30. Cruz
CRUZ
Death.
For a moment, no one moves.
Robin stares at the Ace of Spades as if it might rise off the table and slit her throat.
I go cold, but not because of the card.
Because of Robin’s face.
I stand so abruptly that my chair scrapes against the floor. “Enough.”
All four women look at me.
Mercedes’s eyes widen. “Cruz—”
“No.” I point at the card. “Stop freaking us out.”
Robin blinks.
“It’s only a reading,” Esmeralda says.
“Exactly.” I reach for the card, flip it face down, and slide it back toward the deck. “It’s only a reading. A game.”
Mercedes straightens. “Cartomancy is not a game.”
I grit my teeth. “It is absolutely a game.”
“It’s an ancient art.”
“It’s a deck of cards you bought at éxito.”
Mercedes gasps. “These cards have been with me for twelve years.”
“Then they are old grocery-store cards.”
Robin looks from the deck to me and then back to Mercedes and Esmeralda. “Have any of your predictions come true?”
Mercedes hesitates.
Esmeralda doesn’t. “In a way.”
Robin raises an eyebrow. “In a way?”
“As far as we know,” Mercedes adds, “all of them have come true.”
Robin goes very still.
I give Mercedes a fuck-you look.
She lifts both hands. “What? She asked.”
“In a way,” I repeat.
Esmeralda nods, as if this distinction matters. “Yes. Sometimes the cards draw a very clear path.”
“And sometimes?” Robin asks.
Mercedes clears her throat. “Sometimes the cards require very creative interpretations to match the outcome.”
I let out a huff. “There you go.”
Robin turns to me.
I keep my voice calm. “Any card can mean anything if you’re creative enough. Ace of Spades can mean death, or finality, or change, or maybe that someone drops a black umbrella on a Sunday and decides it was destiny.”
Mercedes narrows her eyes at me. “You’re mocking sacred things.”
“I’m mocking things that scare people who have already been scared enough.”
That shuts her up.
I look at Robin. “You’re not going to die.”
She sighs. “You don’t know that.”
I scowl. “And I’m not going to fall in love because they pulled a heart out of a deck.”
The words taste like acid on my tongue.
Because I want it.
God help me, I want it.
Not the card. Not the prediction. Not the ridiculous performance Mercedes and Esmeralda made over the Ace of Hearts.
I want what they said.
I want to fall in love.
Worse than that, I want to fall in love with Robin.
I stand, forcing the thought out of my mind. “Robin and I need to discuss our plans.”
Her expression shifts. “Our plans.”
“Yes.” I arch my brows. “For how we’re going to smooth things out with your family.”
“Right,” she says. “Smooth things out.”
Esmeralda sighs. “Families can be so dramatic.”
“You have no idea.” Robin stands. “Thank you. For the conversation. And the company.” She pauses for a few seconds, her lips thinning. “And the reading, however harrowing it was.”
Esmeralda rises, comes around the table, and takes both of Robin’s hands in hers. “You’re very brave.”
Robin stiffens. “I’m really not.”
Mercedes joins them. “You are. And very beautiful. Even tired.”
“Thank you,” Robin says.
Esmeralda squeezes Robin’s hands. “I hope everything works out for you.”
Her words hit me hard.
Working out means so many things now.
It means Robin getting home alive.
It means Vega not finding us before then.
It means my past staying far enough behind me to keep her safe.
It means me figuring out what the hell I’m supposed to do once I betray the only person who’s had my back for years.
Mercedes turns to me next. “And you,” she says. “Don’t be stupid.”
I raise a brow. “That’s your blessing?”
Esmeralda nods. “A good one.”
“Very practical,” Robin says.
Mercedes yawns then, covering her mouth with the back of her hand. “We need sleep,” she says.
Senora Valentina stands. “Enough. Both of you. Let them talk.”
Mercedes and Esmeralda begin to clear cups and plates even though they just announced their exhaustion. Robin tries to help, but Mercedes waves her off.
“Go. We’ll be done in a minute.”
Senora Valentina lingers in the kitchen doorway and grabs my arm. “Use the back sitting room,” she says. “No one will disturb you there.”
“Gracias.”
She nods and then looks at Robin. “You are safe in this house.”
“Thank you,” Robin says quietly.
I lead Robin out of the kitchen and down the hall to the back sitting room.
It’s smaller than I remember, though everything from my childhood seems smaller now. The walls are painted a faded yellow. A worn velvet sofa sits beneath the window, and two mismatched chairs flank a low table scarred by rings from old cups and glasses.
She sits on the edge of the sofa, posture straight. The robe makes her look soft, but nothing about Robin is soft right now.
I take one of the chairs instead of sitting beside her. Distance is wise at this point.
“So,” she says. “What’s the plan?”
“We could lie low here for a few days.”
She widens her eyes. “A few days?”
“Yes.”
“Cruz—”
“But I know you want to move now.”
She gestures toward the main area of the brothel. “I want to not get these women killed.”
She’s not wrong. This will be number one on Adriana’s places to look. After all, it’s where she found me. I’m putting all of us in danger by staying here. But I had no choice last night. I had to get Robin to safety. By now, though, Vega is no doubt discovering Robin is missing.
“The safest place for you is the US Embassy.”
She opens her mouth to speak but I gesture her to keep listening.
“Vega will look here, so we have to move quickly.”
She exhales.
“At the embassy,” I say, “you can contact your family. They’ll help arrange a way to get you back to the United States.”
“They’re probably losing their minds.”
“I’m sure they are.”
She locks her gaze on mine. “You say that like you know.”
I do know. I’ve been learning everything I can about the Bellamys in the last few months. But I don’t want to remind Robin of my past. There are still so many skeletons I haven’t yet unearthed.
I shrug. “I know families.”
“You know mine?”
“I know enough.” I pause. “And if your brothers are anything like you, they’re already preparing to burn down countries.”
That gets the faintest curve of her mouth.
I both love and hate her family at the moment. I love that they’ll get Robin out of here.
I hate that they’ll look at me and see only a man who once worked for their enemy.
Robin leans back slightly. “So we go to the embassy. I contact my brothers. Then home.”
“Yes.”
“And what about you?”
“What do you mean?” I ask, though I know exactly what she means.
She draws her brows together. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Pretend you’re stupid. You’re not.”
Despite myself, I smile. “Thank you.”
“It wasn’t entirely a compliment.”
“It was enough of one.”
“Cruz.”
I swallow.
“What happens to you after I get to the embassy?” she asks.
I’ve tried to avoid that thought. She’s been my priority. “I’ll figure it out.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I have.”
I wish I could tell her something, but the truth is ugly.
I don’t know where I’ll go.
Not back to Vega.
Not to the police. Not here. Vega has most of the cops on his payroll.
Not to the prison life I survived once already.
To the US, maybe?
Robin’s world. Her family’s wealth. Her brothers with money enough to move mountains and lawyers enough to make problems disappear.
That’s a dangerous hope. Why would she offer to take me with her? I fucking abducted her, for God’s sake.
But maybe she’ll look at me and see more than that. Maybe she’ll see the man who has nowhere to go because he chose her life over the only one he knew.
“Cruz…”
“No matter what happens,” I say firmly, “I’ll figure out what to do.”
“But I—”
“What matters most right now,” I continue, rising from the chair, “is getting you to safety.”
I cross the room and crouch in front of the sofa so my face is level with hers. I tell myself not to touch her.
I touch her anyway.
I cup her cheeks gently. Her skin is warm beneath my palms. Soft. Too soft for the things she has endured.
Her eyes widen, but she doesn’t pull away.
“That’s my only concern right now,” I say. “Getting you safe. Once you are, I’ll figure out my own next move.”
Her lips part.
I should take my hands away.
I don’t.
“When I get back…” she finally says.
I frown slightly. “What?”
“When I get back to safety,” she says. “I’ll figure out a way to bring you to the States.”
My hands tighten slightly on her face before I catch myself.
“Robin—”
She holds up a hand. “No. I mean it. You can’t go back to Vega, and you can’t stay here without endangering everyone, so we’ll figure something out.”
“We?”
“Yes. We.”
I swallow. We. That word from her mouth is more beautiful than the sweetest song.
“My family has resources. Lawyers. Connections. I don’t know exactly how it would work, but there must be a way.”
“It may not be simple.”
“Nothing in my life is simple right now.” She covers my hands—still on her cheeks—with her own. “We can figure out something similar to what Vinnie did for Daniela. He married her to get her out of Colombia.”
My jaw drops.
Actually drops.
For several seconds, I can’t speak.
Robin’s eyes go huge.
“Not like that,” she says. “A marriage of convenience. For immigration purposes. Or legal purposes. Or whatever purposes apply. I’m not an expert.”
I stare at her.
Her cheeks color. “You can close your mouth now.”
I bring my lips together.
This is serious. Dangerous. Absurd.
But Robin Bellamy just turned pink while suggesting we might get married, and some reckless part of me wants to believe it might mean more.
I let my hands fall from her face because if I keep touching her, I’ll say something to ruin everything.
“A marriage of convenience,” I say.
“Exactly.”
“You’re offering to marry a man you have known for forty-eight hours. A man who took you and brought you to Colombia.” I run my hand down my face. “I’m a goddamned criminal, Robin.”
She opens her mouth.
Closes it.
Then frowns.
She looks toward the window. “It does sound insane.”
“A little,” I agree.
Insane doesn’t begin to cover it.
In forty-eight hours, Robin Bellamy has ruined me.
No.
Not ruined.
Changed.
My entire life has flipped upside down in two days. The man I was before I drugged her and took her from Adriana’s house. That man knew where he belonged, even if belonging there had made him sick. That man understood orders. Loyalty. Survival. Silence.
This man?
This man is crouched on the floor in a faded yellow sitting room, imagining a future in a country that may not want him, beside a woman who should never trust him, because she just offered him a way out before he could bring himself to ask.
All because of her.
All because Robin looked at me with fire in her eyes and made it impossible to keep pretending I was only following orders.
She folds her hands in her lap. “I’m just saying,” she says, “that once I’m safe, I won’t abandon you.”
I look down at the floorboards between us.
When I was a boy, I used to sit in this room while Mamá talked with Senora V after breakfast. I would pretend to read, but mostly I listened. Women’s voices. Their laughter. Their warnings. Their stories about men who promised the world and took more than they gave.
What would Mamá think now? Would she like Robin?
Yes.
She would.
She would like her fire. Her spine. Her refusal to soften just because the world has been hard on her.
She would also tell me to be careful.
Not because Robin is dangerous, but because wanting her is.
“You don’t owe me anything,” I say.
Robin’s expression hardens. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Do the noble thing where you pretend you didn’t risk your life to get me here.”
“I did what I had to do.”
“No.” She leans forward. “You did what you chose to do. There’s a difference.”
I have no answer for that. She’s right. I did choose.
I chose her.
Not Vega. Not fear. Not survival.
Her.
“You should be careful,” I say. “Offering things to men like me.”
“Men like you?”
“Men with pasts.”
She shrugs. “Everyone has a past.”
“Not like mine.”
Her gaze darkens. “You don’t know everything about mine.”
Something in her voice… Robin carries something too. Something older than Adriana’s house. Older than Vega. Something that taught her how to survive.
She was kidnapped in Romania. I know that much.
What I don’t know is what she did to get through it. What she did to make sure she got out alive.
I want to know.
I want to know everything.
“For now, we get clean clothes,” I say. “Senora will take care of that. She has all kinds of clothes here. Then we go to the embassy.”
“And after that?”
“After that, Robin, we see what’s left of both of us.”
Her face softens, but only for a second.
I think of the Ace of Hearts on the kitchen table and hate myself for remembering it.
I think of the Ace of Spades and hate myself for fearing it.
Then I look at Robin Bellamy, and I make myself a promise.
No card gets to decide her ending.
No crime lord does either.
Anyone who tries to end her will have to go through me.