Chapter 28 - Nico
I’ve tracked hostiles through three countries, hunted men across deserts and mountain ranges. Not one second of it prepared me for tracking a woman who doesn’t want to be found because I’m the reason she ran.
The coastal road unfolds like a tactical nightmare. Blind curves, no shoulder, ocean to my right invisible in the darkness. Wind from the southwest at fifteen knots, affects vehicle stability on these turns. My phone sits in the mount, her tracker dot sitting on the edge of the land.
She left this morning and I let her go. Maintained distance, tracked her phone, told myself the surveillance was professional. Not desperate. I watched her dot sit in Little Havana for hours. Then it moved. Fast. A vehicle heading toward the coast.
I called. No answer. Again. Nothing.
That was when I started following her.
The speedometer hits ninety on a straightaway.
Distance to target: twelve miles. Time at this speed: eight minutes.
Too long. The tracker shows her dot has stopped on the cliffs south of the city.
Logan's intel floods my phone: shell company ownership, three layers deep, all tracing back to Cesar Vega's attorney.
Cesar has her.
The property materializes. Gates open, tire tracks fresh in the gravel.
I kill the headlights two hundred meters out and approach on foot.
My training takes over. Glock drawn, slow breathing, the muscle memory of a hundred breaches.
Three targets are visible through windows, likely more inside.
Optimal breach point: kitchen door, blind spot from current positions.
The house glows with light. Through windows, I see movement on the terrace.
Cesar's muscle, but their body language is wrong.
Not calm guards. Men in panic, shouting into phones, gesturing wildly at something.
The cliff.
My blood turns to ice water. My trigger finger twitches.
Three targets. Two seconds each. But that's too clean for what they've earned.
I'm moving before thought catches up, circling past the panicked men who don't even notice me, straight to the low stone wall at the cliff's edge.
Below: darkness. The ocean churning against rocks, white foam visible where waves crash.
Thirty feet down, maybe more. Rocks clustered at the base like teeth.
I see it then. Her purse caught on the stone wall, phone still inside, the tracker that led me here. Torn fabric on the rough stone. She went over. Without her phone.
No body on the rocks. No body in the immediate water.
She jumped. Into that.
The cliff doesn’t have a path down, just rock faces and ledges that might hold or might crumble. I find handholds, footholds, descending too fast for safety. The flashlight beam from my phone swings wild between my teeth as I navigate.
The soldier in me tries to impose order. Grid search, methodical coverage. But I can’t think past the image of her body bloated with water.
The beach materializes. A crescent of coarse sand and rock, waves breaking in irregular patterns.
I scan left to right. Nothing but driftwood and seaweed.
The cold starts in my chest. Not temperature but that other cold, the one from Afghanistan, from stepping through rubble knowing what I'll find. My jaw locks so hard something cracks.
An hour since she jumped, maybe more. The drive here, the descent.
Time becomes meaningless when measured against the ocean's patience.
In water this temperature, with rocks and current…
No. I won't calculate those odds. She's stronger than anyone knows.
The ocean was in her blood before grief made her afraid of it.
"MARISOL!"
Then I hear it. Faint, almost lost in the wind. A cough. Weak but unmistakable.
I run toward the sound, slipping on wet rocks, my phone’s flashlight beam wild.
My knees hit rock hard enough to split skin.
Don't feel it. Can't feel anything except the need to find her.
Around a cluster of boulders that jut into the water lies a smaller cove protected from the worst of the current. And there.
She's on the rocks. Half in the water, half out, like the ocean carried her as far as it could before gently setting her down. Her dress is torn where someone grabbed at her. She's shaking violently, coughing up seawater, but she's alive.
She's alive.
The relief hits hard. I reach her in three strides, hands immediately checking for injuries.
My knees hit rock again, harder this time, definitely bleeding now.
Her pulse is rapid but strong, no obvious breaks, scrapes from the rocks but nothing critical.
She's hypothermic, lips tinged blue from the cold water, but breathing. Breathing.
"Found you," I breathe, the words coming out broken.
"Nico?" Not surprise. Like she knew I'd come.
She flinches when I reach for her.
"I'm here." I strip off my jacket, wrap it around her shaking form. "Jesus, Marisol, you jumped. You actually jumped."
"He was going to shoot me." Her teeth chatter so hard the words vibrate. "Stage a suicide. Said I'd become another Delgado tragedy." She pulls away slightly when I try to gather her closer, not much but enough to notice. "So I jumped first. Took away his ending."
"You haven't swum in eight years."
"I know."
She studies my face for a moment, deciding something. Then, finally, she allows herself to lean into my warmth. Her whole body shakes, from cold or memory or both.
I hold her tighter now that she's letting me, trying to transfer every degree of my body heat.
"I chose to live," she says against my chest. "Even after you looked at me like I was just another assignment."
Each word lands like a bullet I deserve. She's right about all of it.
She pulls back enough to look at me properly. Even soaked and freezing, even after nearly dying, she reads me like she always has. Past every wall, down to the terrified man underneath.
"You thought I was becoming Sofia." Not a question. "You saw me go tactical and cold and you panicked."
"Yes."
"Because you thought you were breaking me.”
“Like I broke her.”
“Like you think you broke her."
The truth lands hard. My hands clench into fists, nails cutting into palms. "Yes. But I was wrong. So fucking wrong."
"You're an idiot," she says fondly. "I wasn't becoming Sofia. I was trying to be strong enough that you wouldn't have to save me all the time. I thought if I could handle things myself, maybe you'd stop seeing me as a burden."
The walls I built crumble completely. Every justification, every noble withdrawal designed to protect her. All of it wrong. She wasn't hardening into a weapon. She was trying to be worthy of staying. And I punished her for it.
"You were never a burden." The words come out desperate. "Never. You were… you are…"
"What? What am I to you?"
The words are right there. Three syllables that have been burning in my chest for days. But she deserves more than an adrenaline confession on dark rocks.
"Mine," I growl instead. "You're mine. That's all. That's everything."
She studies my face for a long moment. Still not completely letting me in, making me work for every inch of proximity. Then she speaks:
"I love you."
The words hit harder than the relief of finding her alive. She says them simply, clearly, despite everything I've done to not deserve them.
"I love you," she continues, "and I need you to know that. Not because I almost died. Because it's true. It's been true since you made me eggs and told me about playing Chopin."
I want to say it back. The words are right there, pressing against my teeth. But if I say them now, they'll sound like relief. Like gratitude for her survival instead of a choice.
"Marisol…"
"You don't have to say it back." She shivers, pulls my jacket tighter.
I notice the bruises on her hips from our last time together, visible through the torn dress.
My marks still on her skin even after I pushed her away.
"I know the words are hard. But I jumped off a cliff tonight, so I figure I can say three words without dying. "
Something cracks in my chest. The last of my walls falling away. "When I say them, I want them to be about living, not almost losing you."
She nods, then manages the ghost of a smile. "That's acceptable, Horse Man."
Horse Man. The nickname breaks something open in me. Not destruction but possibility. The crazy lady who makes up words survived the ocean. She's stronger than my fears ever let me see.
"I promise I'll never leave you again," I repeat, needing her to believe it. "Never."
"We'll see," she says, but she burrows closer into my warmth. Not completely forgiven, but allowing comfort. I'll take it.
I carry her up the beach and around the back of the headland to the road. She weighs nothing, or maybe adrenaline makes everything weightless. My Glock presses against my hip with each step, reminding me of what comes next.
We follow the winding road back to Cesar’s property, where everything has changed.
Gunner's team has arrived. I spot four cars, men in tactical formation. Eastern approach covered, two shooters on overwatch. The terrace is clear, Cesar’s panicked muscle is zip-tied and kneeling.
Gunner himself stands near the house, a hulking shadow who towers over the man next to him, and even in the dark I can read his satisfaction.
"Cesar?" I ask.
Gunner turns his scarred face to mine, looking for all the world like a nightmare come true.
"Contained," he says, his voice like rocks grinding. "Inside. Waiting for you."
Not dead. Not yet. Tomorrow, Cesar learns why Rosettis are feared.
Why our name makes grown men check their rearview mirrors.
Tomorrow, I'll take him apart piece by piece, and make sure he's conscious for every second.
The man who touched what's mine, who made her jump, who thought he could orchestrate her death like she was collateral in his thirty-year plan.
Tomorrow he discovers what real patience looks like. What real violence tastes like.
But tonight is about getting her home.
I put Marisol in my car, crank the heat to maximum, wrap her in the emergency blanket from my trunk. She's barely conscious now, adrenaline crash hitting hard. As I drive, she mumbles against my shoulder.
"My mother was right."
"About what?"
"The water. God was there. In the water. Waiting." Her breathing evens out into sleep.
I drive through the Miami night, salt water drying on my clothes, her warmth against my side.
The city lights blur past, but all I can think about is her voice saying those three words. How she jumped off a cliff but still found courage for that harder leap. How she swam through dark water guided by her mother's voice, saving herself when I wasn't there to save her.
Tomorrow, the violence. Tonight, just this: Marisol Delgado sleeping against my shoulder, smelling like ocean and survival, teaching me with every breath that loving someone isn't about protecting them from becoming strong.
It's about being worthy of the strength they already have.