Free Close Protection by Riley Morgan Page A

We’re going to Cuba.”
                  Ramon pretended to be surprised.
                  “What’s wrong with Cuba, I’ve always wanted to go.”
                  “I’ve been before, and it was awful. ”
                  She wasn’t exaggerating. Ramon asked her to tell him the story of her last trip to Cuba, just five years before. After some measure of pestering, she agreed.
                  They had gone as a family, Zeus, the boys and two of their friends, along with Lena and one of hers. She wasn’t really Lena’s friend, she explained. Lena hadn’t wanted to bring anybody on the trip, but the stepbrothers insisted. She ended up inviting a girl from her class who she was friendly with, which wasn’t the same as a friend.
                  The trip had started off well enough. They flew into Havana and had lunch in an amazing little cafe. The city was alive in a way that put even Miami to shame, with handsome men in old American cars and beautiful women in flowing dresses. There was color everywhere and the smell of slow cooked food and pungent tobacco gave everything a magical scent that she remembers to this day.
    They had a house right on the water with beautiful views of rolling green hills and the Havana skyline in the distance. The house was beautiful, even to Lena’s high tastes, and the beach was, in her words, completely spectacular. As soon as they had put their things away, Lena ran out to the beach and into the water. The children played in the water for hours, until Lena had an unfortunate tangle with a jellyfish.
                  She spent the rest of the afternoon in agonizing pain in a hospital waiting room. Zeus was furious the whole time, not because his step-daughter wasn’t receiving care, but because he was spending his vacation surrounded by the sick and lame. The other children stayed at the house and played, and when Lena returned late that night, her guest had become fast friends with the stepbrothers, and she hardly saw her for the rest of the weeklong trip.
                  To make matters worse, Lena had contracted quite the sunburn in her one day on the water, so she sat in the house, alone, sick and shivering and in an excruciating amount of pain. And while the house was nice, it lacked anything that might pass as entertaining to a teenager. The closest thing to it was an old transistor radio that picked up three local stations. None of them were in English and only one played music with any regularity. So Lena listened to people she didn’t know talk infinitely in a language that she didn’t understand, just so that she’d feel like she wasn’t completely alone.
                  “It was a lot like right now, with the glass,” she said. “Except that I didn’t have you to keep me company.”
                  “That sounds awful,” Ramon said. “I’m sure you’ll have a better trip this time.”
                  “Don’t you mean ‘we’ll’ have a better trip?”
                  It was too late. Ramon could not lie to her, not in a way that Lena would believe.
                  “You aren’t coming?” Lena shouted. “Why not.”
                  “I don’t know,” Ramon said. He did not even begin to suggest that he would not be seeing Lena after she returned. If she returned. “And please, don’t tell your father about it, you weren’t supposed to know.”
                  “What, was it supposed to be a surprise? I get on the fucking plane and you jump out of the security at the last minute shouting ‘bon fucking voyage’?”
                  Ramon sighed. Lena was outraged.
                  She calmed down a little when Ramon promised to talk to Zeus about it. He would make the case that it was in the best interest of her security. It would do no good to have