Chapter 31
Rio doesn't move. He's still on his back, still warm, still exactly where he was a second ago when the world was different. But something has shifted in the quality of his stillness — from the stillness of a man at rest to the stillness of a man who’s waiting to fight.
Eventually, he sits up and tugs off the condom, wiping himself off with the sheets. Last time he got a warm, wet washcloth. I killed the tenderness that could have followed sex, but those words have been sitting in my chest since back at the office.
My going back to Luther is the only way to create the space and time needed to build the trafficking case and not move so soon that justice can’t be served. It’s the only way Enzo and Ava will have time to help Rio find a way out of Luther’s control.
He doesn't look at me right away. He sits on the edge of the bed, forearms on his knees, staring at the floor.
Finally, he speaks.
"No.”
Just that. Flat and absolute, with a finality that says he isn't interested in the argument.
"Rio—" I start.
"No." He stands, reaching for his boxer briefs from the floor. He steps into them. "That's not happening."
I sit up, too, pulling the sheet around me as I shuffle up to the headboard. "Just listen—"
“I heard you." He picks up his jeans. Steps into them. Still not looking at me. "The answer is no."
The defiant part of me rises. “I wasn’t asking, Rio.”
His gaze snaps up. It’s full of something fierce and fearful all at once. “Don’t play that card, Delilah.”
I watch him dress — the controlled efficiency of it, the way he moves through even this with that focused calm that I used to mistake for indifference and now know is the opposite.
He wants to protect me.
But I still feel the fight rising in me, the way when someone else decides for me.
I work to keep my tone calm. He has to consider this. "It's the only thing that works. The only plan that doesn't put you or GhostEye at risk." The words come out quickly. "If I go back—"
"You're not going back,” he says sharply as he snatches his shirt off the floor. Shakes it out. Puts it on.
Still not looking at me.
"That option's off the table."
Heat screams up my neck. "You’re really pissing me off, not even letting me talk.”
"Delilah."
He turns now, jaw tight, his chestnut gaze so intense that I feel it under my sternum.
"I need you to hear me when I say this. The way Luther talked about you today in the bar?” He shakes his head. “Fuck no. You’re not going anywhere near him, and you said you trusted me. Trust me when I say that’s not the safe thing to do.”
I find my top in a mound of covers and pull it over my head. I get my jeans on, but don't bother with the button. What the hell did Luther say?
"Tell me what he said.”
He looks at me for a long moment as if he's deciding whether knowing will make this better or worse.
"He said—" He stops. Starts again. “He plans on breaking you. Punishing you for this stunt.”
The words land in the room like something dropped from a height.
“Luther wouldn’t dare. Not with my father standing by.” But part of me isn’t so sure about it.
I don’t like being controlled, but Rio isn’t wrong. I don’t care enough about Luther and my dad to let them emotionally harm me. But there is potentially real, physical danger here.
If Dad let my mother abuse me, would he really stop Luther?
Rio sees my hesitation. “So you understand me.”
I do.
But that doesn’t change the fact that we need time.
“We don’t have a lot of other options, do we?
” I sit on the edge of the bed to pull my socks on because my hands need something to do.
"I know what Luther is. I've always known what he is. It doesn't change that we need time to bring my father down and to figure out what to do with that damn manila folder. I go to Luther and buy us time. I’ve been through worse.”
He’s more agitated now. “I thought you fucking understood me, Delilah.”
“I do…”
“No you don’t if you think I can agree to you going back there. Your mom, what she did was unforgivable, but Luther–”
He can’t finish.
I don’t want to think of it. I don’t want to go back, but I learned a lot from Ava today about justice, and more often than not, sacrifices have to be made before it’s won. If Isabel and Beatriz have to endure. So should I. It won’t be forever.
"Then what?" I stand. "What's your play, Rio? Because I've been sitting with this since the office, and I can't find one that doesn’t need time. Unless we want to destroy the case against Iron Covenant. Or destroy you.”
He's quiet for a moment, then he kneels on the floor in front of me.
"I'll turn myself in," he says.
I stare at him.
"If they don't have the case by tomorrow," he says, “I’ll go to the Feds.
I hand them everything — Black Ridge, the arrangement with Ray, all of it.
I take the fall. Luther loses his leverage.
GhostEye survives, or it doesn't. There’s still a case to be built.
" He holds my gaze. "But you don't go back to him. "
The room is very quiet.
"That's insane," I say.
"Less insane than that man putting his hands on you. I can’t, Princess. That would kill me.”
Tears prick at my eyes. "You'd destroy everything you built—"
He takes my hands in his, gazing up at me reverently from the floor. "Yes."
"Your family's security—"
"Yes."
"Enzo. Your dad. This ranch maybe. All of it—"
"Yes." His voice doesn't waver. Not once. "All of it. I’d rather lose it all than send you to him. To ever have you live that life again."
He’s completely certain, devoted to every word he just uttered.
This is what it looks like when someone loves you.
"You can't do that.” Tears well up in my eyes, blurring my vision.
“Not a single person in my family will disagree, Delilah, because we know right from fucking wrong. You’re innocent. I’m not. If it’s time to pay, I’ll pay.” His eyes blaze. “You will not pay for me.”
I can’t let him do that. I still believe there’s a future without him behind bars.
Hot streams trail down my cheeks, and he wipes one away with his thumb.
"Rio." I pull him up to the bed to sit beside me. "I’m not worth GhostEye. I’m not worth your family's security–“
"Stop."
"It's true—"
"It's not." He looks at me with those dark eyes that have been seeing straight through me since the first day, and I’ve never once been able to lie to them. "You’re worth every single thing I just said."
I've spent my entire life being a bargaining chip. A useful thing. An asset to be deployed.
Nobody has ever valued me the way he does.
But it still feels wrong. If I endure, this might all end with the woman saved, my dad behind bars. And with us together.
"We're going in circles," I say finally.
"Then let's stop," he says. "Let me go back to the offices. Let Enzo and Ava work through the night. Let Murdock get us the warrant." He takes my hand and holds it. "By morning, we'll have something. I’ll organize protection if Luther dares to come here or– give me time. If it doesn’t work, I’ll take the fall.”
He believes that one night will change everything. I can see it all over him.
I want so badly to believe it.
"Okay," I say.
He looks at me, searching with disbelief because this is the easiest he’s ever gotten agreement from me.
He stands but confirms one last time. “Okay?"
"Okay," I repeat.
He holds my gaze for one more moment. Then he leans down and presses his lips to my forehead — like a promise — and goes.
At the door, he stops. Looks back.
"You said you trusted me.”
His words burn through me.
"Let me prove you're right to do that."
And then he's gone.
The front door closes downstairs.
I listen to the silence settle back around me the way it did at four this morning, and I lie in the dark, unable to sleep again.
That was this morning.
It feels like a different lifetime.
My body slumps. My jeans are still unbuttoned, and I stare at nothing, feeling a heavy weight of emptiness in my chest.
Because I lied to him.
Tina puts her paws up on my knee. She looks up at me with those cloudy eyes that see more than they should for a dog who is mostly blind.
"Hey, T," I say.
She doesn't wag her tail, considering me seriously. She knows me so well.
I pick her up and hold her against my chest the way I've held her a thousand times — in the car, in the bath, in every sad and frightened moment of the years when she was the only constant thing I had.
She smells like dog and the faint ghost of the perfume I spritzed on this morning.
Rio’s words echo in my mind. You said you trusted me.
I do. That's the thing he doesn't understand yet. I didn’t propose to go back to Luther because I don't trust him. But rather because I do.
I trust that he, Enzo and Ava will find a way out of the Black Ridge arrangement. I trust that GhostEye is good enough and fast enough that I wouldn’t be with Luther long, and all of us, me, Beatriz, Isabel, maybe more, will be safe. I trust my dad will be behind bars.
And if all that happens, then Rio and I could be together.
I could stay in Echo Valley.
It’s hard to accept Rio exposing himself when there’s still an alternate universe where this all works out, and all it takes is for me to be strong.
The warrant might not come through by morning. Murdock is a connection, but federal processes are what they are. And if it doesn't come through, Rio will turn himself in. He meant every word of that. He’ll burn everything he built and everything his family built to keep me out of Luther's hands.
I can't let that happen.
I press my lips to the top of Tina's head.
The manila folder is at Luther's house. Everything Luther has on Rio — the photos, the documentation, whatever Ray compiled over years of having a man like Rio in his pocket — it's all there. And if the folder doesn't exist, Luther's leverage doesn't exist.
Except it isn't just the folder.