I scan the busy street, up and down and back again, committing it all to memory. Petrópolis is vastly smaller than the metropolis we came from, but Mateus is right. It’s big enough to disappear in, for a little while at least, and the Carnaval celebrations don’t hurt. The people gracing the streets are raising no alarms, but I can’t escape the feeling that could change at any moment.

“Are you looking for someone?” Isabel sits across from me.

We’re at a little restaurant on the edge of town that Mateus recommended, but she’s barely eaten. Instead, she’s staring at me as if she’ll find a doorway to my soul. Too bad there’s no chance of that.

“I am,” I say.

“Who?”

“Someone who might be here for the wrong reasons.”

She sighs and leans her head to the side, as if all of this has become an exhausting game. “Who would that be?”

I look around again, seeing no one of concern. Still, I take nothing for granted. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

“I doubt it. You’ve been acting like someone’s been chasing us since we got here.”

“If they aren’t yet, they will be.”

She glares at me, her expression falling somewhere between panic and skepticism. “Tristan, what the hell is going on? Why would you say that?”

We live such different lives. We’ve been sitting here less than twenty minutes, and I’ve already grown tired of dancing around her innocent questions. I look her square in the eye, readying myself for the real panic to set in after I say what I need to.

“Someone wants you dead.”

She exhales, her breath audibly rushing past her trembling lips. “How… How can you know that?”

“The important thing is that I know. Because I do, I can make sure they don’t get what they want.”

She stares into her lap and grips her paper napkin tightly.

“Is it the same people who put those scars on your body?”

I shake my head slightly. I don’t know where half my scars came from, but I’m certain they’re not the same bad guys who want Isabel knocked off.

“Different people,” I say a little softer, sensing the heaviness of this subject might send her into an emotional fit—one I’m not especially eager to deal with in public. The last thing I need is for Isabel to make a scene.

“Why would someone want me dead?”

Her question has merit. I’m not paid to care why someone needs to be taken out, but I’m confident Isabel hasn’t done anything to deserve a death wish. She’s a revenge hit. Her death will send a message, maybe a warning, to someone who cares about her. If I had to guess, that person is her father.

“I’m not exactly sure why yet,” I finally say.

“Then how do you know they want me dead? You’re talking in riddles, Tristan.”

Her voice is edging on hysterical.

“The less you know, the better. I’m only telling you so you know how dangerous it is to run from me when I’m the one trying to keep you safe. And right now, I am the only one who can keep you safe. Do not doubt it,” I say with finality.

I run the words over in my head, convincing myself of them too. I need to keep her safe. Need to figure out a plan that will get us out of this mess alive.

Or you could skip the mess and end this now. Do your job. To hell with the past.

I wince and take another scan up and down the street.

“If that’s all true, I suppose that explains why you’ve been so…determined.” Her voice is steadier now. She juts her chin out almost defiantly. “So what happens now? We can’t hide out at your friend’s house forever. I have a life back in Rio. I’m sure you do too.”

I stir my coffee and lift the tiny red straw to my lips. I trap the tip between my teeth and contemplate my next words.

I have a few options, most of which I’ll never tell her. I could attempt to stay in Jay’s good graces and do the job I was hired to do. Except now I’ve taken Isabel out of the city, no doubt raising suspicions about my ability to follow through. Then there’s Mateus, who’s become inexplicably driven to unearth the memories Isabel and I share.

“You know things…”

“About your past,” she finishes the thought. “And now you expect me to be able to fill in all the blanks while we’re here.”

“I’m resourceful. I just need a place to start, and I can figure out most of the rest.”

She swallows without making eye contact. “Why did you kiss me?”

I gnash the straw a few times. “I needed you to cooperate,” I admit.

“Right. It’s not like we were in love or anything.” Her voice gets softer as she speaks, like she’s no longer talking to me.

But her words are an invitation I’ll never be able to accept. Whatever she still feels for me has to fade out. I’ll never be the boy of her dreams or the lover who stars in her fantasies. The mere thought of it scares me enough to believe that stealing her away from Rio was a horrible idea.

“I’m not in love with you, Isabel.”

She nods tightly and looks out the window. A few people walk into the shop on the corner. Her focus is fixed on the church across the street, though. Streaks of dirt stain the stucco below its windows. Three thin crosses mounted on the roof’s round arches pierce the blue afternoon sky.

“I think this is a nightmare,” she whispers.

“You have no idea,” I mutter, regretting it immediately.

She looks back to me, her expression pinched with pity. Of all the things we don’t know about each other, I don’t have to explain my nightmares now. She was a firsthand witness to the effects of last night’s horrors. God knows what I said in my sleep.

“I was with you after she died, you know.”

“My mother,” I mutter matter-of-factly, though I’m certain a deeper pain exists somewhere inside me.

“She was a really sweet woman. You were close. I stayed with you for a couple weeks after she died. My parents were pissed, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t leave you alone.”

When Isabel’s soul-piercing stare creeps under my skin, it’s my turn to gaze at the church. The bright cerulean blue fence around it matches the sky, a vibrant distraction from the darkness of my dreams. Whoever my mother was, I know she died in my arms. If the recurring nightmare hasn’t confirmed it, Isabel just did.

If these are my memories, who needs them?

“Maybe my nightmares are better than the truth. I should just be happy with an abridged version, the version my mind lets me remember.”

“For what it’s worth, you don’t seem happy at all.”

I laugh at the ridiculousness of her statement. “I’d agree with you if I had any sense of the word.”

“You never feel joy.”

I shake my head, feeling nothing as I do. “I survive.” I try not to get killed.

The glimmer in her eyes seems like it might spill over into actual tears. She blinks them away rapidly and points toward the church. “I’m going over there for a few minutes, if that’s okay.”

My immediate response is Hell no, but I can’t get the words out before she rises and gets several paces ahead of me. She leaves the restaurant and crosses the street to the gate that separates the building from the curb. I chase her and catch up as she reaches for the latch on the gate.

“Wait.” I cover her hand with mine, trying to ignore how the smallest touch affects me.

“Wait for what?”

There’s peace in her eyes. Sadness and confusion too, but under it all is a layer of stillness that I can hardly understand.

“I’m not going in there,” I say firmly.

She stares steadily at me. “Are you afraid?”

I grimace, both at her question and the odd twist of emotions it inspires. Afraid? Of a church? It’s all I can do to hold back the nervous laugh that wants to break free.

“No, but I’m not letting you out of my sight, which means you’re not going in there.”

I curl my fingers over hers, reveling in the silkiness of them as I struggle with her request. “Let’s just go back—”

A door creaks loudly. “Posso te ajudar?”

An elderly man steps down from the entrance toward us. He’s in black garb, and a string of rosaries dangles from his neck. His skin is mottled and lined with age. One eye is clouded white. Both lower when the high noon sun catches the silver circle at Isabel’s neck.

“São Paulo,” he says with a kind smile.

Isabel fingers the delicate pendant of St. Paul that rests at her clavicle. I noticed it before, briefly. Noticed it first when she was moaning my name two nights ago. When I was a reflex away from ending her life. I haven’t given it much thought until now.

I can see her pulse ticking beneath the thin chain. The charm interrupts the bare beauty of the woman who wears it. Her skin shimmers like a sea of Moroccan sand. The sharp line of her collarbone slopes to her shoulder, disappearing under her shirt.

I memorize her. Desire I can’t understand inspires dangerous visions. Trapping her against me in the middle of the street. Declaring war with the barriers of her clothing. Baring her. The rest of her perfect skin. Inch by inch, I unveil her in my mind. The sounds she’d make under me. The fear and desire I’d recognize with a single taste.

Something tightens in my gut at the memory of her taste. Something beyond the eagerness of her kiss. The desperation. The asking in it. No, the pure taste of her. The melding of our mouths. The familiarity of it. The way I knew her lips were mine the minute I felt them. And her tongue. The hot and greedy cavern of her perfect mouth.

I’m ready to turn the wanton cravings into truth when her rose-colored lips curve into a soft smile for the old man. In that moment, I force myself to see her as he does. Innocent next to the likes of me. A beautiful young girl. Full of life. Clinging to faith. Hope.

“Me chamo Antonio. Qual é o seu nome?”

“Isabel.”

He nods, rests his gaze on her for one thoughtful moment before lifting it to me.

“E você. Qual é o seu nome?” he says, as if I can be lured in with such a simple request.

The warmth I felt a moment ago in my visions of Isabel and all the carnal things I yearn to do to her crashes like a deluge to the ground beneath my feet, leaving me cold and sober.

I’m me again, and I have no business here.

I step away, dragging my hand away from the gate latch, disconnecting from Isabel’s defiant hold on it.

“Tristan,” she says. “His name is Tristan Stone.”

Isabel’s eyes storm when they meet mine, like some sort of mystic who knows all my darkest secrets. Or just a beautiful woman who knows my name…

Any fleeting comfort I felt on the doorstep of the church is swiftly ripped away when Tristan takes my hand, his grasp firm, and pulls me away from the half-blind father who would have welcomed us with open arms. I don’t know what drew me there. Perhaps a moment’s peace, but that’s become impossible now.

I glance back at the old man, gulping down emotion I fear has no place in my current predicament. The priest draws his hand up toward the gate latch, lingering there, his eyes wide and more alert than they’d been moments ago. Tristan doesn’t give him a chance. We’re down the street. I’m tucked into the car seconds later. And we’re off, speeding through town.

I stare at Tristan, regret and misery lodged in my throat. “Who are you?”

“No one you know.” He jerks the gear shift, lurching us forward at a faster speed. “If you knew me, you’d know that’s the last place I belong. And what in the hell were you thinking? Do you think this is a joke? Do you think there’s a chance someone isn’t out there right now on our scent, trying to figure out where I’ve taken you?”

“He’s a priest. He’s harmless.”

“Everyone can be bought. Everyone. I don’t care how compassionate or kind you think they are. Everyone has a price.”

“You really believe that.”

He stares blankly ahead. “Words to live by. It’s not a hard lesson. I’d suggest you learn it before you get us killed.”

I shove a hand through my already tousled hair, incensed. “Tristan, why don’t you just take what you want from me and let me go home? If you don’t already know who my father is, believe me when I tell you that he can protect me.”

“The people who want you dead don’t care about your father’s security clearances in DC.”

I hesitate a moment. “If we’re not safe here, then send me home.”

My panic climbs with his silence.

“Tristan…”

He turns onto the dirt road that leads to Mateus’s compound. My prison.

“No,” he says firmly.

The rumble of the car quiets beneath the thrumming of my blood in my ears. I’m afraid and angry. And I’m suddenly aware of what might have possessed my mother when she fought with my father. Late at night when they thought I was sleeping, I would hear her words flying—a mix of language, her voice imbued with the kind of rage I could never comprehend. Then, sometimes, I’d witness her violence. From the upstairs hallway, hidden by darkness, I’d watch my father restrain her, calm her. Beyond that, he never retaliated.

Until this moment, I never believed I could be capable of such intensely negative emotions toward the man I loved. As I dig my fingernails into the car’s seat, I imagine doing the unthinkable. I have to get away.

I reach for the door handle and unlatch it.

“Isabel!”

We swerve as Tristan reaches across the seat to pull me back. He slams on the brakes and eases the car onto the side of the narrow road.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

His proximity and anger should frighten me, but I’m too fired up. I match his furious stare and yell, “What do you want from me?”

His nostrils flare. “For starters, I want you to stop trying to jump out of the goddamn car.”

“Why do you care?”

“Because I’m trying to keep you safe.” He yanks the door shut tightly and leans back, putting space between us again. “If I’d known you had a death wish, I would have kept you tied to the bed or—”

“Or what?”

“Never mind.”

My heart thunders in my chest. Something in his voice changes when he talks about keeping me safe. Something that niggles at my instincts. I still love him, even if it’s just the memory of him. But the more time we spend together, the less I trust the man beside me.

“What. Do. You. Want?”

He turns off the ignition, letting silence settle around us.

“Tristan—”

“My mother. Just…” He closes his eyes and swallows. “Just start there, okay? It’s the most vivid memory I have.”

A few minutes pass between us. Our breathing slows. Gradually, the fury between us turns into something else.

“Her name was Grace. She worked as a nurse in Baltimore. She was coming off the night shift at the hospital when it happened.” I hesitate, reliving the sadness. “It was awful. The police had a couple leads but never caught the guy who did it. I often wondered if they had, if things would have been different.”

He looks up at me, silently asking for more.

“You changed,” I say quietly.

“How?”

I exhale slowly, taking myself back to that time. The tragedy had changed us both.

“Something went dark inside you. At first, I didn’t think it would change us, because we were closer than ever. Unshakable. But plans we’d made began to shift little by little. When we were together, sometimes it felt like you were somewhere else. I worried that you’d never make peace with it.”

“And then I left.”

I nod. “We’d both applied to a few schools. I got acceptances from some Ivy League schools, so my parents were obviously breathing down my neck about that. But we both got into UCLA. It was kind of like our little escape plan. You wanted to get away from your past. I wanted to get out of DC.”

“Let me guess. The plan changed.”

“We were ready to send in our acceptance letters when you changed your mind. An army recruiter reached out to you right around then and started filling your head with all the possibilities.”

“Then what happened?”

“I ended up staying close to home for school. I felt tethered to DC, like if I went too far I’d never see you again. Didn’t end up mattering, I guess. You left for basic training. I remember you kept saying, ‘I’ve got to do this. It’s the right thing to do.’” I close my eyes. “If you want to know the truth, I think you needed to take your revenge out on someone, and it didn’t matter if it was your enemy or someone else’s.”

My thoughts spiral down into the agony that followed. The long months apart. The calls that came less often. Then the letter that ended everything.

Why couldn’t I let him go? Why couldn’t I move on and live a normal life? Have friends. Be happy. Be with someone like Kolt, who’s probably wondering where I am now, along with my students and the staff at the school. I’ve been missing for close to twenty-four hours.

I exhale a rough sigh.

“I just couldn’t let you go when there was still a sliver of hope that you’d come home. I tried to move on. I came here…”

“You came to Rio to forget me.”

“I wasn’t in a good place for a long time. I needed a change. Something big. Something…dangerous.”

“You came to the right place.”

“I suppose I did,” I say, gazing out the window.

The sound of the engine revving back to life brings me back to the present. Tristan is eerily silent as he drives us back the rest of the way. We pass through the gates under the watchful eyes of the guards, climb the white stone steps of Mateus’s home, and I excuse myself to get cleaned up.

I take my time in the shower, eager to let go of some of the tension and uncertainty that’s taken hold of me. I towel dry my hair and put on a white sundress I packed, my thoughts tripping over our earlier conversation and his odd behavior at the church.

Maybe it’ll all be worth it in the end, when Tristan can find the truth I’m still not convinced he wants to know. Maybe the people who want me dead will give up, and I can have a normal life again. A normal life. I didn’t come to Rio to have normal. I came to shock myself out of my own malaise, brought on by missing Tristan to the point of inescapable daily pain.

I gaze up into the mirror and judge my reflection. My eyes are tired, my hair leaves much to be desired, and the dress still holds faint wrinkles from being jammed in my bag. What will Tristan see? I don’t know whether to trust that our kiss was a ploy to get me to leave Rio with him. I can hardly believe that the passion crackling between us when we touch is only mine.

Venturing beyond the room Tristan and I share, I follow the sound of voices murmuring in the kitchen. I’m hit with the most amazing cooking smells, and then the sight of Karina with Mateus’s arms wrapped around her waist as they whisper and laugh.

I hesitate in the doorway—hoping I can step away unnoticed—when Mateus turns to me.

“Isabel.” He smiles warmly.

“Sorry. I thought Tristan might be in here.”

“He’s in the den. We were just getting things ready for dinner.”

“It smells delicious. Can I help with anything?”

“Actually, if you could help Karina, I need to attend to a few things.”

“Go. I can finish up,” Karina says, nudging him away with a coy smile.

He shoots her a heated look before leaving us alone.

Karina dices what look to be fresh chives from the garden. “Mateus says you went into town today. How was it?”

I open my mouth to speak and realize there’s nothing I can say about today that doesn’t sound completely crazy. I snap it shut and shrug with a smile.

She huffs out a little laugh. “I was wondering if Tristan was any different with you. I suppose not.”

Her familiarity with Tristan sparks my curiosity. Karina is more than the household staff. She’s obviously Mateus’s lover, and she may know the new Tristan better than I do.

“You know him well?”

She sprinkles the chives into a large pot and bangs the wooden spoon on the edge a few times. “Not well. He’s Mateus’s friend. He doesn’t pay anyone else much attention.”

Even though I’ve just witnessed her and Mateus’s embrace, a little prickle of jealousy edges its way into my thoughts. Why would she desire more of Tristan’s attention?

“He doesn’t seem to want many friends,” I finally say.

She cocks her head. “That’s probably true.”

“How did he and Mateus meet?”

She shoots me a suspicious look but covers it up quickly by turning her attention to the oven.

“I don’t know all the details. I don’t expect I ever will. All I can say is that Mateus is in his debt. Not that he minds. Tristan is always welcome here.”

Karina pulls out a tray of nicely browned empadas from the oven and rests it on the granite counter. Only now do I realize how little I’ve eaten since leaving Rio. I’m starving, and for the first time, I feel relaxed enough to eat.

“Can I help?” I’m willing to do anything to expedite dinner or steal a bite.

Mateus returns just then. “Isabel. Come. Tristan is waiting for you.”

I sigh and follow him deeper into the house until we reach the den. Tristan halts mid-pace and looks me over, his expression unreadable. I glance down and tug at the sides of my dress.

“Sorry. I didn’t pack much.”

He comes toward me. “You look fine.”

I try not to cringe at the word fine. Even though it perfectly describes Tristan. Now that he’s not dragging me from one place to another and I’m not trying to leap out of a moving vehicle, I can actually appreciate the physical man. His corded neck and arms that test the fibers of his black T-shirt. His narrow hips and muscular thighs. His fearless stance before me, close enough to touch.

I lift my wandering stare, only to get lost in the cool assessing eyes that have seen more than I can possibly know.

“Is everything okay?”

I swallow and pretend like I’m not blatantly checking him out, even though a little part of me still feels entitled to.

“Is black the only color in your wardrobe?”

He shrugs. “I just try to blend in.”

My defenses come down a little with his honesty. “You could never blend in, Tristan.”

“I do a pretty good job of it, actually.”

A small smile curves my lips. “I’d find you in a crowd anywhere.”

“Or on a busy street, as it were.”

Thank God I found you…

As if he can hear my unspoken words, he averts his gaze. In the corner, a round, mahogany table is set for two. Several candles burn in the center. It feels oddly intimate—between the rich colors of the room, the musk of leather furniture, and the candlelight.

“Hungry?”

“Starving is more like it,” I say.

Karina walks in with two steaming plates right on cue.

“Then let’s eat,” he says.