Chapter Twenty-Two
RYAN
Six weeks inside.
Six weeks of waking up in the villa as Marco Reyes, moving through the hacienda as Marco Reyes, eating at Clemente’s table, and discussing Clemente’s business and being exactly who Sam’s team had built him to be, with the thoroughness of a man who understood that the difference between a good cover and a perfect one was the difference between coming home and not.
The cover is perfect.
That is the problem.
Marco Reyes has become easy in a way that Ryan finds quietly unsettling, the ease of a second skin worn long enough that you stop noticing the seams. He wakes up in the morning and becomes Marco before being fully conscious.
He moves through the hacienda, logging everything without deciding to, and sits at Clemente’s table, talking about distribution networks and New York contacts with the fluency of a man who has been doing it his whole life.
Because Marco Reyes has been doing it his whole life.
Ryan Lismore is just along for the ride.
The villa has become home in the way that no place you can’t leave ever truly becomes home. The stone path between it and the main house is worn familiar under my feet. The ocean is constant beyond the walls. The guards in their patterns are as well known to me now as my own heartbeat.
Sam calls on a Tuesday.
The phone vibrates in my pocket, three times, the pattern Sam uses when it is him, and I keep my face still, my hands steady, and say nothing to Clemente about it because there is nothing to say.
Too risky.
Always too risky.
Sam will understand.
Sam always understands.
But the call sits in my pocket for the rest of the afternoon like something with weight, the weight of a world I’d left behind pressing against my ribs, the ghost of a compass on my inner forearm still pointing north even here, even now, even in the middle of all of this.
I know, I think. I’m working on it.
***
Clemente holds the meeting in his study, a room I’ve been in a dozen times now. High ceilings and the sound of the ocean through the rear window. Expensive furniture arranged with the deliberateness of a man who understands that the spaces you occupy say something about who you are.
Clemente is behind the desk.
Diego is across from me, wearing a different Hawaiian shirt this time, black pants, and that same piece of gum working steadily in his jaw.
Marco Reyes—attentive, professional, present.
Ryan—cataloging everything.
My watch has been recording since the meeting began. It’s standard Bureau issue is indistinguishable from any other expensive timepiece, which is entirely the point. Everything said in this room is going somewhere Sam’s team will eventually be able to use.
Everything, I remind myself. Every word matters.
Clemente talks.
He always talks, the expansive confidence of a man who has never once been in a room where his words weren’t the most important ones.
He talks about the New York arrangements, the distribution gaps, what he needs from Marco Reyes in the coming months—routes, contacts, and the logistics of moving product through a city that consumes it faster than most operations can keep up.
And then Clemente’s tone shifts, barely, just slightly, the shift of a man moving from one agenda item to the next, and he says it the way he says everything, casually and conversationally, like it is simply another logistics problem to be solved.
“Security has become more of a concern,” he says. “Since we lost the girl.”
I reach for my water glass.
“Lawrence has been difficult,” Clemente continues. “He has particular tastes. The girl we sourced for him was exceptional, apparently. He hasn’t been able to find a replacement who satisfies him.” A pause. Almost amused. “Particular men are particular problems.”
The girl.
I know which girl. I know her name, face, and the strength of the woman who had gone back to college after everything that had happened to her, qualified as a nurse, and married the man who had pulled her out of that darkness.
The man sitting in New York right now is waiting for his moment to come for the people in this room.
My hand tightens around the glass.
I take one slow, controlled breath.
The muscle in my jaw holds for exactly one second before I release it.
Marco Reyes—attentive, professional, unaffected.
Ryan—murderous.
Diego notices.
I catch it in my peripheral vision, that quick gaze cutting across to me, reading something in my face, assessing it, and a beat of silence. Then he leans back in his chair with the loose energy of a man who has decided something is funny.
“Marco.” That grin. “You want one for yourself, just say the word.”
He laughs.
Clemente smiles.
I lift my glass and let the corner of my mouth move in the way Marco Reyes would move it, easy and appreciative, with the mild amusement of a man who understands the joke and has no feelings about it. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
The moment passes.
Nobody in that room knows what those five words cost me.
She comes in twenty minutes later.
Clemente calls for her, a single word, her name, the ease of a man who summons people and expects them to come. Riley appears in the doorway in a dress chosen by someone who understands exactly what it is for.
Ava.
Completely, entirely, seamlessly, Ava.
She crosses to Clemente without looking at anyone else in the room, not at Diego, not at me, just at him, the focused warmth of a woman whose whole world is the man she is walking toward, and Clemente places her in his lap with the ease of a man who has done it a thousand times.
His hand moves to her waist.
Then higher.
His fingers trace the neckline of her dress with the casual proprietary certainty of a man who touches what is his because he can. Slowly, his thumb circling.
“The best woman I’ve ever had.” To the room. To no one. To everyone. The satisfied announcement of a man displaying something he is proud of. “In every way.”
I look at the window.
At the ocean beyond it.
At anything that isn’t Clemente’s hand on Riley.
She is Ava. Completely. Not a flicker of anything, just that composed ease she’d built over months, his hand on her, and her face warm, present, and entirely performing.
Every part of me wants to put my fist through his face.
Not jealousy or not only that. It’s something deeper, more complicated, and furious.
It’s the rage of a man watching someone he cared about be reduced to a display piece by the most dangerous man in the room, and having no recourse, response, or option except to sit in his chair, be Marco Reyes, and look at the ocean and breathe.
She had told me herself.
I do what I need to do, Ryan.
Understanding it then had been one thing.
Watching it now is completely another.
Marco Reyes—mildly appreciative, appropriate, professional.
Ryan—every muscle in his body held perfectly still by sheer force of will.
And then Riley’s eyes find mine.
Just for a fraction of a second.
A look so brief that anyone watching would have seen nothing, two people in the same room glancing in the same direction, nothing more.
But in that fraction, it was everything.
I’m okay.
Stay in the chair.
Don’t.
I hold her gaze for exactly as long as is safe, then I look back at the ocean and stay in the chair.
The meeting wraps up an hour later.
Clemente stands, and that is the signal for everything else to end, Diego pocketing his phone, Riley sliding off Clemente’s lap with that same composed ease, the room reassembling itself into something ordinary.
Clemente speaks briefly to Diego about something logistical, his hand resting at Riley’s waist as he does, casual, proprietary, and certain.
She catches my eye once as I stand from my chair.
Just once.
Just briefly.
‘I’m okay,’ it says again.
Walking back to the villa along the stone path, my pace stays unhurried, my hands are loose at my sides, and the evening settles around me, the garden on either side, the sound of the ocean growing as the main house falls behind, the guards moving at the perimeter in their familiar patterns.
***
Late that night, I stand at the villa window.
The ocean beyond the walls is doing its constant thing, that low, steady sound that has never been calming in this place, carrying underneath it the weight of everything this hacienda contains and everything it has done.
I think about Tate.
About the certainty of my brother, the way he’d always known which direction to move when everything was unclear.
Wondering if he knows I am still alive. Wondering if Sam has found a way to tell him.
Wondering about Sophia somewhere out there, whether she is okay, if Tate is keeping his promise, and if the grief has started to ease even slightly around the edges.
She’s okay, I tell myself. Tate has got her.
And then underneath that, quieter and less examined, something else entirely. Something that belongs to a different life and world, and isn’t going to be named here, not in this place, not as this person.
Not yet.
I look at my left forearm in the villa’s low light.
The compass ghost, needle pointing north.
Six weeks inside. Every day, another piece of what they need, one day closer to the end of all of this.
Come on, I think into the night. Let’s finish this.