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)
“He wasn’t supposed to be a body.”
I whip my gaze to him. “But he could have been.”
Cruz says nothing.
He can dress it up however he wants. Orders. Assignment. Mathematics. Not meant to kill.
But he knew.
He knew there was a chance Eagle would die. And that thought makes my blood boil.
“And the cocaine?” I ask.
His face stills.
“What?”
“There was cocaine in Hawk’s truck. He realized after the fact.”
“That wasn’t me. The coke was already there.”
“What?”
He clears his throat. “When I was casing the property, I noticed Hawk’s truck in the driveway. There was a large amount of cocaine in the back. Why the hell he had so much, I have no idea.”
My mind flashes back.
Hawk’s truck.
The horror of finding Eagle.
The confusion.
The way everything seemed connected and disconnected at once.
And fire surges within my core.
I shove Cruz.
Not hard enough to knock him back.
But hard enough to make him feel it.
“It made the scene easier to explain,” he says. “There was already a trail. Eagle had a history. I opened one of the bags to make it look like he’d used it.”
My stomach roils.
Cruz did it all.
“You made it look like Eagle took cocaine from Hawk’s truck,” I say.
“Yes.”
“You made us believe he relapsed.”
“Yes.”
I remember Eagle’s face.
Not from before.
From after.
Or what I saw of it.
Blue lips.
Sweat.
Vomit.
Twitching limbs.
His body fighting for life while I screamed his name.
My vision blurs.
No.
I refuse to cry.
Not yet.
Not in front of him.
“I checked the next day,” Cruz says. “To make sure he’d been found. I wasn’t going to let him die.”
I roll my eyes. “Yeah? Good. That’s just great, Cruz. And he was gone, right?”
“Yeah.”
“You know why?” I struggle to breathe. “I was the one who found him. I was the one who found my little brother near death.”
“Robin—"
“I went there because Hawk wasn’t answering his phone. He was with Daniela and wasn’t paying attention. I was worried, so I went to check on him.”
The memory comes back so clearly I can smell it. I wrap both arms around myself.
I steady my voice to keep it from breaking. “He was on the ground. His lips were blue. His fingertips too. His skin was clammy. Covered in sweat. There was vomit everywhere.”
Cruz’s face twists.
Good.
“He was twitching,” I say. “His limbs were jerking like his body didn’t know how to stay alive. I thought he was going to die.”
The tears come now.
I hate them.
I hate that they blur Cruz’s face.
I hate that my body betrays me at the exact moment I want to be nothing but rage.
“I screamed for help,” I say. “I called 911. I kept saying his name because I thought if I stopped, he would slip away. I thought maybe if he heard me, he’d come back.”
He takes a few steps toward me. “Robin, please.”
I throw a hand in his face. “You were the one who did that to him!”
His eyes close.
Only for a second.
When they open, they’re wet. He’s not crying. But it’s close enough that I hate him for it.
“Yes,” he says.
“The doctors gave him a fifty-fifty chance.”
Cruz stills. “What?”
“A fifty-fifty chance of making it,” I say. “That’s what we were told.”
He swallows. “I didn’t know that.”
“You didn’t know that when you left him unconscious after drugging him?”
“I calculated—”
“If you mention math to me one more time, I swear to God, Cruz.” I bury my face in my hands.
“But he’s okay,” Cruz says, and the desperation in his voice makes me furious all over again. “He woke up, didn’t he?”
I stare at him.
“Didn’t he?”
I wipe a tear off my cheek. “He’s still in the hospital, as far as I know. I haven’t been able to check because in case you missed it, I was abducted and taken to Colombia.”
His face twists with pain.
But pain isn’t enough.
Not this time.
“I’m grateful to you,” I say. “Grateful that you got me out, even though you’re the reason I was in that dirty place. I owe you my fucking life. But you almost took my brother’s.”
How the hell am I supposed to balance that? How can I find rationale for my feelings for this man when his actions nearly killed my brother? Put my family—when we were already dealing with all my father’s bullshit—through so much turmoil?
“I’ll always be grateful,” I continue, speaking slowly. “But I don’t see a future for us.”
Cruz goes still.
“I can’t,” I say. “I can’t in good conscience use my family’s money to help a man whose actions could have easily killed my own flesh and blood.”
He says nothing.
I almost wish he would argue.
“I understand,” he says.
Damn him.
I don’t want him to understand.
I want him to make this easier. I want him to say something cruel so I can slam the door on whatever stupid thing was growing between us and never look back.
But Cruz just stands there, bloody and devastated, and lets me choose.
I step closer before I can stop myself.