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)
Esmeralda lets out a sob.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and his voice is no longer hard. “I am so sorry.”
The apology is useless. They both know it.
But Esmeralda nods anyway. What else is there to do?
“You’re in danger if you stay,” he continues. “They’re not after you. After tonight, after tomorrow, you may have to start looking for work somewhere else. Or try to contact Señora V’s next of kin and find out who owns the house now.”
“This is the only life I’ve known,” she whispers.
I step closer.
She looks so small suddenly. She didn’t look small in the kitchen. She looked glamorous. Warm. A woman who knew how to fill a room with laughter and sensuality and the kind of comfort that made even danger feel, for a few seconds, like it could wait outside.
“I don’t know what I’ll do,” she says. “I don’t know how to be anything else.”
“Yes, you do.” I take her hands. “You’re charming. You’re kind. You’re smart. You know how to read people, how to make them comfortable, how to survive. Do you have any idea how valuable that is?”
Her mouth trembles.
“And you’re beautiful,” I add. “Which isn’t everything, but let’s not pretend it hurts.”
A wet laugh breaks through her tears.
“You can find work in any line,” I say. “Hospitality. Sales. Beauty. Clothes. Anything that involves people, you can do.”
“I’m too old to start over.”
“You’re not.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know enough.” I take her hand. “Once I’m back in America, I’ll wire you more money.”
Her brows draw together. “What?”
“As thanks for your kindness. Yours, Mercedes’s, everyone’s. Enough to give you time. Enough to help you figure out what comes next.”
Cruz turns his head toward me.
I feel his gaze, but I don’t look at him.
“I mean it,” I say.
Esmeralda shakes her head. “You don’t have to—”
“I know I don’t.”
“You barely know us.”
“You hid in an armoire with me. Señora Valentina opened her home to me. You fed me. You made me laugh for five seconds when I didn’t think that was possible anymore.” My throat tightens. “I’m so sorry for what happened. I can’t undo it. But I can try to make something right.”
Esmeralda’s face crumples again, and this time she steps into me.
I hug her.
And it feels right.
I don’t know this woman.
Not really.
But we’ve been through trauma together, and I’ll never forget her.
Esmeralda pulls back and wipes her face with both hands. “Thank you,” she whispers.
“Get everyone,” Cruz says.
She nods.
Then she turns and rushes down the hall, calling Mercedes’s name first and then others.
Cruz stands very still beside me, flexing his bloody hands at his sides.
I finally look at him fully.
Really look.
A bruise is already forming near his jaw. His throat is marked where Zabala must have grabbed him. His shirt is torn near the collar, and one sleeve is dark with blood.
He looks like a man standing in the wreckage of the only home he ever had.
My heart aches.
“You’re hurt,” I say.
“Not badly.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know.”
“Cruz—”
“We have to move.”
He looks down the hall where Esmeralda has disappeared and then back at me. His eyes are hard now, not with anger but with urgency.
“I need to get you to the car,” he says. “We leave now.”
“The embassy?”
“Yes.” He reaches for my hand.
Part of me wants to let him pull me down the stairs, past whatever horror waits in the foyer, out to the car, onto the road, toward the embassy, toward phones and brothers and lawyers and safety.
But safety without truth is just another locked room.
I look at his hand.
Then at his face.
And I shake my head.
His eyes narrow. “Robin.”
“We need to finish our conversation first.”
34
CRUZ
For one full second, I think I misheard her.
I must have.
Robin Bellamy can’t possibly be standing in the hallway of a brothel with blood on the floor downstairs, terrified women rushing past us, Zabala dead on the porch, Señora Valentina dead in the foyer, and Vega’s men likely already being dispatched to finish what Zabala started, telling me we need to continue our conversation.
But she is.
She stands there in that too-large robe with her chin lifted, hair falling around her face, eyes too bright, mouth too firm, and she looks at me like she’s not being completely unreasonable.
“You were about to tell me why Vega wanted that body,” she says.
I stare at her. “Robin.”
“No.”
“Do you understand what’s happening?”
“Yes.”
“No,” I say, stepping closer, keeping my voice low so the women hurrying down the hall don’t hear the panic rising in it. “I don’t think you do.”
“I understand perfectly.”
“We have maybe an hour,” I say. “Maybe less before Vega’s goons descend on this house and burn it to the goddamned ground.”
Her face tightens.
Good.
Let the truth be ugly enough to move her.
“We can’t stand here and talk,” I continue. “We need to leave. Now.”
“I realize that.”
“Then move.”
“No.”
Mercedes rushes past us with a small suitcase in one hand and a pair of shoes in the other. Her eyes are red, but she’s not crying. Esmeralda is behind her, ushering two younger women down the hallway, whispering instructions too quickly for me to catch. A door bangs open upstairs on the third floor. Someone sobs.