Lex, who apparently refuses to insult my father’s intelligence, says, “No one can know. It puts Andrea in danger as much as it does me.”
My mom sits down as if drained of energy. She’s so pale, I worry she’ll faint. “Someone wants my baby dead,” she whispers to herself. “For a million dollars.”
“We’ll fix it,” I promise, wiping my tears away. “We’ll destroy the man responsible for it.”
“Do you know who that is?” Rafael signs.
I nod. When they all expect me to give them a name, I shake my head. “He’s powerful and influential, but we’ll nail him, I promise.”
They’re still processing it all, with my father now at my mother’s side, his hands on her shoulders, when a nurse walks in. She sighs and gives us a reproachful frown. “Only two people, please. And visiting hours are almost over.”
Rafa, Lex, and I are the first ones to react, stepping out while my parents stay in. My brother remains by the door while Lex and I walk a few steps away. “Do you think we did the right thing?” I ask Lex low enough for no one else to hear me.
“They had to know. Now, they’ll understand why I’m taking security measures for them, too.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“Is there an alarm system in their house?”
“An old one. It doesn’t work very well.”
“Then I’ll have a new one installed. And a few cameras that cover the surroundings. A car with security parked outside at all times, and maybe two more to follow your parents to and from work.”
“Isn’t that a lot?”
“Better safe than sorry.”
“What about us?”
“We’re going back to Seattle. And we’re not leaving the apartment until we have something that can get rid of Becker.”
“What if we never find it?”
He thinks about it for a moment, grave, pensive… When he looks at me again, there’s an edge to his dark stare that I’ve never seen before. One that scares me.
“Then it’s a kill-or-be-killed situation. I’ll hire someone to get rid of Zane Horvat and Norman Becker.”
“Jesus …”
Morally, I want to protest. This doesn’t feel like us. Hiring a hitman to kill someone is vile and inhuman. We’re better than this.
But at the same time… Not only did I almost die, but my abuela, too. Some part of me realizes her surviving the attempts wasn’t necessarily her attacker’s goal. I would have also come out of the shadows for a funeral. And that fuels the rage within me. If this truly is a kill-or-be-killed kind of situation, then there’s no other choice, is there?
Norman Becker, that monster who has hurt thousands of families with his scummy insurance company, wants us dead. He started this war, and I’ll be fucking damned if we don’t finish it. I have too much to live for to risk dying at the hands of that asshole.
He came after my family. No way I’m letting that pass.
“I think I’ll head to Seattle tonight and get a jump on things,” Lex explains.
The idea of us separating sits wrong with me. We’ve been together every single day for over two months now. Being away from one another, even just for one night, when things are this dire, feels wrong.
“Stay with me tonight,” I bargain. “We’ll leave in the morning as soon as we know how MC’s hip surgery went.” When he hesitates, I add, “We can go to a hotel for better security, or my parents’ house. You decide, baby.”
“A hotel would be safer. I’ll see with your parents while we’re all here if they’d allow a team to search their house, to make sure there’s nothing there. Since Horvat wanted us to come back, it’s possible he set traps or surveillance there.”
A tap on my arm makes me turn around to find Rafa near us. “Surveillance?” he signs, having probably read the word on Lex’s lips.
With quick signs, I explain to him how things will be from now on until we catch the man responsible for MC’s attack. He doesn’t seem too happy about it at first, but he quickly gets the need for it. “You can’t keep that from Kate, right?” I ask, torn.
