I pull her into my arms, turning her to face me. "I'm okay. I'm fine. Not a scratch."
She nods against my chest, letting out a shaky breath. "I need to…" She pulls away, straightening, lifting her chin, hardening her features. "Sophia needs to go away for now, I think. I can't be her out there."
I pinch her chin and tip her face up. "I know. But first…" I take her mouth, kiss her breathless.
She pulls back, panting softly, gazing up at me with a soft, loving expression. "Ren," she breathes. "I wish we had more time. I had planned on returning the favor. My legs are still a little shaky from thosethreeorgasms you gave me."
I kiss her again. "Only if you want to,amor. There's no score, no keeping track, no returning any favors. I do that because I like to. Making you come is more than pleasure enough for me." I run my thumb over her lips, silencing her protest. "I know. I know. And if you want to, I will very gladly let you. But if that's a trigger, then you need to know down to your very soul that I willneverfeel deprived if you can't do it.”
She smiles up at me, searching my face with such love and gratitude that my heart feels incapable of absorbing the blinding beauty of it. "Ren, my sweet love. Your compassion andunderstanding are…" she shakes her head, shrugs. "Such a gift. One that a part of me says I don't deserve." It's her turn to speak over my protest. "I know, Ren. I know—I do deserve it. Just as you deserve the love I have to give you. I just…I can only hope that it's….that I'm enough. That it's balanced, between us."
"You're enough and more than enough. Especially when you look at me like that." I dip down and kiss her once more, soft and sweet and quick. "Now, as much as I hate to see Sophia go, it's time for you to become Inez again. We need that part of you if we're going to get ahead of these assholes and put a slug in Rafa's fucking skull."
"Rafa," She snorts. "If only you knew how much that manhatesbeing called Rafa." She scratches fingernails down my beard, gives me a peck on the lips, and then steps back. “All the more reason to call him that, I suppose, eh?”
I watch the transformation with fascination—her posture stiffens, her chin lifts, her eyes harden, the smile vanishes. Any trace of softness and warmth is utterly gone as if it never was.
We dress quickly, gather our gear. I remove body armor from one of the less messy corpses, find the breacher and stuff my pockets with slugs for the shotgun, and clip a few flashbangs to the vest. By the time I've finished this, the rest of our group has gathered in the living room of our suite.
Inez faces them. "I thought we were safe here—how our enemies knew we were here, I don't know. I'll be contacting my employer for an explanation when we're en route. For now, we're simply going to get out of this hotel and out of Vegas while I figure out our next destination, which hopefully will be Rafael's location so we can end this once and for all."
My phone buzzes again—Bruce. "Law enforcement is in the lobby. I have a pair of Suburbans for you at the loading dock, but you need to get down therenow, or I won't be able to keep them from detaining you."
"Understood. Heading down now. Thanks." I hang up and address the group. "We're out of here, now. Law enforcement is in the building and we do not have time for that. And with Pugli involved, we can't trust law enforcement anyway."
Forty minutes after the assault,we're a caravan of two heading west toward LA. Toro and Fonz are in the Suburban behind us with Annika, Anjalee, and Myka. With me and Inez are Naomi, Tatiana, Terra, and Taj.
Inez has called Jakob no fewer than six times in the last forty minutes, and it's obvious she's becoming concerned.
She tries him again, letting it ring until it goes to voicemail with a digital female voice: "We're sorry, the voicemail box you're trying to reach is full. Please try your call again later."
She tosses the phone into the cupholder with a hissed curse in Portuguese . "He has never not answered, Lorenzo. Not once in the decade I have worked for him."
"Decade?" I ask. "That long?"
She nods. "After I left the base in Goiâna, I made my way north. You gave me several thousand dollars, a fake passport, and a Beretta."
"It was all you would accept."
She nods again. "I desperately wanted to stay with you. But I knew Rafael would be looking for me, once he returned and discovered what I'd done. I couldn't risk putting you in his crosshairs." She inhales deeply, holds it, lets it out slowly. "It's why I stayed hidden so long. I knew the second I reappeared in the wider world, I'd end up on his radar, and if I were to approach you, you'd be in danger. I just couldn't do that. It seemed better to remain invisible."
"I understand. I would have accepted the risk to be with you, but I also would have made the same choice—to protect you—if the roles had been reversed.”
She nods. "I took a bus from Goiâna to Manaus, and another to the Colombian border. One of my father's business associates whom I knew rather well lives—or lived—in Medellin, so I took a chance on him. He remembered me, and more importantly what I was capable of. I worked for Vicente for two years, under the assumed name you put on the passport. Only Vicente knew my true identity, at first. But a few of his lieutenants knew me too, and eventually it became an open secret that Bruno de Silva's daughter and Rafael Sousa's wife was working for Vicente, and rumors ofLa Víbora'sreturn to cartel operations began to spread. Unfortunately for me, I didn't realize the danger until it was too late. I thought Vicente could protect me. He was always like a kindly old uncle to me, ever since I was a little girl, and I had faith in him. I underestimated Rafael, however."
“This is all new to me," I tell her.
She shrugs. "It isn't a secret, nor very traumatic. Just…context. Timeline. Anyway. Vicente sent me to finalize a deal for American-made fentanyl. It wasn't very popular on the streets back then, so it was a risky move for him." She waves a hand. "Unimportant. Rafa—as I shall now call him, just to piss him off even in spirit—found out that I was supposed to be doing the deal. He laid a trap, and I walked right into it. Only through dumb luck did I survive, and only just barely. I was hit several times, and hid until they left, and then crawled away. I patched myself up as best I could and…" she hesitates, remembering, and then continues. "I hijacked a private plane at an airfield and made them fly me into Mexico. I nearly bled out before some weird, crazy old man found me wandering around, bleeding, in the hills near the Benito Juárez park. He put me in his truck, took me home, and nursed me back to health. He didn'tspeak a lick of Spanish, Portuguese, or English, just Zapotec or whatever. He wouldn't take my money when I left. Just pointed me north and slammed the door in my face."
"Something similar happened to me, once," I say. "Except it was a Guarani woman."
She's quiet for a while, and then resumes her story. "I walked across most of the rest of Mexico. Hitched rides when I could, walked when I couldn't. Thankfully, I'd managed to keep hold of the briefcase of cash, so I had plenty of money."
"Why not buy a car?" I ask.
She shrugs. "I wasn't thinking clearly. I'd lost a lot of blood, and the old Zapotec guy only did enough to prevent me from bleeding out. I left his hut before I was really ready to go anywhere, and I developed an infection. I was just…stumbling around, I suppose. It's all a hazy blur. I remember reaching a river in the middle of the night and running into a group of migrants. One woman recognized that I wasn't in good shape and stuck with me. She helped me cross. I wasn't even aware that that's what I was doing—crossing into the US. I just had this drive to keep moving. If I kept moving, Rafa couldn't find me, I thought. I was terrified of him finding me. Petrified. I'd have panic attacks about it all the time. Just keep moving, keep walking, keep going north, no matter what—that's all I could think about in my fever state."
"Understandable, I'd say."
