44. Cruz
CRUZ
Robin’s jaw drops.
For one second, I let myself look at her.
Really look.
She’s home. She’s safe. She’s dressed in clean clothes, her hair is clean, shiny, and loose around her shoulders. She looks like she belongs here, in this sprawling Texas house surrounded by people who would kill for her without hesitating.
She also looks like something I should never touch.
The man who answered the door is Hawk Bellamy. He’s easy to identify—the only Bellamy brother with blue eyes.
I watched him for days in Texas. Not up close like this. Not with him standing between me and Robin like he’d gladly tear my spine out through my throat and then enjoy what smells like a great dinner.
But I know his face. His build. The way he carries himself.
The woman beside him is Daniela Agudelo. Daughter of Jacinto Agudelo, who was once in Vega’s circle.
Hawk’s eyes narrow. “You going to answer me? Who the hell are you?”
I keep my hands visible. No sudden movements. No reaching into pockets. No glancing around. “My name is Cruz Moreno.”
Hawk’s eyebrows nearly fly off his head.
His lips twist into a scowl. “You have a lot of nerve showing up here.”
Robin inhales sharply. “Hawk—”
He ignores her, stepping closer to me. “After what you did to Eagle.”
I don’t move.
“And Robin.” His voice drops into something colder than shouting. “You show up at my family’s front door?”
I hold my hands in front of me. “I need to speak to her. To all of you.”
Hawk clenches his jaw. “You don’t need to do a goddamned thing except turn around before I beat the shit out of you.”
He comes at me.
I don’t step back.
Maybe I want him to hit me.
But Robin moves first. She grabs Hawk’s arm with both hands and steps between her brother and me. “No.”
Daniela grabs Hawk’s hand. “Hawk,” she says quietly.
He doesn’t look at her. His eyes stay on me. “Robin, Daniela, move.”
“No.” From Robin. “You and Dani should go back to the party.”
Hawk finally tears his gaze from me to look at her. “Absolutely not.”
“I can handle this.”
“No, you can’t.”
“Yes,” she says. “I can.”
“Robin—”
“Hawk.” Her voice hardens. “Please.”
He points at me without looking away from Robin. “He doesn’t get to be alone with you.”
“We’ll be right here by the door.”
“No.”
“Hawk.” Daniela touches his arm. “Come on.”
His nostrils flare. For a second, I think he’s going to ignore them both and hit me anyway.
Then he steps back.
Barely.
He leans in just enough that his voice reaches me without carrying into the rest of the house. “You watch your fucking back.”
I hold his gaze. “I understand.”
“No,” he says. “You don’t.”
Then he turns, stiff with fury, and lets Daniela guide him away.
Robin waits until they disappear down the hall before she turns back to me.
The door remains open between us.
I stand outside.
She stands inside.
“My family is going to want to know why you’re here,” she says. “They’re only two rooms away, and Hawk is probably telling them who you are right about now. So why are you here?”
Because Vega is coming for you.
Because you’re in danger.
Because Adriana said he would cross any border to take what he wants.
Because if he can’t get me, he’ll take you.
Those are the answers I carried across a continent.
But as I stand here, looking past Robin into this house, those answers begin to fracture.
The Bellamys are here.
All of them, or at least enough of them to matter.
Cars line the drive. Security is visible and invisible. I got here, but that doesn’t mean I’m safe here.
This is Bellamy land.
Their name means something here.
Money. Power. Guns. Lawyers. Security. Loyalty.
The only reason we got Robin the first time is because she wasn’t here. She followed a lead into a house Vega controlled. She stepped outside the protection of this family, and we used that.
I used that.
The thought makes me sick to my stomach.
Robin is safer here than she ever would have been with me.
So why am I here?
The truth rises before I can stop it.
The real one.
Because I couldn’t stay away.
Because I sat on that plane and told myself this was about warning her, protecting her, standing between her and Vega.
But that’s not true.
I came because I love her.
The realization doesn’t strike like lightning.
It’s simply there, as if it’s been true since the moment I took her.
Robin crosses her arms. “Cruz.”
I draw in a breath. “I came because I love you.”
Robin goes completely still.
The words sit between us.
No taking them back.
No reshaping them into something safer.
Her face changes in a way I can’t quite read. Shock. Pain. Anger. Something softer that vanishes before I can be sure it was there.
She doesn’t say it back.
“I know I have no right to say that,” I continue. “I know what I did. To you. To your brother. I know I can’t undo any of it.”
Her throat moves.
“But you can trust me.”
She swallows. “Can I?”
“Yes.”
She frowns. “Because you say so?”
“Because it’s the truth.”
She lets out a scoff. “That’s not the most reassuring answer from an avowed criminal.”
“It’s the only honest one I have.” I step closer. “Everything I did before was because I thought I had no choice.”
Her expression hardens. “Everyone has a choice.”
“Yes.” I swallow. “I know that now.”
She exhales sharply. “Convenient timing.”
“I know.”
“Cruz—”
“My mother died,” I say, because if I stop, I’ll lose the nerve. “I was fifteen. Vega took me in after that. Gave me a place. Money. Protection. Purpose. Or what I thought was purpose.”
Robin watches me.
“I was young,” I continue. “Stupid. Grieving. Angry. I let myself believe I owed him because he picked me up when I had nowhere else to go.”
“Why?”
I frown. “Why what?”
“Why did Vega take you in?”
I’ve asked myself the same question more times than I can count, and I never found a satisfactory answer. “I don’t know.”
She tilts her head. “You’re not the first kid to lose a parent as a teenager.”
“No.”
“You’re not the first son of a prostitute in Colombia.”
“No.”
She bites her lip. “And Vega isn’t exactly running a charity.”
“God, no.”
“So why you?”
I glance away for half a second. “I’ve wondered that myself,”
She narrows her gaze. “You said you were fifteen when Vega took you in.”
“Yes.”
“How old are you now?”
“Thirty.”
She nods slowly, like that confirms something. “So around the same age as I am.”
“Yes.”
“And did you see him a lot? Vega? Was he around a lot, like, when you turned twenty, twenty-one?”
I wrinkle my forehead. “Yeah. I mean, he took trips sometimes, but he was around.”
Robin furrows her brow. “But that’s when he was here. Working drugs on the border. When Eagle got involved with him.”
“Eagle was involved with him?”
Robin ignores me, continuing. “He couldn’t have been running a crime syndicate in Colombia while also spending that much time in Texas.”
“I mean, maybe. He has lots of associates,” I say. “Where are you going with this?”
“Eagle got involved with a drug kingpin named Diego Vega.” She swallows, lowering her voice. “We thought… In the barn…”
Oh, shit.
I get it now.
She doesn’t know.
And I didn’t know it was even important. I didn’t understand how much of this family’s confusion rests on one name used for two men.
“Robin.”
She looks at me.
“The man buried underneath your barn,” I say, low, “was not Diego Vega.”
She furrows her brow. “What?”
“Not the Diego Vega who is head of the family now. Not the man who runs the organization tied to the Agudelos, the Bianchis, the McCallisters. To Hernando Reyes.”
Robin stares at me.
“That man—the body I exhumed—was Diego Vega Junior.”
Her mouth drops.
“His son.”