30. Chapter 30 #2
I thought of Mateo, the guards who called her Mistress, and the men who had chosen her the moment she shot Ciro.
“He thought he made her useful,” I said quietly.
“He gave her access,” Nik replied. “She used it to make herself dangerous.”
That sounded exactly like Marcela.
“Everything I’ve found points in the same direction.
She wants wealth, control, and proximity to powerful people, and she has no problem using women to get any of it.
Ciro wasn’t the mastermind holding an innocent woman hostage.
Marcela saw his machine and decided she wanted a hand on the controls. ”
My skin prickled.
“And now he’s dead.”
“Yes, which means I’m far more interested in what Marcela Reyes does next than I was yesterday.”
I had escaped her, but that didn’t mean she was finished with me.
Nik leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees.
“There’s something else you need to understand.”
I waited.
“All that filth attached to Isabella Delgado out in the world? It belongs to her. Not you.”
My throat tightened.
“She ruined my name.”
“Then we separate the two.”
He said it as though disentangling years of lies was simply another problem he intended to solve.
“For now, Isabella Eliana Duarte gets you safely into the United States. After that, you decide who you want to be. And you aren’t limited by the fact that Ciro kept you out of the normal world.
If you decide you want to go to university, build a career, start a business, travel, or whatever else you dream up, we’ll make sure your identity gives you a foundation to do it.
Education, history, documentation—whatever you need to walk into your new life without spending the next twenty years explaining why the first twenty-five barely exist on paper. ”
I blinked at him.
“You can do that?”
A quiet confidence came over his expression.
“Yes.”
There was no hesitation in the answer. No suggestion that I owed him anything for it either.
Something loosened inside my chest.
Marcela had spent years defining my stolen name with lies and ugly ambition. I’d assumed that if I ever escaped, I would spend years trying to separate myself from everything she’d done while pretending to be me.
But maybe I didn’t have to inherit any of it.
For the first time, having almost no history of my own didn’t feel entirely like something Ciro had stolen from me.
It could also mean I got to decide what came next.
A blank page.
“And my mother?” I asked. “Did you find anything about her family?”
Nik’s attention sharpened.
“I started looking. Princess Eliana Sofija Dravik was exactly who you said she was, and the Draviks are Eslovenya’s royal family. I haven’t had enough time to go much further than that, and I’m not going to give you half-verified information just because I know you want answers.”
My heart began to beat faster.
“Can you find out what happened after my mother disappeared and whether her family might accept me as part of their lives?”
“Yes.”
I touched the locket under my blouse. Mamá had told me about them so many times—her parents, her brother, the home she had lost, and the family she insisted would love me simply because I was hers.
Until now, they had existed only in her stories and the tiny photographs inside the locket.
“And if they would?” I asked quietly. “Could you help me contact them?”
“I can find out who they are now, what their circumstances are, and the safest way to approach them.”
Something warm and frightening moved through my chest at the possibility.
“I do want to know.”
Nik nodded and leaned back in his chair, his expression growing more serious.
“You unlocked Lachlan from those restraints when doing so could have gotten you killed. You helped keep him alive, then put yourself at risk getting him out of that compound.”
Lucian leaned forward, and unlike Nik, he made no effort to hide how much this meant to him.
“You keep saying you helped each other as if that makes what you did any less important. If you hadn’t gone into that dungeon, my brother might still be chained to that fucking chair. Or dead. You had chances to save yourself, Isabella, and you went back for him.”
His voice roughened.
“I don’t think you understand what that means to me.”
“I couldn’t leave him there.”
“I know.” Lucian’s expression softened. “That’s exactly my point.”
Nik let the silence settle for a moment before adding, “And it was more than most people would have done.”
No one spoke for a moment, and I became acutely aware of Lachlan beside me and Lucian still watching me with the kind of gratitude I wasn’t used to receiving.
Nik finally broke the silence.
“So I want to make something very clear before we reach New York. You do not owe The Syndicate anything for getting you out of El Salvador, for the documents I create, or for anything we do to help you establish a life there.”
Nik tapped his thumb on the edge of the seat. “If anything, the debt runs the other way. The Syndicate owes you.”
I had no idea what to say to that.
For my entire life, everything given to me had come with rules attached. A room, food, clothes, books, even the limited freedom to walk through the gardens had all belonged to Ciro Delgado first. Nothing had ever simply been mine because someone wanted me to have it.
“When we get to New York, you’ll have somewhere safe to live for as long as you need it. We’ll get you clothes, money, proper identification, a phone, and whatever else you need to function without depending on Lachlan for every little thing.”
Lachlan grunted, but Nik ignored him.
“Whatever you decide comes next, we’ll make sure you have the time, resources, and freedom to figure it out for yourself. None of that buys your loyalty, and none of it puts you in our debt. It gives you choices.”
Something in my chest tightened at that last word.
Choices.
It was strange to realize that the terrifying Russian crime boss I’d spent the last two days imagining was using his power to give me choices instead of taking them away.
Lachlan rested a hand between my shoulder blades, his brows drawing together when another tremor ran through me.
“You’re still shaking.”
Only then did I realize how bad it had gotten.
The trembling had spread beyond my hands, and an odd chill kept washing over my skin despite the warmth of the cabin.
The adrenaline that had carried me through the FBO and into the sky was finally draining away, leaving my stomach rolling and my teeth threatening to chatter unless I clamped my jaw shut. Now that we were finally safe, my body had apparently decided it could fall apart.
“Take her to the bedroom, Lach. Let her lie down somewhere quiet for a while,” Lucian said.
“While we’re flying?”
Lachlan smiled.
“Aye. Once we’re up here, you can move around. The bedroom’s perfectly safe.”
“This aircraft is designed for people to eat, work, sleep, shower, and occasionally spend sixteen hours avoiding one another,” Nik explained.
Lucian snorted.
“That last part is why he bought it.”
Nik gave him a bored look.
Lachlan unfastened his seat belt, stood, then reached over and released mine.
Before I could ask what he was doing, one arm slid behind my back and the other beneath my knees.
“Lachlan.”
He lifted me effortlessly from the seat.
“I can walk.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you carrying me?”
“Because I want to.”
I slid my arms around his neck and tried to relax against him as he carried me down the aisle. My body still trembled from the adrenaline crash, but pressed against his chest, the shaking began to ease.
With his arms around me and El Salvador already behind us, I couldn’t help thinking about everything that had happened since Lachlan was dragged into the dungeon beneath my room.
He had utterly changed my life.
I hated everything he had suffered before we reached this moment. Marcela had tricked him, drugged him, handed him to Ciro, and left him cuffed to a chair to be tortured.
He could have died there. Or worse. He could have survived only to end up trapped in whatever future Marcela had planned for him.
Instead, I’d helped give him his freedom back, and somewhere along the way he had helped me take mine.
I had no idea what Manhattan would do to us once ordinary life began.
But even if everything changed, I would never regret the part I had played in getting Lachlan Byrnes home.
Freedom was worth fighting for, and I knew that better than most.