To keep me alive. To move me without patterns. To pull threads quietly and figure out who’d staged the betrayal and why. Lucía didn’t just broker my contracts.She rebuilt my existence from the ground up, piece by careful piece.
Saint is silent when I finish. Not distant. Focused. Like she’s already mapping the parallels, lining my story up against her own and seeing how neatly they overlap.
Saint is silent when I finish. Not distant. Focused. Like she’s already mapping the parallels, lining my story up against her own and seeing how neatly they overlap.
I lean in closer, lowering my voice even though no one can hear us over the hum of the plane. Old habits die hard. So does trust.
“Sound familiar?” I ask quietly. “Because it should.”
Her eyes flick to mine, sharp and unreadable.
“They’re setting you up to take a hit,” I continue. “Not because you’re in the way, but because you’re useful as a body. Dead women don’t argue. Dead women don’t contradict the story.”
I watch it land. The tension in her shoulder’s shifts, subtle but real.
“They need someone else in power,” I say. “Someone pliable. Someone already bought and paid for. And the timing matters, just like it did with Mateo.”
I straighten slightly, just enough to look at her properly.
“This level of coordination doesn’t come from the middle,” I tell her. “Not from handlers or opportunists trying to make a name. It comes from the top.”
Her jaw tightens. Good. She’s listening.
“One person,” I say. “One hand with a finger on every trigger, every contract, every rumor that turns into a knife in the dark.”
I don’t say the name. I don’t need to.In our world, you don’t invoke monsters unless you’re ready for them to look back.
“They tried to erase me because I survived,” I add. “You’re being hunted because you haven’t died yet.”
The plane hums on, steady and indifferent, carrying us across the sky like none of this matters.
Saint doesn’t speak, but I can see the decision forming behind her eyes.
And I know, with the same certainty I had that night in the limo, that once this machine turns its attention fully on you, the only way out is through.
Together.
Whether she trusts meor not.
Alejandro is on his feet again, moving through the cargo hold with an ease that suggests he’s already memorized the layout. The heating unit hums softly as trays begin to cycle toward some internal lift mechanism that will carry them up to the passenger deck above, where linen-draped tables and polished smiles wait.
He lifts a lid, peers inside, then another.
“Bingo,” he says, pleased.
He pulls out two trays of hot food and sets them on the crate between us like an offering.
“No land meat,” he adds, glancing at me with a wink.
“Open those,” he says. “I’ll find us dessert.”
I watch him go, then peel back the foil. The smell hits me immediately, rich, and clean and wildly inappropriate for the place we’re hiding. I eat slowly, methodically, because my body needs it even if my head isn’t ready to rest.
While I chew, I let myself think.
I make peace, at least temporarily, with the things Alejandro didn’t share.
Like what timing needs to be right.
