CHAPTER 8
HELENA
◆
By the time we reached S?o Aurelio, my apartment was a black mouth above the street.
Firefighters dragged hoses through the lobby. Reporters crowded behind police tape. Neighbors stood in pajamas beneath umbrellas, staring up at the home where I had kept my mother’s earrings, my father’s letters, and six years of proof that I had built a life after they were gone.
Gabriel’s car stopped half a block away.
“You stay inside,” he said.
I opened the door.
He caught my hand. “The fire could be cover.”
“My neighbor is seventy-three and forgets her medication when she’s frightened.”
“I’ll send someone.”
“She knows me.”
“So does the person who burned your apartment.”
I looked at his hand around mine.
He released me.
Then he got out first.
We walked into the rain together. Cameras turned. Someone shouted that I was under arrest.
A police officer moved toward us until Gabriel showed him a Bastion credential and said something too low for me to hear. The officer stopped.
Mrs. Azevedo sat beneath the awning of the bakery across the street, wrapped in a silver emergency blanket. I knelt in front of her.
“Your medicine?” I asked.
“In my purse.” Her hands shook. “They said the fire started in your bedroom.”
“Were you hurt?”
“Only offended. That young firefighter carried me like a sack of flour.”
“You threatened to hit him with your cane, didn’t you?”
“He had no respect for my dignity.”
Relief broke through me so sharply I laughed.
She touched my cheek. “Your father would be furious.”
“At the fire?”
“At you standing in the rain without an umbrella.”
Gabriel opened one above us.
Mrs. Azevedo looked up at him, then at me. “This one is too handsome to be trustworthy.”
“I told him the same thing.”
“I heard,” Gabriel said.
She smiled. “Good ears too. Keep him.”
The phrase hit both of us. Gabriel’s gaze settled on me, unreadable and far too intent.
I stood before the rain could expose more than my face.
The fire captain allowed us into the building after the flames were contained. Gabriel came despite three arguments, one threat from the police, and my reminder that he was not my husband.
“That is not the winning point you believe it is,” he said as we climbed the wet stairs.
“What does that mean?”
“It means watch your step.”
The fourth-floor hall smelled of soaked plaster and smoke. My front door had been broken inward before the fire, the lock hanging by one screw.
Inside, water dripped from the ceiling. The living room walls were streaked black.
My couch had collapsed into springs. Every window was gone.
I stepped over a charred book.
Gabriel stayed close without touching me.
The fire had started in the bedroom, exactly where the news said. My mattress was a burned frame.
The dresser had split from heat. One red shoe lay beneath a layer of gray ash, absurdly bright.
I bent to pick it up.
The heel broke in my hand.
“I wore these to my first national interview,” I said.
Gabriel looked at the shoe as if he could punish the person responsible through it.
“I can replace everything.”
“No, you can buy things.”
He accepted the correction. “Yes.”
On the bedroom wall, someone had painted a message before setting the fire.
LIARS BURN.
The letters ran black beneath the water.
My chest tightened. My father had received the same words in an envelope one week before his arrest.
Gabriel saw my face. “What?”
I told him.
His expression went empty in the dangerous way I was beginning to recognize.
“Who knew?”
“My mother. Me. The police officer who took the report.”
“Name?”
“Retired. Maybe dead.”
“I’ll find him.”
I walked into what remained of the closet. The floor sagged beneath my boots. Gabriel caught my elbow.
“Enough.”
“I need my records.”
“They’re gone.”
“No.” I pulled free. “My father taught me paper survives men who control screens.”
“He didn’t say it survives fire.”
“He hid things.”
The bedroom was wrong.
Everything had burned except one rectangle of wall behind the melted record cabinet. The plaster there was smoke-stained but intact, protected by the heavy wood.
I dropped to my knees and pressed along the baseboard.
A panel clicked open.
Inside sat one vinyl record in a clear sleeve.
Cartola.
My father had kept a second copy.
Gabriel crouched beside me. “Was that always there?”
“I didn’t know.”
The paper label had peeled from the center. Coordinates were written underneath in blue ink, along with four words.
WHERE BEATRIZ COULD brEATHE.
Gabriel closed his eyes.
“Costa Clara,” he said. “My mother had a house on the coast. She called it the only place where no one needed a title.”
“You still own it?”
“Through a trust Vale doesn’t know.”
A floorboard cracked in the hall.
Gabriel stood and drew his weapon.
A firefighter appeared in the doorway. “You need to leave. Structural team says this side is unstable.”
“I can walk,” I said before Gabriel could decide otherwise.
Then the ceiling groaned.
A beam shifted above us.
Gabriel crossed the distance and lifted me against his chest.
“Put me down.”
“No.”
“Everyone has cameras.”
“Good.”
He carried me through the ruined apartment, down four flights, and into the rain while reporters shouted my name.
I stopped fighting because one arm was around his neck and because his heart beat hard beneath my hand. He didn’t hide his face.
He didn’t put me in a car before the cameras could see. He walked through the entire crowd with me in his arms, openly choosing a wanted woman.
At the curb, a prosecutor held up an arrest order.
“Gabriel Salles, surrender Helena Duarte.”
Gabriel stopped.
His arms tightened.
“Come take her,” he said.
The prosecutor looked at the six Bastion guards surrounding us and reconsidered his morning.
“You are obstructing a federal warrant.”
“I am preserving the life of a witness under active attack.”
“She is accused of financial terrorism.”
“She is accused by the same chamber that signed her warrant before the first shot.”
The cameras caught every word.
Gabriel lowered his head to my ear. “Do you want me to put you down?”
The question mattered because he asked it where everyone could hear.
“No,” I said.
His eyes met mine.
Something fierce and private passed through them.
He carried me into the car.
We drove through the afternoon and reached Costa Clara after dark. Beatriz’s house stood above the ocean behind a wall of wind-bent palms.
White stone, blue shutters, wide terraces. No neighboring lights for half a mile.
Gabriel unlocked the front door and immediately opened the doors along the hall.
Kitchen. Study.
Guest room. Terrace.
Every exit remained visible.
“You don’t have to do that,” I said.
“I know.”
The simplicity undid me more than kindness should have.
I walked onto the terrace. The ocean below was black, the waves white where they broke against the rocks. Salt wind pulled smoke from my hair.
Gabriel stayed inside until I turned toward him.
Only then did he come closer.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“For what?”
“Every thing money cannot replace.”
My throat closed.
I pressed the red shoe’s broken heel into his palm. I had carried it without realizing.
“Keep this,” I said.
“Why?”
“Because I’m tired of holding ruined things.”
He wrapped his fingers around it as carefully as if I had given him something precious.
His phone rang inside.
Mara’s voice came through the speaker. “Secure line. Caller ID is impossible.”
Gabriel’s voice went flat. “Trace it.”
“I am. It’s routing through an evidence server disconnected three years ago.”
The old landline on the kitchen wall began to ring.
Once.
Twice.
A label beneath it read BEATRIZ—PRIVATE.
Gabriel crossed the room and lifted the receiver.
Static crackled.
Then my father’s voice said, “Helena, if you can hear this, he has started the clock.”