31. Chapter 31
T he car hums down the empty highway, tires slicing through the wet road like they’ve got somewhere more important to be than I do. The jazz station plays low on the stereo—something brassy and slow, the kind of sound that makes silence more obvious instead of hiding it.
I don’t mind silence.
I’ve lived in it most of my life.
But tonight, as the adrenaline drains from my veins and the job fades behind me, the quiet feels like a mirror.
And in it—she’s there.
No matter how long it’s been. No matter how many borders I’ve crossed. No matter how much whiskey I’ve drowned her ghost in, she always finds a way to resurface in my thoughts.
Three years should have been enough time to forget the way she looked at me in the morning, her eyes sleepy yet sharp. It should’ve been enough to erase her. But it wasn’t. I know that even eternity will not be enough to help me forget her.
I shift in my seat, roll my shoulder to ease the tightness building behind it. Crack my knuckles one at a time, and change lanes for no damn reason.
I tell myself I’m just driving. That it’s the road, the heat, the sting of betrayal from earlier tonight making me restless.
But I fucking know it’s her.
Is she happy?
That question hits harder than I expect. It creeps in like a whisper under the noise. A small, sharp thing that slides into the space between thought and instinct.
Is she with someone?
Fuck.
The idea makes my jaw lock. My fingers tighten on the steering wheel until the leather creaks under my grip.
Is someone else touching her? Lying beside her? Hearing that low, sleepy voice in the morning?
I stare at the highway stretching ahead, headlights illuminating curves in the road I’ve driven a dozen times but never noticed. I don’t blink. I don’t breathe right.
She’s too stunning to be alone. Too full of heat and fire and beauty not to have set someone else ablaze by now.
And maybe she should be with someone. Someone better, and softer. Who tells her he loves her when she needs to hear it instead of assuming silence is enough.
I exhale hard.
My right hand lets go of the wheel long enough to run down my face, over my mouth, and through my hair.
This is what she still does to me after all this time.
I wonder if her eyes still narrow when she’s annoyed—those sharp little slits she gave me when I pushed too far. If she still eats olives one at a time, slowly, like she’s cataloging the flavor in her head. If she still talks in her sleep. She used to say the strangest things.
Fuck, that girl damn near broke me.
I clench the steering wheel tighter.
“She’s not yours anymore,” I mutter aloud. The words fall flat in the car.
“She never really was.”
The truth tastes bitter.
I hit the gas harder, and the engine growls, eager for speed. I need motion. Noise. A rush of something that reminds me I’m not stuck in the past she left behind.
The car surges forward, fast enough to make my pulse finally match the weight in my chest.
Maybe she is happy in her new life. And with someone who kisses her bare shoulder in the mornings and laughs at her awful coffee jokes.
The tires crunch over gravel as I pull into the estate’s private drive. It’s a safe house that's dressed like a luxury retreat. It is discreet, remote, and surrounded by nothing but jungle and silence. The kind of place where secrets can rot in peace or be buried without question.
A guard at the gatehouse nods as I pass. I barely acknowledge him.
Inside, the lights are low. The air conditioner hums against the sticky night heat. I make my way to the bar without pausing, loosen the first two buttons of my shirt, and pour a finger of something dark and expensive into a glass.
I move to the window, glass in hand, and stare out into the jungle where the trees sway like whispers, hiding things I don't care to name.
The shipment’s safe. The cover worked. On paper, everything went according to plan. However, I can sense that someone is playing games. And I don’t like games unless I’m the one dealing the cards.
I take a slow sip of my drink, let the burn crawl down my throat, and run the names through my head again—port contractors, security rotations, customs handlers, crewmen. Someone fed the Feds a sliver of truth wrapped in bullshit.
Someone thinks they’re clever.
I’ll find them.
My mind circles back to the man whose name I didn’t say out loud earlier but haven’t stopped thinking about since.
Thiago Delgado.
He’s never hidden the fact that he wasn’t thrilled with how Mara and I ended. Over the years, in quiet moments behind closed doors, he’s dropped comments. Half-jokes with too much edge.
“You couldn’t have held her interest?”
“Maybe if you’d acted like a husband instead of a weapon…”
“My daughter needed a man who would see her.”
They were words disguised as wit, but I heard what he meant.
He blames me.
Thinks I mistreated her. Thinks I was cold. That I was the reason she walked.
Maybe I was.
But he’s wrong if he thinks she ever wanted to stay. She didn’t leave because I pushed her away. She left because I wasn’t her destination.
I was her exit.
She used our marriage like a door—out of a life she couldn’t breathe in, and away from a man she couldn’t learn to love.
And I let her.
That’s what no one seems to understand. I down the rest of the drink and slam the empty glass onto the bar with a dull clink. Thiago might be using this leak to lash out. To remind me that I failed his daughter. That he is still coming for retribution.
Fine. Let him come.
But if he’s behind this—if he’s dragging the Bratva into his family vendetta—then he’s just declared a war he thinks the Bratva won’t answer.
But he’s wrong, because I will answer.