rotting corpse, while my brother slit his own

ing and begging the heavens to let

ost, I watched their absolu

ed, but I knew one

we will be nothi

pte

ra

a moment's pause, a brief use of the restroom. As my slippers padded past a secluded, dimly lit fire stairwell

emia a fabrication. He was telling my weeping mother that the treatments were nothing more than slow-ac

through me, I had locked myself inside a bathroom stall and swallowed the lethal p

my limbs. I held my breath so shallowly that my own heart, kno

the IV line had not y

arted, the only sound was the frigid drip of fluid in the tube, a clin

most, their words from the stairwell

brother Mateo's

ne he used when he carried me to th

e forged of i

in order after this mock surgery," Mateo sai

sp followe

that

my moth

uietly. "Look at the state of her, how emaciated

gh that sounded more lik

oken by those traffickers. She can never survive the brutal politics of o

im-lit hallway, my b

a stone dropping in

to Elena, I will find the top Syndicate specialists to cure Clara," M

I have to," he added. "I will leave her two of my lu

t make sense to

thal. Supreme Do

ughter of a struggli

other, Rosa, took in laundry. My brother, Mateo

rboss standing on the other si

ing rush that my family

I was not dyi

cing a life of paralysis

mach suddenly flared, a sharp r

never to touch-a substance he kept locked away, claiming it was a dangerous chemical f

ought my treatments w

them too much to watch

I was already

room, her rubber shoes squeak

at me wit

minute so your family can give you a kiss before w

d not

ture of unshed tears and the b

wheels of my bed and pu

swung w

tantly dropped the

selves into masks of agoniz

y side, her eyes red

my hand, his fing

earful smile

eatures, inwardly apologizin

e dead before the surgeo

that I knew exactly