He knelt in front of me. Still touching me, which he never did unless it was a full moon or someone was dying. “It’s not his baby,” he repeated, slow and low, perhaps for his benefit as much as mine. “Him and Juana, they haven’t been together since they made that kid.”
“You believe that?”
Saint released one of my knees to touch his chest. “I can see it. They love each other, but not like that. It ain’t there, I promise.”
I wanted to believe Saint more than anything. But betrayal was a vicious beast, relentless and cruel. So he hadn’t fucked her. She still existed. Hisdaughterstill existed. My battered conscience grappled with the harrowing story he’d told, but the worst parts of me skipped over it, clinging to the fact that he’d lied and lied and lied. “Did you know?”
The question seemed to startle Saint, which was shocking in itself. “That Mateo’s been double crossing a Spanish mobster for the last decade?”
Okay. Maybe not. But the mobster part was new information to me. I’d zoned out for most of his confession. “Who is he? Her dad? A Sambini type?”
Saint shrugged. “Some cunt with money who wants more money. They’re all the same, aren’t they?”
Probably. Now the fire in me was starting to fade, the ability to think was slowly coming back, but fatigue was hitting me hard. As Saint loosened up and found his voice, mine disappeared.
“There’s another reason you can’t leave,” Saint said.
I dropped my head, focusing on his hand on my knee, letting my brain wonder at how different we were, before I meandered it back to him, waving a hand of my own for him to elaborate.
“Lockdown.” Saint jerked his head at the window. “No one in. No one out. At least until we figure out what the fuck we’re gonna do with them.”
Them. Juana.Liliana.
Mateo’s daughter and her pregnant mother.
She’s pregnant.
It’s not his.
“Who’s the father?”
“The dead bodyguard.” Saint rose and peered out over the yard. “It was him who got caught, not Mateo. Juana ran because a doctor was coming to force an abortion on her.”
“Mother—” I rubbed my face. “We have to help them.”
However I felt about Mateo, the anger in my heart meant nothing in the face of what would happen to Juana and her unborn baby if we turned them away.
Saint said nothing, all talked out. He waited for me to stand, then took my bag from me and tossed it across the room. I was staying, apparently. In his head, at least.
He stepped to the door and gripped the handle.
“Wait.”
He stopped.
Waited.
“I don’t want to see him. Not yet.”
Saint nodded. “He’s in Cam’s room with the girls. Rubi went downstairs to get caught up.”
He opened the door and peeked out. “Clear. Let’s go.”
“Nah. I’ll meet you there.”
Saint glanced at the window and rolled his eyes. “Okay.”
He left, and I moved to the window, crawling out onto the roof like I had an hour ago when my world had been a place I understood. It was no man’s land right now. To the naked eye, a vast scape of nothingness, but as I rose to dash across the flat part of the roof, I saw craters and trip wires wherever I turned with no way out.
