Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 71949 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 360(@200wpm)___ 288(@250wpm)___ 240(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71949 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 360(@200wpm)___ 288(@250wpm)___ 240(@300wpm)
“You’re asking me to trust you,” I say finally.
“You trust me with Raven,” he says without hesitation. “Aren’t we family?”
Family.
Daniela is my family now too.
Memory claws at my ribs—Dani’s laugh last night, the way she curled into me and fell asleep. The image of her writing those three lines and walking away. The knowledge of what she’s willing to give up for that little girl tightens in my chest.
I leave the office and pace the kitchen island like a man on death row.
I want to go. I want to burn the world down and rebuild it only if she’s in it.
But Vinnie’s voice echoes in my head.
I know how men like this operate. Sometimes they keep their word because it’s in their interest to. Sometimes they don’t. If we go in hot and wrong, we might lose both.
That is not an option.
32
DANIELA
The road unwinds in front of me. I killed the GPS an hour ago, flipped my phone to airplane mode not long after. Vinnie will be trying to track me by now, maybe Hawk too. He’ll wake, find the note, and hate me for it.
But at least he’ll be alive to hate me.
Every few miles, the tires thump over seams in the asphalt, counting down the distance between who I was and what I’m about to do.
The horizon is colorless. Just a smear of fog and the thin line where night pretends to become morning. I haven’t eaten, haven’t slept, but I feel sharp. Focused. Fear hasn’t found me yet, and I don’t plan to invite it in.
When I stopped at Vinnie and Raven’s, I found my old duffel bag in my closet where I left it.
I unzipped it.
And there it was…
Now, as I drive, I pat the place where it rests in a makeshift holster against my thigh.
The blue dress will cover it nicely.
The GPS coordinates from the note led me down a narrow country road. The trees grow close, crowding the road.
I crest a small hill, and there it is.
A house.
It looks like it hasn’t been lived in for decades. The paint has peeled away in strips, exposing gray wood beneath. The porch sags. Half the railing has fallen. One of the shutters clings by a single hinge.
No neighbors. No lights. No sound.
I park beneath a dying oak and sit for a minute, gripping the steering wheel.
This is it.
If he’s here—if he really is behind all of this—then my fate is sealed and Belinda will go free.
I inhale. I won’t show fear. Not to him. Not to anyone.
When I open the car door, the warm morning air hits me. My feet crunch through gravel. Each step feels too loud, too heavy. The house looms in front of me, its windows black.
I square my shoulders and climb the porch steps.
Then I knock.
Once, twice, three times.
The sound echoes into silence.
For a heartbeat, nothing happens. Then the door creaks open.
I brace myself, every muscle tight.
But it’s not him.
Not the Chef. Not the monster from my past who taught me what fear tasted like. Not Diego Vega either.
It’s the man who first destroyed my innocence all those years ago.
A face I’ll never forget, no matter how much I want to.
Hernando Reyes.
33
HAWK
Vinnie is crouched in front of the main screen, rewinding the footage from his exterior cameras frame by frame. He’s made sure everything has been running clean since Belinda was taken. If a leaf moves wrong on this property, he’ll know about it.
He clicks again, and the screen jumps to life.
Daniela.
She moves quietly and heads around back to enter her suite. Then she disappears into the house.
“Christ,” I mutter, stepping closer to the monitor.
“Wait,” Vinnie says, holding up a hand.
We fast-forward fifteen minutes. The feed flickers back on. Daniela reappears, coming down the front steps. She’s holding a garment bag and something small, looped over her hand—looks like a belt—and another object wrapped in white tissue paper. The shape is narrow, oblong. My stomach twists.
“What the hell is that?” I ask.
Vinnie zooms in, but the footage pixelates too much to make out any detail. “No idea. She took it from her suite.”
“She didn’t leave anything?” I ask. “A note, a clue, anything we can work with?” I drum my fingers against the desk.
“If she doesn’t want to be followed,” Vinnie says, “then no. She wouldn’t.”
I drag my hand through my hair, hard enough that it stings my scalp. He’s right, of course. Daniela is too smart for any of that.
She thinks Belinda’s life is in danger. That if Gordon Brown even gets a whiff of a sting operation, that he’ll kill that little girl right then and there. Dani loves Belinda so much—like a mother loves her own daughter—and she wouldn’t leave anything to chance. No breadcrumbs for us to follow.
She’s given herself up, plain and simple. A life for a life.