Sweet Revenge, bitter Soil

**Chapter 10: The Broken Blade**

The rain that had been threatening from the bruised clouds all afternoon finally fell, but it brought no relief. It descended in fat, lukewarm drops that did not cleanse the air; instead, it turned the fine volcanic ash drifting from the mill into a thick, slick paste that coated the sugarcane leaves and made the clay soil of Sector 12 treacherously slippery.

Anza stood in the center of the downpour, her hand still resting on the handle of the machete she had driven into the earth. The downpour washed the dark soot from her face in erratic, muddy streaks, revealing the deathly pale skin beneath her sun-baked complexion. Her breath came in shallow, rattling gasps. Her heart hammered against her ribs like a trapped bird trying to break through bone.

She had hit the double quota. She had saved Mang Tolits from the municipal jail for one more day. But the price had been extracted from her very marrow.

"Get up, Cruz! The shift isn't over until the final hauling truck is loaded!"

Gardo’s voice boomed through the curtain of rain. He stood at the edge of the perimeter path, sheltered beneath a heavy plastic tarp held by two of his sub-caporals. He pointed a thick, muddy finger toward a massive, iron-sided hauling truck parked on the embankment. The back of the truck was already piled high with thousands of pounds of raw cane, but a final mountain of severed stalks still lay scattered across the mud, waiting to be loaded by hand.

"The cutting crews do not load the trucks, Gardo," Anza said, her voice dropping to a raw, ragged whisper that was nearly swallowed by the sound of the rain. She forced her shaking legs to straighten, pulling her blade from the mud with a wet, sucking sound. "That is the job of the *cargadores*."

"The *cargadores* have been reassigned to Sector 3," Gardo sneered, stepping closer to the edge of the path, his face twisting into a hideous, triumphant grin. He knew Doña Amalia was still watching from the luxury sedan parked on the main road. "You want to clear your old man's debt? You load your own harvest. If those stalks aren't in the back of that truck by the time the gears move, I’ll mark your entire day's labor as a forfeit."

The surrounding workers watched in horrified silence. To lift and carry bundles of raw sugarcane—each weighing up to fifty kilos—across a slick, mud-slicked embankment after eight hours of continuous cutting was an impossible, sadistic demand. It was an explicit attempt to break her spine.

"Anza, don't..." one of the elderly women from the barracks whispered from the shadows of the cane rows, tears mixing with the rain on her wrinkled face. "Your hands... you'll tear your muscles apart."

Anza didn't answer. She looked down at her hands. The skin of her palms was completely shredded, the raw meat of her flesh exposed and bleeding a faint, watery pink under the rain.

She let out a long, ragged breath, her gray-green eyes flashing with a final, desperate spark of survival. She dropped her *espading* into the mud. She walked toward the nearest pile of cane, bent her knees, and wrapped her raw arms around a massive, heavy bundle of stalks.

With a guttural cry of pure pain and defiance, she lifted it.

The rough, coarse husks of the cane bit directly into the open wounds of her hands, the sharp fibers tearing deeper into her flesh. Her muscles screamed in protest, a blinding flash of white-hot agony radiating up her spine and behind her eyes. She took one step toward the truck. Then another. Her rubber slippers slipped in the slick clay, but she forced her body forward through sheer, unadulterated willpower.

*Thud.*

She threw the first bundle into the back of the iron truck.

She turned back around, her vision blurring, the horizon tilting dangerously. She reached for the second bundle. She lifted it. She carried it.

*Thud.*

By the fifth bundle, her body began to fail. Her breathing turned into a high-pitched, agonizing wheeze. The rain grew heavier, blinding her, filling her mouth with the taste of mud and ash. She reached for a sixth bundle—a massive, water-logged cluster of cane that weighed nearly sixty kilos. She managed to haul it up to her chest, her arms trembling so violently the stalks rattled against each other.

She made it halfway up the wooden loading ramp of the truck when her right slipper lost its grip on the mud-slicked wood.

Anza’s knee buckled with a horrific, sickening snap.

The heavy bundle of sugarcane crashed down directly onto her chest, pinning her down as her body slid backward off the ramp, her small frame collapsing heavily into the black, jagged limestone mud below.

A collective scream of horror erupted from the barracks workers as they rushed forward, but Gardo's security guards instantly raised their tactical shotguns, their barrels glinting coldly in the gray rain. "Stay back!" Gardo barked. "Anyone who touches her is fired on the spot!"

Anza lay in the mud, the crushing weight of the cane leaves pressing her down. She tried to move her legs, but a sharp, paralyzing agony shot through her right knee, pinning her to the earth. She could feel the cold mud filling her ears, could feel her consciousness fraying at the edges like burnt paper. She was slipping into the dark.

Then, the sound of the rain was shattered by the violent, roaring screech of heavy tires spinning in the mud.

A pristine, midnight-black luxury SUV tore down the perimeter road, completely ignoring the estate speed limits. It skidded sideways, its heavy frame slamming to a halt mere inches from Gardo’s position, throwing a massive wave of black mud over the overseer's plastic tarp.

The door flew open before the vehicle had even fully stopped.

**Alejandro Valenciano** stepped into the downpour.

He wasn't wearing his standard tailored jackets or his pristine linen shirts. His hair was completely soaked, plastered against his forehead, and his white silk shirt was translucent against his skin from the rain. His face was no longer that of a calculating, aristocratic businessman; it was the face of a man who had completely, utterly crossed the threshold into absolute, unhinged madness.

He didn't look at Gardo. He didn't look at his mother’s sedan parked in the distance. His dark eyes locked onto Anza’s broken, mud-covered form lying in the dirt.

"Señorito Alejandro—" Gardo began, his voice instantly losing its venom as he took a terrified step backward.

Alejandro didn't let him finish. With a movement so fast and violent it looked animalistic, his right fist flew forward. *Crack.* The heavy, solid force of his knuckles connected directly with Gardo’s jaw, sending the thick-necked overseer crashing backward into the mud, his toothpick spitting out along with two shattered teeth.

"Touch her again, and I will bury you under this field myself," Alejandro whispered, his voice a low, vibrating growl of pure, murderous intent that made the shotgun-wielding guards instantly drop their weapons to the ground in terror.

Alejandro turned and strode through the mud, completely indifferent to the way the black slime ruined his expensive leather clothing. He dropped to his knees right in the filth beside Anza.

With trembling, frantic hands, he threw the heavy stalks of sugarcane off her chest, tossing them aside as if they weighed nothing. He slid his long, powerful arms beneath her small, broken body, gently lifting her from the black earth.

Anza’s head fell back against his shoulder, her long, wet hair draping over his arm. She forced her heavy, swollen eyelids open, her striking gray-green eyes cloudy, looking up at his handsome, terrifying face through the haze of her fading consciousness.

"Let... let me go..." she whispered, her voice a dying ember, her raw, bloody hand weakly pressing against his chest to push him away. "I... I hit the quota... let me go..."

"Never," Alejandro murmured, his voice cracking with a terrifying, feverish emotion as he tightened his grip around her, pulling her close against his chest until her mud and blood stained his white silk shirt. He stood up, carrying her effortlessly against the downpour, his dark eyes boring into hers with a possessive, eternal finality.

"The fields are finished with you, Anza," Alejandro whispered into the rain as he carried her toward his vehicle, leaving the blackened earth of Sector 12 behind them. "You wanted to die out here for your pride. But I am your master now. And I will keep you alive, even if I have to chain you to my side for the rest of your days."