“I don’t believe you.” Natalia shook her head, then wiped sweaty palms against her pants and stood. She shuffled around the coffee table and circled as far away from Ethan as she could manage. She didn’t know how to look at him. Didn’t know what she’d do if he reached for her.
How could he do this to her?
“Yes, you do,” he said slowly, rising from the club chair he’d dropped into shortly after she’d arrived at his apartment.
When he’d texted her, asked her to slip away, to come to him, she’d prayed for a miracle, that he’d found the missing money, that he’d forged a path to that future he’d promised her.
She should have been more specific in her prayers. Because this? This wasn’t a path forward; this wasn’t one step away from a tomorrow so bright and potent it practically buzzed beneath her skin. This was destruction—couldn’t he see that?
“No.” She shook her head and pulled the sleeves down on her pullover, hooking her thumbs into the loops on the cuffs. “Everything you just described . . . It’s no easy thing, Ethan. It would take so much skill, so much ambition, to pull it off. Ana Maria’s just a kid. She wouldn’t—couldn’t—do what you’re suggesting.” For God’s sake, they were talking about a kid who’d never broken curfew, who held a near-perfect GPA, who’d hadn’t so much as had an overdue library book.
“You still see her as a child, as the little sister you promised to protect, but she’s twenty-one, Natalia,” Ethan said, following her over to the window but stopping feet away, as if he knew that each word he uttered placed another foot between them. “She’s smart—smarter than even you or I gave her credit for—and she has as much reason to hate the cartel as you do.”
She shook her head and turned her back on him to stare out at the bright midafternoon sky.
“But a hundred million dollars? An automated program? Large-scale embezzlement?” Natalia barked out a laugh that cut her throat with the edge of hysteria. Ana Maria wouldn’t so much as slip a twenty from Natalia’s purse without asking, but now Natalia was supposed to believe she’d been the mastermind behind a nine-figure theft? It was ludicrous.
Impossible.
And the only answer that made sense.
She knew it. Had understood where all this was going when Ethan had been only halfway through his careful explanation.
“The program is simple enough for someone who knows what they’re doing,” Ethan explained. “Any bored college kid with a laptop and too much time on their hands could write it up. How many of those do you think your sister met at George Washington? How many would have been all too willing to do her a favor, no questions asked?”
Ethan moved closer, circling in with logic, tightening the noose with facts.
“She’s a double major in international business and accounting. She’s made the dean’s list. Twice.”
All true. All things Natalia had taken such pride in, almost as if they’d been her own accomplishments. In a way, they had been. It was because of her, because of the sacrifices she’d made, that Ana Maria had been given the opportunity to go to college in the first place.
And now Ethan was saying what? That the very education Natalia had wanted so badly for herself, had worked so hard to give her sister, had been key in corrupting her?
“I never even saw her coming,” Ethan said with a rueful shrug. “From the beginning, I dismissed her out of hand. Couldn’t imagine a world where that sweet, unassuming kid could be anything other than what she appeared. God, she had me snowed.” Ethan heaved out a rough sigh and settled into a restless pace in Natalia’s peripheral vision.
“There’s not a deceitful bone in my sister’s body,” Natalia argued, her voice firm even as doubts flooded in. There’d been a time when Natalia and Ana Maria had told each other everything. After their mother died, there’d been no one left to talk to, no one else to rely on. There’d been no secrets between them.
Except that wasn’t entirely true. Ana Maria had invited a man into her bed, a federal agent—and said nothing. Not until it was far too late for Natalia to caution her against it. Not until there was nothing she could do to save his life or spare her sister’s heart.
But that had been young love. A relationship too dangerous to acknowledge to anyone.
Natalia had her own experience with that now.
But to systematically steal from the cartel? To set up their uncle as the fall guy? To do that over the course of years and say nothing?
Natalia couldn’t fathom it.
When she shook her head, searching for an argument that rang true, Ethan cut her off.
“She had the access, Natalia. The right education. And most of all, she had the perfect cover. I knew the moment I met you that you were so much more than who you appeared to be. That I’d be stupid to take you at face value. That there were depths to you most would never see. Why did I ever assume it would be any different with your sister?” he asked, shifting toward the window and coming more fully into her line of sight. “You raised her. Protected her. And she watched you become what you needed to in order to survive. Is it any wonder she did the same?”
“So . . . what? You’re saying everything was a lie? That I don’t know my sister at all?” The words tasted bitter against her tongue, but did that make them a lie? She didn’t know anymore, and that made her queasy.
“Of course not. But everyone—you included—looked at Ana Maria and saw a beautiful, fragile little girl. Someone harmless. Someone who wasn’t a threat. There’s power in that. Ana Maria understood that, then turned it to her advantage.”
No one cares for a pretty, harmless little girl.
How many times had Natalia thought the same? That her sister’s innocence, her kindness, her nonthreatening nature, protected her? How many times had she encouraged Ana Maria to remain docile and accommodating and quiet?
To be invisible.
But when had she, too, stopped seeing her? Stopped paying attention?
“She would have told me, Ethan. I would have known.”
“But she didn’t.”
Which was the hardest part of all this to understand. Ana Maria knew the things Natalia had done for her, the price she’d paid for basic freedoms like a car and college and a reasonable curfew. And yeah, she spared her sister the worst of it, the gruesome details that could serve only to make Ana Maria feel guilty for a choice that was purely Natalia’s. But still.
Natalia had kept nothing from Ana Maria.
Now Natalia was forced to wonder what else Ana Maria had lied about. What else she’d hidden.
Because if Ana Maria had successfully stolen more than a hundred million dollars from the cartel, Natalia had to wonder—had it all been worth it?
At the end of the day, Natalia had made a promise to protect her sister. A promise she’d taken seriously. Natalia had done everything in her power not just to keep Ana Maria physically safe but to shelter her from the violence. To put her through school, let her get a job, get her a car.
All because, to Natalia, keeping Ana Maria safe meant taking every hope and dream and wish for a future that she’d ever had and passing them along to her sister. She’d wanted so much more than the cartel life for Ana Maria.
But now it looked like what she wanted hadn’t mattered at all.
If Ana Maria had done what Ethan said, then she was as trapped in the cartel as Natalia had ever been.
And they would kill her for it.
“There’re only two beneficiaries on that account, Natalia. And we both know you never touched a dime of your uncle’s money.”
Defeated, Natalia closed her eyes against the emotions making her sick. “What do you want from me, Ethan?” Natalia asked, her shoulders heavy beneath the weight of a no-win situation. No matter what she did next, it would be the wrong thing. To help Ethan was to betray her sister—and the promise Natalia had made to her father. To shield Ana Maria was to let Hernan—and, by extension, Ethan’s friend—die. Once again, someone else would pay for the choices Natalia made.
Because of her, someone else would die.
“What do I want?” Ethan asked, fire and frustration and the snap of his patience striking through his voice. “I want you to realize that not everything is about your sister. I want you to finally understand that not all promises can be kept,” he railed. “I want you to acknowledge that you’ve already done so much more than your father could ever have asked of you!”
She swallowed hard against the panic climbing her throat and seizing her shoulders, rooting her in place even as she wanted to hit the pavement at a dead sprint and never, ever stop.
“Even yours?” she asked quietly, wondering for the first time why Ethan had drawn her here in the first place. To warn her, yes. But of her sister’s betrayal—or the one he was about to make?
“You made promises, too, Ethan. To your friend. To me.” She looked at him over her shoulder, wishing her eyes weren’t heavy with the sting of tears. Wishing she knew what she’d do, who she’d choose, if it came down to it.
If we have to choose, Ana Maria lives.
The oath had slipped from his lips without the tang of a lie to taint it. She’d known then, as Ethan had stood there, promising her the only thing she’d ever have asked him for, that he was someone special. That he’d keep his word.
It had been the first crack in her resolve. The first chink in her faith that the only person she could truly trust was Ana Maria. But if she’d been wrong about that, wrong about a sister she’d practically raised, how could she possibly put any faith in Ethan?
How could she believe, for even a moment, that he’d choose her—not her sister but her—over the life of his friend? Because that was the only reason he could possibly have for holding his tongue. For not immediately informing Hernan, and by extension, the rest of the cartel, of Ana Maria’s duplicity.
A man would have to love a woman beyond all reason to do such a thing.
How was she supposed to believe she’d earned that sort of devotion?
“You think so little of me?” he asked, his voice low and hurt and begging her to turn and face him. “You still have so little faith in me?”
When she couldn’t bring herself to move, he came to her, pulling her around and bracing her back against the windows, his grip firm and undeniable. For a long moment, he studied her face, searching for what, she didn’t know.
“It’s not me you don’t believe in,” he concluded without victory. “I made you a promise, Natalia. But even then, even before I knew the taste of you, the lines of your body, the depths of your heart, even before you let me see all of you, I made that promise for you. Not because I thought Ana Maria was innocent and not because it was the right thing.”
He shook his head and let go of her. “I wanted to give you something no one else could, even if I didn’t really understand why. I asked for your faith, and I know what a gift it was. I won’t squander it.”
Her heart, which had been lodged in her throat from the moment she’d realized just how much danger Ana Maria was in, dropped to her toes. For so long she’d believed her heart closed, consumed with the sort of love and devotion that could never be rivaled. And she’d been okay with that. Content to live a life dedicated to someone better, more worthy, than herself.
But then Ethan had stormed into her life with cheesy cocktail come-ons and bright, mysterious eyes. He’d been a challenge, an anomaly that didn’t make sense . . . and dangerous from the start.
She just hadn’t understood the ways he’d destroy her, or how fast she’d come to care for him, or how much she’d long for his regard.
The fall had been so fast, so sharp, so effortless, that sometimes it didn’t feel like falling at all. It felt like the embrace of fresh, warm linens and the comfort of a familiar smile and a casual hello.
Ethan felt like home, and she didn’t know how to give that up.
She reached for him, grabbed his forearm, pulled him back to her.
“I’ve never asked her for anything,” she said, stepping into his chest, breathing in his scent, committing the feel of his embrace to memory. “But I’ll ask her for this. For the money. For you.”
“I always knew you would, Natalia.” He brought his arms up, held her close, kissed the top of her head. “But I don’t want you to do it for me or because it’s the right thing. I want you to do it for us. Let’s end this for Will, for Ana Maria, but most of all, let’s end this so that we can start something new. Together.”
She stifled a sob, kissed him on the mouth—one last, long, lingering taste to tide her over—then slipped from his arms. She couldn’t tell him how much she wanted that—the day he’d promised her and every one that came after it. Ethan believed in her, trusted her, and in placing his faith in her, he’d offered her redemption.
She’d prove herself worthy of him if it was the last thing she ever did.
“Hey,” Ana Maria said when she spotted Natalia lingering on the steps leading up to the economics building. “Were we meeting for lunch today? It’s after three. You must be starving if you’ve been waiting for me.”
She bounced down the remaining steps, a tote on one shoulder, her hair tumbling out of a half-hearted topknot. She looked exactly the same as she had that morning on the way out the door, but she felt like a stranger.
Ana Maria pulled to a stop with a wide grin. Just this morning, that same smile had been something Natalia basked in. A warm, simple thing that was a physical reminder that Ana Maria, at least, was still whole. Now she looked at it and wondered what lay dormant beneath. Wondered what she didn’t see.
“Natalia?” Ana Maria asked, her smile crumpling and her brow furrowing. “Is something wrong?”
Yes. Yes, something was very, very wrong. “Take a walk with me?”
“I’ve got another class in a couple of hours, and I was going to swing through the library beforehand. Can this wait?” she asked, shifting her bag from one shoulder to the other.
It took every ounce of restraint Natalia had not to thumb away the red friction burns on her sister’s shoulder. To scold her one more time about the merits of a backpack over a purse. Instead, she simply said, “It can’t wait.”
“Okay.” Ana Maria fell in step beside Natalia, a curious but otherwise-patient expression on her face.
Did she have any idea what was coming? Did some part of her know that her secret had been exposed? Natalia pushed away the questions. God willing, there’d be time enough to worry about learning Ana Maria’s tells. Hopefully, someday in the not-too-distant future, Natalia would be able to look at her sister again without wondering if she knew her. Without wondering if she was being played or lied to.
When they turned south on Twenty-First Street and the noise of heavy traffic ensured a private conversation, Natalia said, “I know about the money.”
Ana Maria didn’t falter a step, didn’t blink, didn’t gasp. She acted for all the world as if Natalia had simply said, I remember where I left the keys or Let’s have Thai food for dinner or Don’t be late.
“How did you find it?” Ana Maria asked, her happy expression slipping into something more practical, morphing her into someone older, the adult Natalia knew she was but rarely saw.
“Does it really matter?”
“The accountant, then,” Ana Maria concluded. “Can’t say I’m surprised. I thought he might be a problem—especially after you started sleeping with him.”
Natalia’s skin tingled with embarrassment, and the thrum of stop-and-go traffic matched the erratic beat of her heart.
“Yeah. I know about that,” Ana Maria admitted in a bitter imitation of something Natalia had said to her not so long ago. She hiked her bag up her shoulder and huffed, the little puff of air ruffling her bangs. “I suspected he wasn’t who he said he was, figured he was FBI or DEA or maybe even Interpol. You sleeping with him only confirmed it.” Ana Maria cocked her head to the side, pinned Natalia with a smug, brittle look. “Guess I’m not the only one keeping secrets.”
“How did you know?”
“That you were sleeping with him?” Ana Maria laughed. “Please. The chemistry between you was palpable from the start—the two of you were destined to fuck or fight or both.”
Natalia winced at the casual way fuck slipped from her sister’s mouth. Another confirmation that when it came to Ana Maria, Natalia had only half the picture.
“But I also knew there was no way you’d go for casual sex, even if it was what you wanted.” Ana Maria shook her head as if the very idea was alien to her. “Which means this isn’t casual, which also means whoever Ethan is, he’s not some cartel lackey. No way Natalia Vega spreads her legs for a man she can’t respect,” she said, her voice dipped in scorn that had been bottled and aged, as if she’d been storing it up for years. “How am I doing so far?”
Sick of the lies, surprises, and second-guessing, Natalia shrugged. “That pretty much sums it up.” Her sister had made it sound crass and a little virginal—as if Natalia had been saving herself for true love—but that didn’t make her wrong. Natalia would never have taken Ethan to bed, let him touch her, see her, know her, if she didn’t respect the man he was.
“So what do you want to know?” Ana Maria asked, sidestepping around a woman with a stroller, giving the chubby-armed toddler a little finger wave. “How I did it?”
“I know the how—Ethan was able to explain that part—I want to understand the why.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Ana Maria stopped Natalia with a hand to her arm, jerking them both to a halt. “Why? Why not?”
“But if anyone besides Ethan had caught you, the consequences, Ana Maria—”
“Are no different from the ones we face every single day, and you know it!” She lowered her voice to a whisper, a grinding, angry rumble that sounded like a machine turning over after being left to rust. “Every day Tio gets more violent, more paranoid. It’s only a matter of time before he lashes out at one or both of us. And even if he doesn’t, the cartel is done with him. You don’t hear the rumors, you don’t see the warnings. But I do. People are careless around me, they don’t think I’m a threat, they don’t think I’m dangerous.” She stared Natalia down, fire in her eyes and heat in her voice. “They’re. Wrong.”
You’re wrong. Ana Maria didn’t have to say it; Natalia heard the condemnation anyway, felt it like a blow to her solar plexus she should have expected but still hadn’t seen coming.
Ana Maria started walking again, her pace hurried but her steps choppy with anger. “Colombia has lost patience with Tio; it’s only a matter of time now.”
Hours. They were down to hours. And though Natalia wouldn’t weep for her uncle, wouldn’t give a second thought to his death if it weren’t for Will, it still rattled her to hear her sister speak so cavalierly about what was to come. Did she not understand that she’d been the one to set this whole thing in motion? That she’d set up their uncle for this fatal fall by embezzling money from his accounts?
“Because of you, Ana Maria. Because you stole a hundred million dollars,” she whispered through an angry snarl.
Ana Maria shook her head once. “No, this has been a long time coming. Hernan thought Papa was weak, that the choices he made in running the business proved he’d gone soft. But even though Papa had lost revenue by cutting off streams of income he didn’t like, he made the others safer, more reliable. In the end, profits would have increased. But Tio convinced the right people he was better suited. That Papa was too busy playing at being legitimate to seize the right opportunities. Tio set Papa up, and then they killed him.” Ana Maria shoved her hands beneath her armpits, her arms crisscrossing her chest. “But what goes around comes around. And now Colombia regrets their greedy decision. Where Papa managed the business, Tio ran it into the ground. If it weren’t the money, it would be something else. Six months, a year? It doesn’t matter. All I did was accelerate the timeline.”
“Then, why take it at all?” It was just one of the questions Natalia couldn’t answer on her own. Nothing about Ana Maria had ever seemed superficial or pretentious. She’d never asked for designer clothes or fancy cars. What could she want all that money for?
“Because I could,” she snapped. “Because he’s taken everything from me, every good decent thing in my life he destroyed. My parents. My childhood. My—” She cut herself off, her denial strangling her voice to the point that for a moment she sounded like the startled twelve-year-old girl who’d just witnessed her father’s murder. “Even my sister. He took it all, so I wanted to take something from him.” She stepped to the side, letting a woman on a cell phone pass between them, then closed the distance again. “Then one day, I asked if I could use his computer to print a term paper, and I realized he trusted me. That I could do anything and he’d never even think to blame me.” She shrugged, stopping to glance in a storefront window and wipe the smeared mascara from beneath her eyes. “In the end, it was all so easy. And now, finally, someone’s noticed. It’ll be over soon. I can’t say I’m sorry.”
Natalia rubbed a hand over her face, parsing through everything Ana Maria had just told her, looking for anything that rang untrue. Relief, cold comfort that it was, trickled through her. Bitterness. Anger. Revenge. Those were things Natalia could understand, and they were so much better than the alternative. Than realizing that Ana Maria had acted out of greed, out of a sense of entitlement. As it was, she was right at the edge of crossing a line she couldn’t come back from.
“I need you to release the money, Ana Maria.”
Ana Maria turned to stare at her over her shoulder. “I named you as a beneficiary, too, you know,” she said gently, as if that mattered. As if that softened the blow somehow. “It’s enough for us to start over somewhere far away, somewhere the cartel can never find us—if they can even be bothered to look.”
For the first time that afternoon, Ana Maria’s expression relaxed, her eyes lighting with excitement and transforming her into the barely grown woman Natalia knew so well.
“They don’t care about us—they never have. They’ll always believe Tio stole all that money. The trust dissolves the minute we empty it—I arranged everything,” she explained, pride infusing her cheeks with a pretty flush. “And now that you know, we can plan. Decide where to go, what to do.”
Natalia shook her head against the shocking realization that Ana Maria thought the cartel would let her walk. That somehow, despite everything, she still managed to believe that they would ever allow Natalia to live.
But even now, as her sister turned to face her, excited with the promise of everything they could do and have together, Natalia couldn’t bring herself to tell her that.
“I need the money now, Ana. A man’s life depends on it.”
Ana Maria’s excitement fled, and she studied Natalia as if searching for answers written across her body.
“Don’t tell me you’re doing this for him.”
“It’s complicated—”
Ana Maria waved her off. “I don’t care—”
“I just need to buy a little time—”
“I don’t care—”
“An innocent man will die if they kill Hernan. Don’t you understand?” Natalia said, then grabbed Ana Maria’s hand and pulled her down a narrow dead end caught between two redbrick buildings.
Ana Maria wrenched her arm away. “I don’t care!” she thundered. “I don’t care about some man I’ve never met. I don’t care about our uncle. I don’t care what Ethan Sullivan wants!”
“But I do,” Natalia admitted on a hushed whisper.
Astonishment stole across Ana Maria’s face. “You fell in love with him.”
Since it was an afternoon of confessions and no part of her could deny Ethan, Natalia just nodded.
Ana Maria laughed, her voice rich with contempt. “I knew you were naive, but I had no idea you could be so stupid.”
Only hours ago, Natalia would have found the idea of Ana Maria calling her naive insane. Now, it just felt like a half-hearted jab but hardly untrue.
“You think he loves you—”
“He does, I know he does—”
“He needs you, Natalia. There’s a difference. And when all this is over and he’s got no more use for you, you’ll realize that. Realize it and thank me,” Ana Maria declared, as if she were decades older, as if her heart had been battered one too many times. “One man’s life is not worth a hundred million dollars or the freedom it will buy.”
“Then, do it for me. Do it because I’m asking, begging you to. Please, Ana Maria, please release the money.”
“Why? Why should I give up the fortune of a lifetime to help the man you love, when you wouldn’t so much as lift a finger to save the one I did?”
“What?” Shock rippled through her, rooting her feet to the pavement, sending her heart pounding. But she didn’t ask who, didn’t need to. In her gut, she already knew.
They were sisters, after all; it should come as no surprise they had similar taste in men.
“You thought it was just sex, didn’t you?” Ana Maria sneered. “That Garrison was just using me to help the DEA gain entry into the cartel. But he loved me. He wanted to save me.” Tears welled in Ana Maria’s soft blue eyes, then spilled down her cheeks. “He told me everything. Things about the case, about his life, even things he’d overheard at work. Rumors about a program that could topple entire organizations—criminal or legitimate—in an afternoon. He told me that for the right price, we could buy our way out. He even gave me a name.” She wrapped her arms around her waist, ignoring the way the tears kept coming. “But I didn’t believe him. How could I? It all sounded so insane.”
Ana Maria shivered, but Natalia knew it wasn’t the chill that lingered in the early-spring air. It was regret, a desperate wish that she could go back, do things differently. Her body’s way of railing against the helplessness that threatened to break her. Natalia was all too familiar with the feeling.
“But then he got caught photographing those shipments, and you killed him—”
“I had to, Ana Maria,” Natalia rushed out, desperate for her sister to believe it. To understand that if there’d been any other choice, she’d have taken it. She’d had no idea that Ana Maria had fallen in love with him. No clue it was anything more than young infatuation. But it wouldn’t have mattered. If there’d been another option, Natalia would have taken it. “There wasn’t any time—I didn’t even know until I was dropped off at the warehouse. I would never intentionally hurt you—”
“It doesn’t matter,” Ana Maria said, sniffling, then wiping away her tears. “After that, I swore I’d do whatever it took to ruin our uncle, to destroy him the way he’d destroyed me.” She flicked her fingertips free of the moisture, as if the tears were somehow beneath her. “The hit was expensive—and risky. I’d set up the trust too neatly to access it at the last minute—but it would have all been worth it if he’d died like he should have.” Ana Maria sighed, as if the inconvenience of it all weighed her down. “But it doesn’t matter now. What’s done is done, and this will all be over soon.”
“Ethan loves me, too, Ana Maria.”
“He needs you. There’s a difference. That money is ours, Natalia, recompense for every cruel thing that man did to our family. It’s a new life; I won’t let that go. Not even for you.”
“Ana—”
“I have class,” she said dismissively as she pulled her hair down from the messy bun, raked her fingers through it, then resecured it with an elastic. As if that gesture alone could put everything right.
“Ana, please,” she begged, even as her sister turned and walked back toward the street.
“Neither one of us should deviate from our normal routines right now,” she said with a casual glance back. “I’ll be home for dinner. I’ll bring a pizza.”
And just like that, Ana Maria turned right and headed back up Twenty-First Street, as if nothing was wrong, as if she hadn’t just broken Natalia’s heart.
Natalia pressed herself against the worn brick at her back and struggled through the surge of emotion attacking on all fronts. Disappointment. Failure. Sadness.
But mostly, she wrestled with the realization that she’d known how this would end. Known that if Ana Maria had gone to such lengths to pull this off—and to keep it from even Natalia—then she wouldn’t let the money go so easily.
She just hadn’t expected the bitterness. The anger. The callous disregard for the fact that Natalia had never asked for any of this. That she’d given up her whole life on the hope Ana Maria might someday have one of her own.
Natalia swallowed.
Her sister was angry, and on some level, she probably thought she was doing the right thing. In a matter of hours, Hernan would be dead; Ana Maria could practically taste the freedom on her tongue. Maybe, if there was time, Natalia could convince Ana Maria that there were other ways. That Ethan would help them.
They were out of time, and Natalia knew of only one way to buy more of it.
She withdrew her phone, punched in Ethan’s number, waited for him to answer.
“Natalia?”
“You told me once you could protect Ana Maria. That you could give the order, have her picked up, and hide her so well no one would ever find her. Did you mean it?” she asked.
Ethan was quiet for a beat, then said, “Yes. Why—”
“George Washington University. She’ll either be at the library or the economics building.” Natalia clenched her phone in nerveless fingers. “I need you to pick her up. Now.”
“Send me her phone number. I’ll have it traced and send someone to pick her up,” he said, snapping off instructions in a way that reminded her that this was who he was. This was what he did. “What’s happening, Natalia?”
She didn’t answer right away, couldn’t. She knew what he’d say. Instead, she put him on speaker, pulled up Ana Maria’s contact card, and sent it to him.
Seconds that felt like unfulfilled lifetimes passed before he said, “Got it. I’ll send someone on the way to her location. Now tell me what’s happening,” he demanded.
“She won’t release the funds,” Natalia admitted, “and I don’t have time to change her mind.”
He cursed, and she smiled, picturing his face, mentally tracing the lines of his frown, the curve of his lips, the break in his nose.
“You’ve kept your promise, Ethan. Now I’m going to keep mine.”
“Natalia—”
“Goodbye, Ethan.”
She hung up before he could say anything, before he could curse or scream or beg, before he could tell her it wasn’t worth it, that she didn’t have to.
Before he could tell her that he loved her.
She turned off her phone and dropped it as she exited the alley.
Less than twenty-four hours until that live stream came through. Without the money, Hernan would be dead in twelve.
Unless, of course, Carlos believed someone else had stolen it in the first place.