I had to reach her before Scarlett and her cartel did.
CHAPTER 14
JASON
Paradise Island was exactly what it sounded like.
The morning light here had a particular quality I hadn’t encountered anywhere else — softer than Miami, warmer than the Bahamas mainland, as if the island existed slightly outside the normal parameters of the world. The streets near the waterfront were quiet at this hour, the shops still shuttered, a few early joggers moving along the seafront path. Bougainvillea spilled over white walls. Somewhere nearby, someone was making coffee.
I had been awake for most of the flight.
There was something almost unbearable about hope after a year. That hope sat in my chest the entire flight. I checked into my hotel at 6:30 A.M., and by 7 I was already outside the cafe. If she was here. If she was in that bookshop. If she would let me stand in front of her long enough to say what I should have said three years ago, on the day we met, instead of choosing the easier and more cowardly path of saying nothing at all.
I had rehearsed it on the plane. The whole thing, in order, without omissions.
I would tell her I was under Witness Protection. I would tell her my real name. And then I would tell her about the fateful call six months ago from Scarlett. She had been the cartel leader Ernesto Quintero’s girlfriend when I testified against him and got him jailed for life. I would tell Camila how Scarlett had found out about my true identity six months ago, and along with her bodyguard Pablo Moreno, started blackmailing me. Initially assuming she wanted money, I had offered her a blank check, but she had just laughed connivingly, telling me how she could buy me with her own cartel money.
No, she wasn’t after my money. She wanted a sex slave. She wanted me to fuck her the way she wanted, when she wanted. She wanted me to satisfy her twisted sexual fantasies, each time she was in the mood. Otherwise, she said she’d leak my name as the person who was responsible for Quintero’s arrest, and the entire cartel would be let loose upon me. And upon Camila.
I would tell her all of it. Every word. And then I would ask for nothing — no forgiveness, no second chance, nothing she wasn’t willing to give. I would just let her finally know the truth about the man she had married.
She deserved that much. She had always deserved that much.
Dog-Eared Books & Café occupied a corner position on a quiet street two blocks from the waterfront — a converted colonial building with cream-painted walls and dark green shutters and a hand-lettered sign above the door. The café side had small round tables on a covered porch. The bookshop window displayed a carefully arranged stack of paperbacks.
It was seven in the morning. The sign on the door said they opened at seven-thirty.
I had offered Camila our house through the lawyer. The full property, mortgage-free, and fifty thousand dollars a month in alimony for as long as she wanted it. She had declined everything — the house, the money, all of it — through a single terse note from her lawyer that said simply:Ms. Torres declines all proposed arrangements.
She had found this instead. From nothing. In a year.
I stood outside the door and felt something move in my chest that was compounded of pride and grief in approximately equal measure.
I knocked.
Nothing.
I waited, then knocked again, slightly louder. Still nothing. The shop looked dark from the outside, the interior lost behind the morning glare on the windows.
I stepped to the side and looked through the glass.
And stopped.
A beautiful woman was at the far end of the shop, her back to the window, arranging a display of books on a low table. She was wearing a short coral sundress. She was swaying happily to a faint music I could hear, and with each dip, her dress twirled almost up to her ass, and I could see her white panties underneath the dress. She was clearly humming along with the music, and dancing as if she had no care in the world. Her hair had golden highlights, and fell in silky cascades almost down to her hips.
Only when she turned her head to tuck-in a stray strand of hair did I finally recognise her.
Camila.
Not the Camila I remember from a year ago. The one whose hair was always tied up in a messy bun. The one who walked slowly and deliberately, as if she was trying hard not to be noticed. And the one who never, once danced so freely.
This woman..thisCamila… looked happy and self confident in an unassuming, understated way.
Her glasses were gone, probably replaced by lenses. She looked drop-dead gorgeous, as if she had just stepped out of a music video.
She was a complete contrast to the state of the man standing outside her window.
I knocked again, harder.
