"We can't know that yet."
"I know." His smile doesn't reach his eyes. "And he will be strong. Protected. No one will ever touch what's mine."
The words should sound romantic. Instead, they sound like a warning.
That night, I wake to voices outside our bedroom. Mateo's voice, sharp with anger, speaking rapid Spanish. Another man responding. I catch fragments: "shipment," "border," "eliminate," "witnesses."
Fear crystallizes in my chest, cold and sharp.
I wait until Mateo's breathing evens into sleep, then slip out of bed. The office he keeps locked is down the hall. I've seen him enter the code on the keypad a dozen times, never thinking I was paying attention.
2-7-9-3-4.
The lock clicks. The door opens.
Files cover the desk. Shipping manifests listing cargo that couldn't possibly be legal development supplies. Financial records showing millions of dollars moving through offshore accounts. Photographs of men I recognize from news reports about cartel violence.
And in the center of it all, a folder with Mateo's name. Not Mateo Ruiz, logistics coordinator.
Mateo Vega. Lieutenant in the Sinaloa cartel.
The room spins. I grip the desk to keep from falling.
The medical supplies were leverage, not charity. The hacienda—a fortress, not a home. The armed guards, jailers.
And I'm carrying the child of a man who kills people for a living.
"You should be sleeping."
I turn to find Mateo in the doorway. Still shirtless. Still beautiful. But now I see the predator beneath the polish.
"Who are you?" My voice shakes despite my best efforts to stay calm.
"You know who I am." He steps into the office and closes the door behind him. "You've always known. You just chose not to see it."
"The clinic. The supplies. All of it was?—"
"A way to get close to you." He moves toward me with the same easy confidence I once found attractive. Now it looks like a hunter stalking prey. "You were so sad, Rachel. So broken by whoever hurt you before. So desperate for someone to make it better."
Tears burn my eyes. "You used me."
"I loved you." He says it like it's the truth. Maybe in his twisted way, it is. "I still do. And now you're carrying my child. My heir. You're not going anywhere."
I back toward the window. "Mateo, please?—"
"Mateo Vega." His hand catches my wrist, gentle but unyielding. "Not Ruiz. But close enough." He almost smiles. "Come back to bed, mi amor. We'll discuss this in the morning when you're thinking clearly."
I don't go back to bed. I go to the guest room and lock the door.
By morning, the locks are gone. All of them. Every door in the hacienda opens freely except the main entrance, which now requires a code only Mateo knows.
The guards smile when they see me. Sympathetic smiles that tell me they've seen this before. Other women. Other realizations.
The word echoes in my head. Prisoner.
Lucas is born in a bedroom that used to feel like a sanctuary and now feels like a cell.
Mateo brings a doctor. A real one, with credentials and equipment and the kind of professional detachment that comes from treating cartel families for years. The birth is long and painful and when they finally place my son in my arms, I sob.
