Chapter 36
Three Weeks Later
The hacienda sits on the edge of a hot, Mexican valley outside San Miguel de Allende. It is without question the most beautiful place I have ever stood in my life.
Bougainvillea everywhere — hot pink and deep red cascades over every stone wall, every archway, every surface that will hold it.
Ava and Enzo’s wedding ceremony was in the courtyard under an arch of white flowers, with the valley stretching out beyond the walls and the spring sky so blue it barely looked real.
I cried at the ceremony; those two love each other so much that it was impossible not to.
Anton cried harder. He sat two rows ahead of me with Freya's hand in both of his.
When Ava appeared at the top of the aisle, Anton made a sound between a sob and a laugh, and Freya handed him a tissue without even looking.
She'd come prepared, thankfully, because she had to hand another to Luis after that.
Enzo waited at the altar. I found it strange staring out at Rio’s replica. It was so easy to imagine our whole life together in that moment.
Enzo stood up there, a perfect, handsome groom, and when he saw Ava, he went completely still. His eyes brightened behind his glasses.
He looked like a man who had spent his whole life building things and had finally built the best one.
Rio's hand found mine in the space between us and held it for the whole ceremony.
The reception spilled into the gardens — loud and warm and full of people, a full mariachi band sounded out joyfully into the space. Enzo and Ava arrived on horseback to a cheer that rattled the bougainvillea off the walls.
The extended Mendez family was enormous, loud, and though I know Spanish from my mom, it was rusty. Everyone was patient. I noticed his aunties spoke more slowly for me, and they told me my accent was cute.
Rio, of course, sat at the wedding party table for dinner, just to the right of his brother. Ava had Anton to her left. I sat at a huge round table with Luis, Julia, Kat, Santi, Gabriel, Lara, and two empty chairs.
Owen and Theo never stopped playing outside with an enormous gaggle of other kids.
When dinner is almost over, Santi leans over to me and murmurs. “Let’s see how good your man is at a speech.” Then he taps his champagne flute with the edge of his knife and shouts into the space.”
"?Oye! ?La novia es gringa! ?Necesitamos un discurso del padrino!"
Kat leans toward Santi. "What did you say?"
He grins. "I said the bride is a yank, so the best man owes up a speech.”
At the wedding party table, Rio turns to look at Santi with an expression that says– I’ll deal with you later.
Santi raises his bottle of beer, completely unrepentant. On top of that, he cups his hand around his mouth and shouts. “Speech! Speech! Speech!”
The whole room — sensing that something is happening — begins to clap to the rhythm of his taunting. Expectantly.
Rio stands, smooths the lapel of his jacket, and clears his throat.
The garden goes quiet. My God, he looks hot as hell up there.
He’s in trouble later.
Rio’s voice carries all the way to the end. "Nadie quiere escucharme, estoy seguro—" then he finds Anton a few chairs down, "—pero los que sí, probablemente necesitan el inglés."
He explains that he’ll speak in English for Anton’s sake.
He gazes out at the crowd again. “Hopefully, each table has a translator the other way around.”
And then, Rio thinks for a moment, composes himself handsomely, calmly. He picks up his glass of tequila, sips and then he’s ready.
“When we were kids," his deep voice fills the space, "Enzo used to ask our mom for broken things.
Toys from Goodwill. Radios that didn't work.
Clocks with missing parts. She'd bring them home, and he'd take them apart on the kitchen table and put them back together.
" He pauses as if he can still see his brother in his mind’s eye.
"He never threw anything away. He always believed he could fix anything.”
I glance over at Luis. His hand and Julia’s are clasped together on the table in front of them. Luis listens intently, with glassy eyes.
The garden is completely still.
Rio continues. "Then Ava arrived, and we learned she was the same.” He looks at Ava now, who beams and nods. “Enzo found his equal. Just with a little more sunshine in her step. Just — better, if you ask me, though don't tell him I said that."
After the translations, there’s a ripple of laughter in the garden.
Enzo is still at his table, listening intently. Ava's hand is in his.
“These two spent their lives finding what's missing in broken things and making them whole, which is a lesson I learned through them about love.”
He lifts his eyes and finds me across the room.
"Everyone is broken in some way," he says. "Some of it shows on the outside —"
He smiles for the crowd momentarily, then fixes his gaze on me again.
"But there's another kind of broken. The broken we hide with an almost desperate hope that nobody gets close enough to find it."
Even from across the room, he makes me absolutely breathless.
"Love is what happens when someone finds our inner broken and still thinks we're the most valuable thing in the room.”
The entire room sighs with emotion.
Rio lifts his glass toward Ava and Enzo.
"To Ava and Enzo," he announces, "who in each other found something priceless.”
He lifts his glass. "Cuídense el uno al otro."
Take care of each other.
The speeches give way to dancing. The band shifts into brassy salsa. The marquee in the garden becomes exactly what a wedding in Mexico in spring should be — loud and warm and spinning.
Rio has been accosted by aunties.
And I need some fresh air. I’m on the edge of my limit with tequila, and we still have a long night ahead of us.
I slip through the garden toward the far side of the hacienda, where a stone terrace looks out over the valley.
The noise of the reception softens behind me.
The lights of San Miguel de Allende glitter below in the early evening, and the mountains beyond are going purple at the edges.
The air smells like flowers and warm stone.
I lean on the railing and close my eyes to remind myself this is actually my life now.
Then, there’s the patter of footsteps behind me.
I turn.
Ava is still in her wedding dress, but she’s slipped back into her signature Docs and fiddles with a charm on her bracelet.
She lifts her wrist and points to the charm. “It’s an ojo azul, evil eye charm.” She smiles softly. “Isabel sent it to me as my something blue.”
Warmth spreads through my chest at the sound of her name. “That’s sweet.”
“Yeah, it was.”
Ava and I share a moment, both clearly thinking about the women who are now all safe.
Beatriz and Isabel chose to go home to Chile. Valentina — whose name I only learned after the raid and who was also trafficked — chose to stay. San Francisco. A support organization. A fresh start somewhere nobody knows her story yet.
That Isabel sent this charm shows there’s still hope in her heart after everything she's been through. I hold onto that. I can only imagine how hard it will be for these women to trust again.
These three women were the only ones currently in the trafficking operation started by Iron Covenant.
But they’d already sold three other women before them into modern slavery to two men in Florida and another in Texas.
GhostEye found a trail of communications using burner phones, ads posted and quickly deleted on various boards.
The network here, along with a paid contact on the ground in Chile, would have allowed my father to hurt women systematically.
It’s done now.
I hope all the women get the help they need. I hope the road back is kinder than the one that brought them here.
Ava and I grab the rail and share a moment staring out at so much peace. It’s weird that all this exists here and such darkness can exist elsewhere.
The grooming site Iron Covenant built is gone. The broker network dismantled. Cheryl Hartman and Rourke charged. All of it unraveled because of passports in a folder and a dog groomer who couldn't look away.
My dad is in jail.
Just then, Rio’s voice drifts over my shoulder. "Interrupting anything?”
Ava spins. "Not at all. Just taking a breather." She gazes at me warmly. "I'll leave you two alone."
The sound of the reception drifts up from the garden below — laughter, the brass band, someone's heels on the stone, the bond of a family fully alive.
Rio comes to stand beside me, and we look out at the valley together — the lights of San Miguel below, the mountains beyond, the gold of a Mexican spring evening settling over all of it like magic poured slowly from a great height.
He wraps his arm around me.
"That was some speech in there," I say. "I didn't know you were so sentimental."
He tuts. "The hell you didn't."
He's right. Rio is so hard on the outside, but damn does he know how to be soft for me.
Below, someone cheers and the band shifts into something with more brass. The garden gets louder and warmer.
I think about what it might look like — this life.
A year from now. Five years. Coming back to Mexico for someone else's wedding, or just for the sake of it, because we felt like it, because we wanted to.
Waking up at Monarch Hills with the mountains outside the window and Tina at the foot of the bed and this man beside me every single morning.
After a moment, he mirrors my very thought. "Do you ever think about it?"
“Think about what?" I say, as if I don’t know.
"Getting married."
"Hell no," I blurt without even thinking.
But my kneejerk reaction– is it the real me or the conditioned one?
Thankfully, he laughs — his real laugh.
He probably expected me to say that. With a dad like mine, living in a world of men who treat women like a means to an end, and my shitty childhood?
Sovereignty is everything to me. But how does that connect to love?
I haven’t experienced this long enough now to know if they have to be mutually exclusive. Can you be free and eternally connected to someone at the same time?
Rio shows no hurt from my comment, but his jaw tics once, and I realize — maybe that was him asking something he didn't want to ask directly.
"I mean, I don't think I want to get married," I stand on my tiptoes and kiss his cheek. "But I do like your last name."
He smirks. I know him well enough now that he's running the sound of Delilah Mendez through his mind. His dark gaze sears through me with that intensity he always has before he says he loves me.
Maybe Rio wants to get married. Maybe I'll change my mind one day, too. But right now, what the hell is a piece of paper going to do to make me love this man any more? Or even trust him?
I know he'll never let me down just as sure as the sky is blue.
"So you don't want to get married," he says. Carefully. Like he's feeling his way through it and working toward acceptance.
I turn to look at him. At this man who has been by my side in the darkest time of my life. Who was my teammate even when we were enemies.
"I want something better than marriage," I say.
He furrows his brow.
"I want us to choose each other every day," I kiss the back of his hand. "Even though we don't have to."
The clouds shift above us. Rio looks at me, and I feel it the way I always do — seen.
"I'm fine with that," he wraps his arm around my waist and pulls me in. His voice lowers. "Just as long as we choose each other every day. For the rest of our lives."
I lean into him and murmur across his lips. "Promise."
"Oh, you promise, do you?"
"Yes. I'll choose you." I press my lips to his, then pull back. "Until I'm in the grave."