Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 96167 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96167 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
Eventually, she settled into soft sniffles, and he moved the boxes to the floor to lay with her on the bed. Side by side, faces inches apart, she stared into his eyes as hers became clearer, more lucid.
“How did you kill them?” She balled her hand in the bedding between their chests, but sympathy flooded her expression.
He pulled in a dry breath. She knew her mother had been the only mother he’d known. While her parents had never really accepted him, never thought he was good enough for her, it still killed something inside him when he pulled the trigger.
His rage, though… That had made it easier. It was such a deadly emotion, rising up from a dark place and taking over without logic or attention to consequence. His anger had been pure passion—raw, vindictive, and his only friend that night.
“Bullets. One shot each. Quick. Andres included.” His voice was scratchy, hoarse. “Then I gathered your personal things. Set the fire. Covered my tracks.”
“Where’s Lucia?” Her voice was so small and hesitant he knew she didn’t want the answer.
“She wasn’t in that fire, but she’s still gone, mi vida.” He’d give anything to return her sister to her.
She lifted up on an elbow. “Where is her body? Do you have that proof?”
“No, but I have an investigation that proves her death. Every trail I followed, every name of every person involved is in one of those boxes in the closet.”
“Show me.” She jumped off the bed and straightened her white dress over her legs as she headed to the closet with way too much hope in her steps.
He couldn’t bring back Lucia, but he could help Camila through the healing process as she grieved her sister all over again.
Two hours later, he sat with her on the bed amid papers, maps, printed photos of locations and slave traders—the entire portfolio of his two-year investigation. An investigation that ended with Lucia inside a transport that crashed in Peru. No one survived in the cargo full of trafficked slaves.
Camila stared at a newspaper clipping, her eyes glazed as if not really seeing it. “She’s gone.”
Her cheeks were sunken in, face pallid, and the paper trembled in her hand. She needed to eat, rest, take a fucking step back from this, and let her heart breathe.
He gathered the papers and started boxing everything up. “Tate asked about Lucia years ago then again this morning. He doesn’t believe me and wants to retrace my steps, see if he can find something I missed.”
“Really? Why?”
“I think he’s just being a competitive asshole. Honestly, I don’t understand his motivation, but he can take a stab at it if he wants. There’s nothing to find that I don’t already know.”
She smiled sadly. “Guess he has a lot of free time now that he doesn’t have to babysit me.”
“He never looked at it that way.” He softened his expression. “If I hadn’t threatened his life four years ago, I’m pretty sure he would’ve gone after you for himself.”
“I always wondered what his deal was.” She shook her head. “I’m still trying to process the last four years.” She watched him put the box with the others on the floor, her eyes narrowing as he sat beside her on the bed. “What else are you keeping from me?”
“You have all my secrets now.” He rubbed a hand up and down her arm, reflecting on her comment about the last four years. “But there’s one question I never answered.”
“I don’t…” She blinked, and blinked again, lips parting. “What question? My brain is crap right now.”
“That last phone call you made to me four years ago…”
“To collect Van’s body?”
He nodded. “It changed my entire world, Camila. Following Van, finding you, approaching Tate, my plan to win you. During those four years, you were all I thought about. In my head, you were already mine, and I was yours. After that phone call, I remained one-hundred-percent faithful to you.”
“You didn’t…” She bit her lip as the corners of her mouth tipped up. “You didn’t have sex for four years?”
Neither had she. It’d been an unknown connection between them, both of them abstaining as if fate had already intervened, pulling them together.
“I didn’t touch or look at another woman,” he said. “Whatever Yessica told you—”
She gripped the back of his neck and kissed him, putting every ounce of her grief and love into the vibrating hum of her lips. When she touched her tongue to his, his brain ignited, and heat spread from his chest, loosening the coil of remorse in his gut.
He broke contact and pressed his forehead against hers, his breaths erratic as he caressed the line of her jaw, kissed the soft skin there. Never had he felt so loved, so wanted. And deep beneath their connection was something more, something darker, sexual and potent, and he knew. It wasn’t just his desire he sensed. It was hers.