30. Chapter 30
Chapter thirty
The only home I’d ever known fell away beneath me.
The airport disappeared first. Then the roads and buildings became too small to distinguish from one another, swallowed by fields and stretches of green. The mountains rose into view as we climbed, their ridges folding one behind another in every direction.
Somewhere among them was La Cruzona. I searched even though I knew there was no chance I could find it from here.
For twenty-five years, that compound had been the center of my entire world. Every room I’d slept in, every meal I’d eaten, every book I’d read, every person I’d loved or feared—all of it existed somewhere below me.
Then the first wisps of clouds drifted past the window.
Within minutes, the mountains were gone too.
White stretched beneath the wing where my entire life had been.
I’d read about airplanes and flight. I’d watched them pass high overhead and tried to imagine what it would be like to sit inside one, looking down instead of up.
Nothing I’d imagined came close to this.
I was thousands of feet above the earth, hurtling toward a country I’d never seen, wearing an outfit from a donation box with my mother’s locket beneath my blouse and everything else I possessed stuffed into the small backpack at my feet.
With an Irish mafia man sitting beside me.
The thought should have been funny, but it wasn’t.
The rush from the FBO was still tearing through my body. We had run through gunfire, climbed onto an aircraft while armed men covered us, ignored whatever airport authorities had wanted us to do, and launched ourselves into the sky before anyone could stop us.
My heart hadn’t seemed to understand that the danger was over.
It continued pounding far too fast while my fingers dug into the window frame.
And as the clouds erased the last glimpse of the country below, something worse than adrenaline took hold.
Doubt.
What the hell had I done?
I trusted Lachlan, I really did.
He had given me every reason to trust him. He’d kept his word when doing so had hurt him, protected me when abandoning me would have made his own escape easier, and never once used his strength against me.
But trusting Lachlan wasn’t the same thing as knowing what happened next.
I’d been so focused on getting out of La Cruzona that escape itself had become the entire plan.
Had I done the right thing by betting everything I had on a man from New York I’d known for only a few days? Had I jumped out of the frying pan and straight into the fire, as the women in the kitchen used to say whenever someone solved one problem by creating another?
I didn’t believe Lachlan would hurt me, but his world frightened me. And these men? They were absolutely terrifying.
And judging by the jet surrounding me, they had more money than I could possibly imagine.
Lachlan belonged among them.
I’d seen that clearly in the FBO.
The moment his people reached him, something about him had changed. He was still the man who teased me, kissed my knuckles, called me Mouse, and held me while I slept, but he was also unmistakably one of them—powerful, dangerous, and completely at home in a world that still frightened me.
Then there was me. A nobody with nothing.
I had escaped with no job, money, or real identification beyond the documents Nik had manufactured for a woman named Isabella Eliana Duarte.
I didn’t know how to rent an apartment, open a bank account, navigate New York City, or do any of the ordinary things people my age probably managed without thinking.
Lachlan would take care of me. But that frightened me too. Not because I doubted he would, but because I knew he would.
He was that kind of man.
But what happened a week from now? A month? When he went back to running his club and living the life Isabeast had interrupted? When the intensity of almost dying together stopped making everything between us feel so immediate?
We had spent the night wrapped around each other, and I wanted more nights exactly like it.
Far more than I was ready to admit.
But great sex and feelings neither of us had fully named didn’t make me his permanent responsibility.
I wouldn’t become another obligation he never asked for.
Somehow, I would figure out how to stand on my own feet. I would find work and eventually repay him.
A warm hand closed over mine.
Lachlan gently pried my fingers away from the window frame.
Only then did I realize how quiet the cabin had become. The violence and shouting were gone, replaced by the steady hum of the aircraft and the soft rush of air that seemed impossibly peaceful after everything we had just survived.
“Mouse.”
I turned.
His attention dropped briefly to my trembling hand before returning to my face.
“Sweetheart, are you all right?”
Lucian had noticed too. He sat ahead of us, but his head had turned enough that I could see the concern on his face.
Nik glanced back from his laptop.
I hated suddenly being the center of everyone’s attention.
“I’m scared,” I whispered.
My lower lip quivered.
Lachlan’s expression changed immediately.
“Of flying?”
I shook my head.
“No.” My voice came out thinner than I wanted. “Everything else.”
He waited.
That was one of the things I had learned about him. Lachlan didn’t rush to fill the silence simply because it was uncomfortable.
I looked back toward the window, although there was nothing to see now except white clouds and blue sky.
“You have a life waiting for you in New York.” I swallowed. “I don’t.”
His thumb moved slowly over the back of my hand.
“You have a life, Mouse.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Aye. I do.”
I glanced up at him.
“I don’t know what happens next for me.”
For several seconds, he said nothing.
Then he leaned closer.
“Neither do I. But we’ll figure it out. There’s no rush.”
I stared down at our joined hands.
“I don’t want to become your responsibility.”
“You’re not. You’re a woman I want in my life. There’s a difference.”
My chest hurt.
He squeezed my hand.
“You don’t have to decide today what the rest of your life looks like. Hell, you don’t have to have it figured out six months from now. Stay with me because you want to stay with me. We’ll sort out the rest as it comes.”
His certainty didn’t answer all the questions crowding my head, but it quieted enough of them that I could finally breathe without fighting for every inhale.
A soft chime sounded through the cabin a few minutes later, followed by one of the pilots letting us know we had leveled off and could move around.
Nik closed his laptop, released something beside his seat, and swiveled the chair until he faced us. Lucian did the same with his.
With both men suddenly turned toward me, every old instinct from La Cruzona told me to prepare for questions and judgment. I straightened without meaning to, bracing for the scrutiny, and Nik noticed.
“I suppose now would be a good time to share with you that I’ve spent several hours digging into your life.”
I cocked one eyebrow at him.
His mouth pulled slightly to one side.
Lachlan frowned. “Stop acting like a dick.”
Nik ignored him.
“There isn’t much to find about the woman sitting in front of me. Ciro kept you almost entirely outside the normal systems. There are no school or employment records, no banking or travel history, and very little proving Isabella Eliana Delgado ever existed beyond his compound.”
Hearing my entire life reduced to almost nothing was strangely unsettling.
“But,” Nik continued, “the woman who stole your identity has been busy.”
My stomach tightened.
“What did you find?”
He studied me for a moment before answering.
“Marcela Reyes is from San Antonio. She earned a law degree, passed the bar, and had a promising legal career before she crossed paths with Ciro.”
“She told me some of that.”
“But she left out an important part. She wasn’t just some young attorney Ciro noticed and trapped.
His financial records crossed her desk, and she used the opportunity to study everything she could about him—his businesses, his money, his habits, the people around him, even the kind of woman he was drawn to.
Once she understood what appealed to him, she deliberately made herself into that woman and put herself directly in his path. ”
I stared at him.
“She chose him?”
“Very deliberately.”
A chill moved through me.
I had always known Marcela was ambitious. I’d watched her flatter the man I used to call Father, sleep with him, manipulate his men, and take more power every chance she got. But somehow hearing that she had targeted him from the beginning made her feel even more dangerous.
“Once I had Marcela Reyes instead of Isabella Delgado to work with, other things started lining up,” Nik continued.
“She’s used more than one identity. There are accounts under different names, cryptocurrency wallets, money moved in ways Ciro apparently didn’t know about, and enough financial activity hidden from his people to make it clear she was stealing from him while he thought he controlled her. ”
Lachlan gave a humorless huff beside me. “That sounds like Isabeast.”
Nik’s expression remained hard.
“Money wasn’t the worst of it. She helped recruit women.”
My hands went cold.
“I knew that.”
“I don’t think you understood how deeply involved she was.
Marcela targeted college students and other young women who wanted modeling careers, scholarships, travel, connections, or simply a way into wealthy circles.
She learned what each of them wanted and used those ambitions to lure them in.
The deeper I dig, the more her contacts and organizations overlap with the same trafficking network we’ve been tracing through Leon Brands and Franklin Whitaker. ”
Lucian’s expression darkened, but Nik continued in the same controlled tone.
“She wasn’t merely carrying out Ciro’s orders. She was quietly using his money, access, and organization to build something of her own, gathering influence, cultivating loyal men, and creating connections Ciro never realized belonged more to her than to him.”