Thatis vigilante justice.
Then the reporter says the one name I’ve been waiting for.
The man who bought my mother from Adrian Crowe.
My vision blurs, and my chest caves in.
Jag found him months ago.He and Wolf went after him with single-minded focus and deadly patience, peeling apart his multibillion-dollar software empire piece by piece.Contracts voided.Boards turned.Allies gone.Billions of dollars rerouted to offshore accounts controlled by the cartel.
Now the truth is pouring out on live television, and there he is, dragged forward, wrists bound, eyes wild.
Exposed.
Finished.
The tears come, hot and relentless.I fold in on myself, and Jag is there instantly, arms around me, holding me as my legs give out and relief crashes in.
Wolf moves just as fast, passing Kaya to Leo before kneeling before me, kissing my cheeks, my forehead, my mouth.His own eyes shine, tears streaking down his face.
On the screen, the reporter mentions the ongoing speculation that Adrian Crowe was assassinated by an unknown terrorist group.The perpetrator remains at large.
Wolf looks at me.Then at Jag.
For one breathless second, we all stare at one another.
Then we break, laughing and crying at once, the sound torn out of us, ugly and free and impossible to stop.
The baby fusses somewhere behind us.The TV shuts off.The world finally shifts its weight.
I cling to them both, shaking, lighter than I’ve ever been.
It’s over.
It’s really fucking over.
I sit on the edge of Frankie’s bed and watch Kaya sleep.
She sprawls on her back, tiny fist curled, and mouth slack in perfect peace.I’m in love beyond words.
Today’s my last day on the island before heading back to Colombia.I’ll be back next month, but a month feels huge when she’s this small.She’ll grow and change and do something new I won’t see.
The thought tightens my chest in a way I don’t love.
Frankie stands at the window with her glass, bourbon catching the light and dark Amarena cherries bouncing along the bottom.She stares out at the ocean the way she often does, her mind somewhere else.
The image lines up too neatly with the details she wrote in her journal.The night she waited for Monty.The night Denver took her.
“Would you change anything?”I ask quietly.
“No.Nothing.”She turns from the window, green eyes cloudless.Then a smile.“Everything brought us here.Full circle.Isn’t it beautiful?”
Beautiful?Hmm.I never imagined a life where I worked for a cartel.Not once.
But that’s not how I see this.
I was born in hell, raised there, hurt there, trapped inside it for twenty-three years with a devil who starved, raped, and broke me in places so dark I stopped hoping for daylight.
This path with the cartel?It isn’t corruption.
