Page 72 of The Girlfriend Agreement (Conwick U #1)

My smile slips as I glance at the time on my phone.

Shit, it’s nearly midnight in Newport, which means it’s eleven o’clock in Guadalajara, which on a normal day might as well be three a.m. to my elderly grandmother.

Aside from not realizing just how late it is, I forgot all about daylight saving time and assumed I was still two hours ahead.

“Lo siento, abuelita. I didn’t even look at the time?—”

“Nonsense,” she interrupts before I can finish apologizing, say a hasty goodnight, and hang up.

“I will always answer your calls, no matter the time of day, mijo. But Xolo is looking at me as if to remind me that it’s our bedtime, so perhaps you could tell me what’s wrong so we can talk it out and this old lady can go to sleep? ”

I nod, even though she can’t see it, then dart out my tongue to wet my lips. “I just…well, what I wanted to ask…” I trail off, struggling to put the thought into words.

A beat of silence passes before my abuela asks, “What’s bothering you, mi amor? You know you can talk to me about anything.”

A shaky breath expels from my lungs. “I don’t know where to start,” I admit. “I feel like I’ve completely screwed everything up. Like…I had a chance to make a difference, to do something good with my life like abuelo did, and now, it’s just…” Gone.

Or close to it. At this point, it’s impossible to tell what my parents are thinking, or if they’ll allow me to take that seat at the table once these nine months are up.

“Did you get into another fight with your father?” my abuela asks.

“No,” I retort, then clear my throat, checking my tone.

“No, I haven’t. It’s just… I’ve been thinking about Hallazgo and everything abuelo built.

About how he wanted to help people, and he just…

made it happen. Looking at my own future”—I let out an exasperated breath at the thought—“I don’t know.

It just feels like the whole system was constructed to hurt the people who need it the most, and I don’t know how to fight that. How did abuelo manage to do it?”

My abuela’s lengthy pause is telling. “Oh, mijo,” she coos, and the sadness in her voice has alarm bells screaming in my head and red lights flashing behind my eyes.

“Your abuelo was a great man, but what you saw in him, and the stories and ideals he instilled in you when you were young, that was the dream. His dream, yes. But it wasn’t always the reality. ”

Goosebumps pimple my skin. “What do you mean? He always talked about wanting to make medicine accessible to the masses, and he did it. It wasn’t some unattainable dream. He made it happen.”

I was raised on stories about my abuelo—about how he grew up in near poverty, and built Hallazgo from nothing to become the conglomerate and major foothold in the health industry it is today.

It was always framed as the classic underdog story, an inspirational tale about a man with a passion for chemistry, who—after developing a breakthrough treatment early on in his career—realized the power he had to use science to change the world.

His goals were altruistic, his kindness and compassion were unparalleled, and though he didn’t believe in unearned handouts, he was always the first in line to donate to charity.

To offer help to those who needed it most. I know all that about him for certain—I saw it with my own eyes—and yet…

my abuela’s comment makes me wonder if there was more I didn’t see because I was too young, too afraid of shattering that image, to look beyond what was right in front of me.

If I was only seeing what I wanted to see instead of the truth.

If I idolized the grandfather I loved and the man he desired to be instead of who he actually was.

Her next words only compound that fear.

“It might not feel like that long ago to you, but you were still so young when he passed. You only ever saw the success. You didn’t see what it cost him.”

What it cost him? I shake my head, confused. My abuelo was an exuberant man, full of life, and energy, and ideas. And he turned those ideas into a reality using his brilliance and innovation. Our wealth and the dominance of Hallazgo in the global market are proof enough of that.

But if that’s true, then why is that voice of doubt that was only just pestering me about Blondie now whispering in my ear again, beckoning me to consider that, maybe, I’ve always had it all wrong?

I grew up with these stories about my abuelo, this incredible self-made man, but even I know wealth and opportunities don’t just appear from thin air, and as someone who came from nothing, it was unavoidable the poor chemist from Guadalajara had to make sacrifices, or pay some price, to reach the impressive heights he did.

As that understanding sinks into my skin, another unsettling thought takes shape.

What devils did he have to bargain with to create this life I’ve taken for granted?

What monsters did he have to sell his soul to?

A feeling of disquiet curdles in my stomach like spoiled milk, and I’m overwhelmed by the sudden urge to retch.

“I don’t…” I shudder at the sticky bead of sweat forming along my hairline and brow. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I force myself to choke out. “He only talked about the good, about what was possible if I worked hard enough. He always said we could change the world.”

“That’s because he wanted you to believe it,” my abuela insists, though her tone is gentle. “He wanted you to see the best of what he was trying to achieve while also shielding you from the ugliness of the truth.”

“The truth?” My heart is racing beneath my rib cage.

A few seconds tick by, marked by the call time on my phone screen as if taunting me. Finally, my abuela says, “How difficult it was to create anything good in a system designed to put profits ahead of people.”

“But he did,” I counter, clinging to that image of the man, the grandfather, I revered as a child. “He built Hallazgo on his own, and turned it into something huge. He found a way to beat the system.”

Didn’t he?

The silence that follows is deafening. I can hear the crinkle of the static between us in the dragging moments it takes my abuela to speak.

“No, mijo.” There’s a heaviness to her voice now. “He didn’t beat it. He survived it.”

Her words hit me like a blow to the chest. I’d always imagined my abuelo as a man who commanded respect, who bent the whole world to his will. The idea that he’d been forced to bow to it instead…it doesn’t sit right with me. It doesn’t sit right at all.

“When your abuelo came to this country, he had hopes and dreams, as so many do. And he thought, with perseverance, and with the right people behind him, he would have the reach and means to create medications that everyone—regardless of income bracket—would be able to afford. He thought others would share his ideals. That science and the desire to do some good in this world would be enough to sway them.”

“Let me guess,” I deadpan. “It wasn’t.”

“No,” she says sadly. “It wasn’t. The insurance companies, the industry regulators, the investors—all of them wanted to make money first and help people second.

Your abuelo’s biggest struggle wasn’t in the lab; that part was always easy for him.

The real hurdle was convincing everyone else with a hand in the pie to take a chance on his ideas.

Every formula, every breakthrough—he had to fight to get them funded, to get them approved, to get them into the hands of the patients who needed that medication.

And each step of the way, there were compromises. ”

That horrible sour feeling in my stomach rises in my esophagus until I taste bile in my mouth. I try to spit out the bitter tang, but what escapes instead are accusatory, venom-laced words. “So, he sold out,” I growl as that pedestal I put my abuelo on seems to crumble before me.

“It’s not that simple,” my abuela protests at the clear vitriol in my voice.

“Your abuelo never once abandoned his ideals, but he also knew he couldn’t create what he did on his own.

He didn’t come from wealth—you know this.

His funds were not unlimited. So, he had to find a way to work with the system, not against it.

The success of the company had to come first. He hated it, but if he didn’t play by the rules, there would have been no Hallazgo.

No way to distribute the medicine he was creating, least of all to the people who needed it.

Do you think he wanted to see his drugs priced so high that only the wealthy could afford them?

Do you think he wanted to partner with predatory insurance companies?

Of course not. But without them, the people who needed his drugs the most—the ones who couldn’t afford to pay out of pocket—would never have been able to access them at all.

And without the funding, without the patents and approvals, there wouldn’t have been any medication to sell.

He didn’t have a choice, Damian. All he could hope was that, someday, whether under his leadership or your father’s…

or even yours,” she adds after a meaningful pause, “that maybe, someday, things would be different.”