“Tribe guys each have an apartment here. Nemo… Fuck, I’ve no idea, actually, where he lives with Gem. Mythos members are rarely in one place for long. When he was part of our team, he lived on the same floor as his brother, and he still has access to his place. Kubrick and Flame own houses they had before they met Waters and TB. They live in both spaces, although Flame is here more than there. It’s safer for them.”
He couldn’t see her face from the angle he was standing at, but he did notice that her shoulders curled inward. “Belleza, what is it?”
“You have this whole life here. A life I knew nothing about.”
“I explained why?—”
“Sí, you explained why. You were protecting me. But you weren’t, Fanso.”
He felt anger begin to coalesce, swirling dust particles in the wind, and with each second, the wind captured more and more debris until it formed a funnel cloud inside him. “Everything I’ve ever done, since you walked up to me at the altar, has been with the intention to protect you,Madre, and Tobias.”
She turned to face him. “Maybe you thought that’s what you were doing, but you weren’t. They threatened to deport us? They never would have done it. We were too valuable to them. Two biological children from two competing crime lords who approached them about giving up information on the cartels in Argentina? We held all the power, Fanso. Your government would have been tripping over itself to give us everything we wanted and more if it meant they could get the credit for shutting down the Colonels alone.”
“It was a very real threat, Daleyza. I wouldn’t have been able to stop them.”
“No, because you rolled over and showed them your belly like a dog the moment they suggested sending us all back. You didn’t even try to hold their feet to the fire.”
“How the hell would you know that?”
“It only makes sense because they threatened me too, Fanso!” Whirling away from him, she slammed her hands against the window. “They came at me, a mother in mourning for her child. In a strange country, in a box of a room, alone!
“My brothers didn’t tell me anything because I was a worthlessgirl. They weren’t always as careful as they should have been because they falsely assumed I was stupid. I told your DEA agents every conversation I overheard, every visitor to the house I saw, anything and everything I could think of that might be of use to them.
“When I said I didn’t know any more, they threatened to send me back to my brother if I didn’t give up everything else, but there was nothing left to give them. I held my ground, Fanso. They threatened you… they threatenedMadre. If Tobias had been alive, they would have threatened him too.
“But you can’t get blood from a stone, Fanso. If there had been anything else to tell them, I would have. I was alone. Frightened. Grieving. I needed you there to hold me. To tell me everything would be okay. But you weren’t there, so I just kept reminding myself what you told me. That you would always protect me. I got through those days of separation because I believed that to be true. I trusted you!”
His heart plummeted. “Agent Salazar played me. He assured me that you both were living well. That you were staying in a hotel nearby. But he couldn’t let me go because he couldn’t move on what little information I’d given him, and he was being forced to send you both back to Argentina. The DEA felt they weren’t getting what they were promised.”
There was a bark of laughter, its bitterness more than obvious. “So let me guess. They threatened to send you back to the Navy and face punishment there. A court-martial and a dishonorable discharge. Prison time for desertion. But if you could come up with something more, you’d be free to go.”
“Not exactly,” he hedged. He might as well tell her the truth. It wasn’t like it mattered now. “A prison sentence might have been better for us all. The deal was—if I went back to the Navy, went no-contact with you before leaving, I could go back to my unit. Shortly after returning, they would arrange a fake death for me. They’d give me special missions to fulfill, but I could never see you again. In return, they’d keep you in the WITSEC program, you’d receive my benefits to live off, and you could stay in the States.”
“The Ildefanso Colonel I knew never would have fallen for that,” she said softly.
She wasn’t wrong. He should have known better, but he’d been in such a panic. Sleep-deprived, not thinking clearly, and he played right into their hands. At that point, he would have agreed to anything to make sure his family was safe, and Agent Salazar had used that to his advantage.
“I hadn’t seen you in days. They wouldn’t even tell me whether Ka-Bar had lived or died. And Tobias… They wouldn’t even let me see him one last time before you buried him.”
The pain he felt at that moment was the worst he’d ever felt. Like someone reached into his chest cavity, grasped his heart, and squeezed it until it exploded. It was the ultimate betrayal. It felt wrong that his own country—the one he’d fought and bled for—had betrayed him, but what other solution made sense? And over what? Bragging rights to say they brought down the Colonels? The right to seize billions of dollars in drugs, guns, and women?
And the irony of it was, they hadn’t been able to do it, even with everything Steel, Livia, and Daleyza gave them. The Navy failed, and now the Colonel Cartel controlled all of Argentina instead of just sections of it. They’d sucked up all the other cartels within their borders and were now making plays for other countries in South America. In the end, it had all been for nothing.
He could tell her that. Plead his case. But it would sound like nothing but excuses, and Steel had always been one who held himself accountable for his fuckups. So instead of apologizing. Instead of begging for her forgiveness. Instead of groveling to be let back into her life, he took responsibility for the mistake because, well-intentioned or not, manipulated or not, he made the choice in the end.
“I protected you the only way I knew how, Leeza. My intentions were honorable, if misguided. My only thought was to ensure that you andMadrenever had to go back to that hell. That you could start fresh. Have a better life. One you deserved.
“They kept their promises to me. When I could check on you, Ialways made sure of that. Perhaps it wasn’t the luxury you lived in while with me in Córdoba, but there it was a gilded cage. In the States, you had the basics of shelter, food, clothing, and you were free.”
He thought of all the things he wished he could tell her. All the things he missed. About their marriage. About their son. About how much he fucking loved her. In all the years they were married, even with having a son together, he’d never told her that.
It was killing him to be in the same room with her, yet he couldn’t walk away. The few moments he’d been able to talk to her and touch her were the moments he’d dreamed of while they’d been apart. He’d take whatever scraps he could get.
“But we didn’t have the most important thing that we needed, Fanso.” She turned to him, her eyes glassy with tears she’d never let fall. “We didn’t have you. I wouldn’t have cared if you’d been court-martialed, or dishonorably discharged, or even put in prison for a crime you didn’t commit. You would have still been mine, and you would have been free to come home to me at the end of your sentence. We survived a fucking cartel hell, so we could have survived anything. Instead, you walked away from that, leaving us behind to pick up the pieces.”
Again, she was correct. He’d left. Could he have demanded to see them one more time before he left? Yes. But he’d been too damn afraid to push and risk losing everything for them. His fearful reasoning at the time didn’t matter. Results did. It looked to her like he ran, so that was the truth to her. He’d never convince her otherwise. And perhaps, it was actually true when he looked at it now, after all these years.
All he could do was lock everything down. Keep his emotions in check. Stay close enough to protect her, but far enough away that she was less of a temptation. If he’d ever had any hope of a reconciliation with her, it was gone now. He’d done too much damage for her to forgive him.
