My stomach twisted. Familiar discomfort. The kind that never quite left.
“But,” AB added, more cautiously now, “there’s nothing definitively tying you to Madrina’s group before that point. No prior notation. No identifiers. No auction codes. Nothing personal. Which means…” He hesitated.
Voodoo lifted his chin softly. “Means we still don’t know.”
AB nodded.
“And,” AB continued. “While we still have some threads to pull, we are running out of avenues to look.”
My heart was a rock in my chest. “Wasn’t there another name? The Maikel one?”
“He’s dead,” AB said. “Not a lot of data on that at the moment. Just—regime change. Looks like an internal war, not a lot of clear data at the moment, just…” His sigh said everything.
A thick quiet settled over the table. The heavy drape of it threatened to muffle the rest of the world. After all of it, we’d found so much and were no closer.
Legend crossed his arms, face unreadable. Bones dropped into the chair next to mine as Voodoo’s gaze flicked to me, sharp and careful. But I was looking right at AB when he glanced up from his tablet, guilt etched into the lines on his face.
Unsurprisingly, it was Bones who broke the quiet. His somber, authoritative presence steadied me as he wrapped a hand around my nape.
“Grace.” His tone was even gentler than I expected. “Do you want to keep looking?”
Just like that, every breath in my lungs froze. The room felt too bright again. The sunrise too sharp. The coffee scalded my fingers but I held onto it like it anchored me.
I looked at each of them—these men who had dragged me back from hell, who followed me into shadows they never owed me. Men who were asking—not assuming, not pushing—what I wanted.
WhatIwanted.
Did I keep searching for answers that might not exist? Did I chase ghosts and fragments, push deeper into wounds that might never close? Did I want the truth badly enough to risk what it might do to me?
Or had I already seen enough to know that certainty was a luxury I’d probably never get?
“I…” My voice caught. I swallowed and tried again. “I don’t know.”
And the awful, honest part of it was?—
I wasn’t sure I ever would.
The words felt thin the moment they left my mouth—fragile, like they might splinter in the air if anyone breathed too hard.
No one did.
Bones didn’t flinch. Voodoo didn’t crack a joke to fill the silence. Legend didn’t step closer. AB didn’t try to offer some soft consolation or workaround. They all just… stayed. Present. Watching me without staring me down.
It was almost worse.
I dragged a hand through my hair, breathing out slowly. “It’s like—I finally think I’m getting somewhere, and then it curves back into a dead end. And every time we hit another wall, it feels less like we’re getting closer and more like we’re just confirming that everyone involved—Ignacio, La Madrina, whoever—treated people like inventory. Which means I could’ve been anyone. A body in a room.”
Meant she could have been anyone. If I didn’t end up somewhere, maybe Am didn’t…
My voice went quiet. “I don’t know if there’s an answer. Not anymore.”
Legend’s eyes softened, but he didn’t intrude on the space I was fighting to hold. “Not every story’s clean,” he said, voice low.
Voodoo nudged the wall with his shoulder. “Sometimes the closest thing you get to peace is knowing which doorsaren’tthe right ones.”
“That’s still progress.” Bones massaged the tense muscles at my nape, his fingers working slowly as if he could help drain it all away.
Maybe. Maybe not.
