She keeps her eyes on the party like the noise is safer than my stare.
“Mostly.”
My hand curls into a fist so tight my knuckles crack.
“I will kill him,” I say.
The promise comes out calm.
Absolute.
She shakes her head slowly without turning around.
“That’s the problem,” she says. “You think killing everyone fixes everything.”
“It fixes him.”
She spins back toward me, eyes blazing.
“And then what?” she demands. “You going to kill every man who looks at me wrong?”
“Yes.”
The word leaves my mouth before I even think about it.
“You were supposed to leave Miami.”
She lets out a frustrated breath that sounds halfway between a laugh and a groan.
“I’m not leaving Miami,” she says.
“You’re not safe here.”
“I wasn’t safe anywhere.”
That stops me.
For a moment the only sound is muffled music and the distant roar of my brothers celebrating something downstairs. I catch fragments through the walls. Vice’s voice. Magic’s low murmur. Rico name shouted like a threat.
I step closer until the edge of the desk presses against the back of her thighs. She doesn’t move away. Not really.
My hands land on either side of her hips, trapping her without touching her.
Not yet.
The space between us hums with want, memory, and everything I denied myself for three years.
“I fucking love you, cariño,” I say.
Her breath catches.
I don’t soften it. I don’t dress it up with excuses. I don’t make it pretty.
“I never stopped.”
For a second something in her face cracks. A flash of the girl she used to be. The one who believed me when I said things like that.
Then she shoves her hands against my chest.
