Sample Chapter of Primogénito: The Fuentes Legacy

Chapter 1

Jenn watched as the car wound its way up the tree-lined street. It was a powder blue VW Beetle, a classic, not one of the newer versions. Jenn already knew it was a 1979 model. She also knew who was behind the wheel long before it came close enough for her to see through the windows. She had only ever known one person who drove a car like that, and it was a person she had hoped never to see again. 

The problem was not that she didn’t like Ashley. They had been best friends in high school and even college roommates for a little while, but a lot had happened since those carefree days, and Damian had borne the worst of it. Jenn did not relish the thought of Ashley coming and stirring all of that up again, not after they had worked so hard to put their lives back together.

The gravel crunched under the wheels as the little Beetle came to a stop a few yards from the house. Jenn came down from the porch to meet her friend, if that word could even still be used to describe what they were after everything they had been through. Though the four of them, Jenn, Damian, Ashley, and Nick, would be forever held together in the bond created by their shared past, Jenn wasn’t sure if there was a word that could adequately describe that bond. 

Ashley stepped from the car, her golden curls reflecting the afternoon sun and her body as perfect as ever. She smiled when she saw Jenn, but there was a look in her eyes that betrayed some less pleasant emotion. Jenn suspected that the cause of this barely masked distress was the thing that had brought Ashley here today. She was sure did not want to know what it was.

“Hi, Jenn,” Ashley said, and the tone of her voice carried the weight of a lifetime of shared experiences.

“Hi.” Jenn returned Ashley’s smile, but there was no warmth in it.

Ashley glanced around. “Wow, you’ve really got a beautiful place here.”

“Thanks. We like it. It’s been good for my business.”

“I can imagine. It’s a photographer’s paradise.” She paused a moment before continuing.  “Jenn, how is he?”

“He’s good, Ash. He’s really good.”

“Really?” 

Jenn could not blame her friend for the incredulity in her voice. Ashley had not seen Damian in five years. The last time the four of them were all together had been in the immediate wake of the most harrowing experience of their lives. Damian had been broken then, both physically and emotionally. Jenn still felt a stab of jealousy when she remembered that he had chosen Ashley as his confidante at the time. It made sense. Ashley had been there when it happened, but Jenn could never quite get over the fact that it had been another woman who had helped him through those first few weeks. Not that it mattered now. Jenn was the one who had stayed with him in the months—years, even—in which the real healing had taken place. Jenn was the one who shared his life now that he was whole again. Ashley was one of those ghosts from their past that they had tried to forget. But now here she was, all the way down from Asheville for who knew what reason, and Jenn dreaded the resurgence of those dormant ghosts. 

“Ash, what are you doing here?”

“I need to see him, Jenn.”

“Why?”

“I need to ask him some things.”

“About what?”

“You know what.”

Jenn nodded. She did know what. This had to do with the secrets the Fuentes family had guarded down through the centuries. The secrets from which Aureliano Fuentes, called Leo by everyone outside the family, had tried in vain to protect his son. But secrets do not remain buried forever, and Damian had been the one to pay the price for his father’s actions. 

“Ash, we’ve tried really hard to move past all that.”

“I know. Believe me, I know. I wouldn’t have come if it wasn’t important.”

“What’s going on?”

“Look, Jenn, I really don’t want to get into it.”

Jenn attempted to push down the anger that threatened to bubble up inside her, but was unsuccessful. “You don’t want to get into it?” She was trying to control the tone of her voice. She didn’t want to fight with Ashley, but she couldn’t believe the woman’s audacity in coming all the way down to Savannah to dredge up old business that had long been ended. “What about Damian? Do you think he wants to get into it?”

“I think if he knows what’s happened he’ll want to.”

“But you won’t tell me?”

“I only want to explain it once, and Damian is the one who can help me.”

There it was. Jenn’s biggest fear. That something would come along and pull Damian back into all that hell. It was the curse that had followed him all his life. His father had tried to hide from it, but it had caught up with him. Now Damian and Jenn had moved away and started their lives from scratch in an attempt to feel normal again. That was Damian’s one wish, to be normal, but he and Jenn both knew he was not normal. He was a Fuentes, descended from Galeno Fuentes who had been a part of the De Soto expedition of 1539. But exploring the New World had not been Galeno’s primary motivation for coming to America, and the things he had done after his arrival haunted the family to this day. Perhaps they were kidding themselves to think there was an escape. 

“Damian’s out on the boat with a friend right now,” Jenn said.

Now the smile on Ashley’s face contained genuine mirth.  “Seriously?” she said with a trace of a giggle. “You two have a boat?”

“This is the islands, Ash. Everybody has a boat.”

Damian and Jenn lived on Whitemarsh Island, one of a number of barrier islands near Savannah, Georgia. The island had no beach, for that you had to go a few more miles down the road to Tybee, but it boasted no shortage of waterfront and marsh view properties. The houses right on the water were generally known to be some of the most expensive in the area, but Damian and Jenn had managed to find a fixer upper and save a few dollars that way. They had spent the past three years gradually repairing the old house until now it looked almost new. The boat had come with the property. The previous owner had moved inland and would have no more use for it. Damian and Jenn found it amusing that the boat had been in better shape than the house when they had first moved in. 

“Do you know when he’ll be back?” Ashley asked.

“No, I don’t. He and Jack go out just about every Saturday. You know, drinking beer and talking about football. Guy stuff. They pretend to fish, but never bring back much, and they usually spend the whole afternoon on the water, so I don’t worry about them unless they’re not back before dark.”

“Do you mind if I hang around until he gets here? Maybe we could have a glass of wine and watch a chick flick, like the old days.”

Jenn wanted Ashley to go away, but she could not deny that part of her had missed her friend these past five years. An afternoon hanging out and doing girly stuff might be nice. And maybe she was overreacting about Damian. He often proved himself stronger than people realized.

“Come on in,” she said, “and I’ll open a bottle. But only if you tell me why you’re here.”

Ashley hesitated. “It’s Nick,” she finally said. “There’s something wrong with him. I don’t know what it is, but I think Damian can help me figure it out.”