of the towering royal palm trees filled the air as the firm trunks seemed gathered around the small farming property to offer privacy.
The three-bedroom villa with its one lone bathroom and barely an acre of land was modest in comparison with his beachfront estate, but it was here among his cousins, with the night pulsing with the sounds of music and laughter, that he felt warmth and comfort.
Mi familia.
He came to a stop, just barely shaded by the darkness, and looked at his petite, dark-haired mother whose brown complexion hinted at the history of a large majority of Dominicans having African ancestry due to the slave trade of the early 1700s. She stood before a rustic wood-fired oven, stirring the ingredients in a cast-iron pot as she moved her hips and shoulders in sync to the music. He chuckled as she sang along with Cardi B’s part of the song and raised the large wooden spoon she held in the air.
Everyone cheered and clapped when she tackled the rap part, as well.
Esmerelda Diaz was his mother and everyone’s beloved. Although only forty-nine, she was the last of the Diaz elders. The baby girl who grew up to lead their descendants.
His mother turned and spotted him standing there. Her dark, doe-shaped eyes lit up as if she didn’t have her own suite on his estate and had not fixed him pescado con coco for lunch. His stomach grumbled at the thought of the snapper fish cooked in coconut sauce.
“Chance!” she exclaimed, waving him over. “Mira. Mira. Mira.”
The nine members of his extended family all looked over to him and waved as they greeted him. His cousin Carlos, a rotund, strong man in his late twenties, came over to press an ice-cold green bottle of Presidente beer in his hand as he slapped him soundly on the back in greeting.
This was the home of Carlos, his wife and four small children. He owned and operated farmlands of just three acres only a few hundred yards from the villa and was proud of his work, like many other Dominican farmers, providing locally grown fruits and vegetables and taking care of his family. Chance respected his cousin’s hard work ethic and enjoyed plenty of his harvest during his time in the country. In kind, he knew his family respected him for the success he had made of his life back in the Estados Unidos.
“Tough day?” Chance asked.
Carlos shrugged one shoulder. “Same as always. And you, primo?” he asked with a playful side-eye and a chuckle before he took a swig of his own beer.
Chance laughed. His days of finance work and the development of his app had never been physically hard, and now that he just served as a consultant to the firm that’d purchased his app, the majority of his time was spent maintaining his toned physique and enjoying the fruits of his labor. Life was good, with his private jet, his estate in Cabrera and his permanent one in Alpine, New Jersey, and the ability to do whatever he wanted, whenever he chose. And during this time of his life, he chose to travel, enjoy fine food and wine, and spare himself nothing.
His days of struggling were over. As were his days of feeling less than for having less than.
“Excuse me, I’m starving,” he said, moving past his younger cousin to reach his mother.
She smiled up at him before turning her attention back to stirring the pot.
“Sancocho de mariscos,” he said in pleasure at the sight of the shellfish stew rich with shrimp, lobster, scallops, garlic, plantains, pumpkin and potatoes.
“Sí,” Esmerelda said, tapping the spoon on the edge of the pot before setting it atop a folded towel on the wooden table next to the stove.
Living in a town directly off the Atlantic Ocean had its privileges. Although Chance was no stranger to traditional Dominican cooking. On her rare days off, his mother would go shopping and spend the day cooking and then freezing meals for him to enjoy while she was at work.
“Como estas?” she asked in rapid Spanish as she reached up to lightly tap the bottom of his chin with her fingertips.
“I’m fine,” he assured her.
She shrugged one shoulder and slightly turned her lips downward as she tilted her head to the side. Translation? She didn’t agree with him, but so be it.
The radio began to blare “Borracho de Amor” by Jose Manuel Calderon, and Chance was thankful. His mother gave a little yelp of pleasure and clapped rapidly at the sound of one of her favorite songs from the past before she grabbed the hand of her nephew Victor and began dancing the traditional bachata.
Chance took a seat at a wooden table and placed his beer on it as he watched his mother, alive and happy among her culture and her family. But as everyone focused on their dance, his attention was on the words of the song. As was common with traditional bachata music that was about heartache, pain and betrayal, it was a song of a man who turned to drinking after the heartache and pain caused by a woman’s scorn. It was said that the tortured emotions displayed in the song fueled bachata dancers to release those emotions through dance.
Chance knew about heartache all too well.
His gut tightened into a knot at the memory of his former fiancée, Helena Guzman, running off with her lover and leaving him at the altar. In the beautiful blond-haired Afro-Cuban attorney he’d thought he found the one woman to spend his life with. She’d even agreed to give up her career as a successful attorney to travel the world with him.
But he’d been wrong. And made a fool of.
His anger at her was just beginning to thaw. His mother referred to her only as “Ese Rubio Diablo.” The blond devil.
Cabrera had helped him to heal.
But now I’m headed home.
This celebration was his family’s farewell to both him and his mother.
The daughter of his best friend since their days at Dalton, Alek Ansah, and his wife, Alessandra, had been born and he’d been appointed her godfather. He’d yet to see her in person; photos and FaceTime had sufficed, but now it was time to press kisses to the cheek of his godchild and do his duty at her upcoming baptism.
In the morning they would board his private plane and fly back to the States. She would return to the house he purchased for her in New Jersey, and he would be back at his estate in a house he’d foolishly thought he would share with his wife and their family one day.
Chance looked over into the shadowed trunks of the trees that surrounded the property as his thoughts went back to the day he was supposed to wed the woman he loved...
“I’m sorry, Chance, but I can’t marry you,” Helena said, standing before him in her custom wedding dress and veil as they stood in the vestibule of the church.
For a moment, Chance just eyed her. His emotions raced one behind the other quickly, almost colliding, like dominoes set up to fall. Confusion. Fear. Pain.
“I am in love with someone else,” she said, her eyes filled with her regret.
Anger.
Visions of her loving and being loved by another man burned him to his core like a branding. The anger spread across his body slowly, seeming to infuse every bit of him as the truth of her betrayal set in.
“How could you do this, Helena?” he asked, turning from her with a slash of his hand through the air, before immediately turning back with his blazing fury.
And his hurt.
That infuriated him further.
“How long?” he asked, his voice stiff.
“Chance,” Helena said.
“Who is he?”
She held up her hands. “That is irrelevant,”