Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 80139 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 401(@200wpm)___ 321(@250wpm)___ 267(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80139 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 401(@200wpm)___ 321(@250wpm)___ 267(@300wpm)
Robin leans back slightly. “So we go to the embassy. I contact my brothers. Then home.”
“Yes.”
“And what about you?”
“What do you mean?” I ask, though I know exactly what she means.
She draws her brows together. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Pretend you’re stupid. You’re not.”
Despite myself, I smile. “Thank you.”
“It wasn’t entirely a compliment.”
“It was enough of one.”
“Cruz.”
I swallow.
“What happens to you after I get to the embassy?” she asks.
I’ve tried to avoid that thought. She’s been my priority. “I’ll figure it out.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I have.”
I wish I could tell her something, but the truth is ugly.
I don’t know where I’ll go.
Not back to Vega.
Not to the police. Not here. Vega has most of the cops on his payroll.
Not to the prison life I survived once already.
To the US, maybe?
Robin’s world. Her family’s wealth. Her brothers with money enough to move mountains and lawyers enough to make problems disappear.
That’s a dangerous hope. Why would she offer to take me with her? I fucking abducted her, for God’s sake.
But maybe she’ll look at me and see more than that. Maybe she’ll see the man who has nowhere to go because he chose her life over the only one he knew.
“Cruz…”
“No matter what happens,” I say firmly, “I’ll figure out what to do.”
“But I—”
“What matters most right now,” I continue, rising from the chair, “is getting you to safety.”
I cross the room and crouch in front of the sofa so my face is level with hers. I tell myself not to touch her.
I touch her anyway.
I cup her cheeks gently. Her skin is warm beneath my palms. Soft. Too soft for the things she has endured.
Her eyes widen, but she doesn’t pull away.
“That’s my only concern right now,” I say. “Getting you safe. Once you are, I’ll figure out my own next move.”
Her lips part.
I should take my hands away.
I don’t.
“When I get back…” she finally says.
I frown slightly. “What?”
“When I get back to safety,” she says. “I’ll figure out a way to bring you to the States.”
My hands tighten slightly on her face before I catch myself.
“Robin—”
She holds up a hand. “No. I mean it. You can’t go back to Vega, and you can’t stay here without endangering everyone, so we’ll figure something out.”
“We?”
“Yes. We.”
I swallow. We. That word from her mouth is more beautiful than the sweetest song.
“My family has resources. Lawyers. Connections. I don’t know exactly how it would work, but there must be a way.”
“It may not be simple.”
“Nothing in my life is simple right now.” She covers my hands—still on her cheeks—with her own. “We can figure out something similar to what Vinnie did for Daniela. He married her to get her out of Colombia.”
My jaw drops.
Actually drops.
For several seconds, I can’t speak.
Robin’s eyes go huge.
“Not like that,” she says. “A marriage of convenience. For immigration purposes. Or legal purposes. Or whatever purposes apply. I’m not an expert.”
I stare at her.
Her cheeks color. “You can close your mouth now.”
I bring my lips together.
This is serious. Dangerous. Absurd.
But Robin Bellamy just turned pink while suggesting we might get married, and some reckless part of me wants to believe it might mean more.
I let my hands fall from her face because if I keep touching her, I’ll say something to ruin everything.
“A marriage of convenience,” I say.
“Exactly.”
“You’re offering to marry a man you have known for forty-eight hours. A man who took you and brought you to Colombia.” I run my hand down my face. “I’m a goddamned criminal, Robin.”
She opens her mouth.
Closes it.
Then frowns.
She looks toward the window. “It does sound insane.”
“A little,” I agree.
Insane doesn’t begin to cover it.
In forty-eight hours, Robin Bellamy has ruined me.
No.
Not ruined.
Changed.
My entire life has flipped upside down in two days. The man I was before I drugged her and took her from Adriana’s house. That man knew where he belonged, even if belonging there had made him sick. That man understood orders. Loyalty. Survival. Silence.
This man?
This man is crouched on the floor in a faded yellow sitting room, imagining a future in a country that may not want him, beside a woman who should never trust him, because she just offered him a way out before he could bring himself to ask.
All because of her.
All because Robin looked at me with fire in her eyes and made it impossible to keep pretending I was only following orders.
She folds her hands in her lap. “I’m just saying,” she says, “that once I’m safe, I won’t abandon you.”
I look down at the floorboards between us.
When I was a boy, I used to sit in this room while Mamá talked with Señora V after breakfast. I would pretend to read, but mostly I listened. Women’s voices. Their laughter. Their warnings. Their stories about men who promised the world and took more than they gave.