We were first introduced to Emilio in Who Is Erin Carter? when Erin found him sleeping in his car and told him to go to her house and have some coffee with Jordi. Emilio and Jordi were the best of friends, and both families were very close to each other. Emilio’s life had become a mess, and he just couldn’t deal with the fact that his wife was no longer living with him. Every relationship has its own challenges, but Emilio was an optimist, and he believed that he wouldn’t ever reach a stage where things would become so bad that they would no longer be able to live together. He loved his wife and could do anything to change what she had felt in those moments when she took the decision to not live with him, but now that the boat had sailed and Emilio didn’t know what he should do.
Emilio was sleeping in his car because the empty house haunted him, and he did not have the courage to accept the reality. Emilio had started drinking quite often, and Jordi and Erin Carter were worried for him. Though they never explicitly told him anything, they knew that he needed them, and they made sure that they were always there for him. A lot of times, when a person is going through some personal tragedy, instead of dealing with it, they immerse themselves in so much work that they do not have any time to think about anything else. That is what Emilio was doing, and he was ready to take risks and do anything to get to his goal. Emilio was after a big-shot lawyer named Benecio Agustin for quite some time, but he was not able to get the breakthrough that he was desperate for.
Benecio Agustin had close ties with a lot of smugglers and gang leaders operating in the area, and a lot of times, his law firm was used by the cartel to launder money. Emilio knew that if somehow he was able to tap Benecio Agustin’s computer, he would get some incriminating evidence that he could use to expose the criminal gang. Emilio knew that he couldn’t do it himself, and so he was on the lookout for some person who, as he puts it, “could handle themselves” and would be ready to grant him that favor. Just around the same time, Erin Carter’s supermarket incident had happened, and Emilio, by chance, got to witness the CCTV camera footage of that day.
Emilio was spellbound to see how Erin Carter had tackled the robbers, and had she not been his neighbor, he would have definitely believed that she was a part of some intelligence agency and a highly trained soldier. Emilio had something on his mind, but he was not able to find the courage to approach Erin and ask her to help him. When the supermarket incident happened, very weirdly, Emilio went to Erin’s school and told her that he had her back and that she would sail through the interrogation as he would make sure that his superiors knew that she was innocent and that she had a clean background. Now, it was very surprising for Erin that, in the middle of the day, Emilio had come to her school just to tell her that he had got her back no matter what.
Erin Carter found it very strange, as anyone would, but she didn’t say anything to Emilio at that time because somewhere, she thought that the guy might have only bona fide intentions. Erin had no clue that Emilio was doing it so that he could ask Erin to help him. Emilio had no clue how to initiate the conversation, but one day, he just went to Erin and told her that he was involved with very bad people, and he needed her help to come out of it. Erin had organized a barbecue party at her place, and Emilio, seizing the opportunity and finding Erin alone, went to the kitchen and told her that the covert task for which he wanted her help had to be executed the day after. Erin asked him who he believed her to be and why he was asking for help, as she got a bit skeptical if Emilio had come to know about her past. But Emilio knew nothing about her past, and his judgment was based on just the video that he had seen from the supermarket. Erin did end up helping Emilio, and she risked her life to make sure that she installed the spyware in the lawyer’s house.
Emilio was treading on thin ice, and Erin Carter had warned him not to take such risks. Probably, it was his messed-up personal life that irked him enough to test his limits, take the risk, and go to find some evidence in the den of the criminal gang he was investigating. But the criminals got the better of him as he had gone there without any sort of backup. Once Daniel Lang took Emilio into his custody, the latter knew that he was not going to come out of it alive. We saw a very different side of Daniel Lang that night when he brutally assaulted Emilio and told him that that was all his doing, and had he not tried to investigate and dig out information, he would have lived a happy life.
Erin Carter reached there, and she saw Daniel and his men brutally beating the police officer. Daniel asked Emilio to tell him who that woman was whom he had sent to the lawyer’s house, but Emilio didn’t open his mouth. Daniel time and again told him that if he gave him the name, he would spare his life, but Emilio was quiet, and he walked towards his doom out of his will. We came to know something about Emilio that day: he was a good human being and a great friend to have. That man, out of greed for staying alive, could have given Erin’s name, but he didn’t, even when he knew that it would get him killed. Emilio looked into the eyes of death, smiled, and embraced his own fate. Erin Carter screamed from the stands when she saw Emilio getting stabbed to death, but she knew it was too late. Erin did take revenge for Emilio’s death when she killed Daniel Lang later in Who Is Erin Carter?, but she and Jordi would always feel the void that the man left in their lives.
