I look at her face. The dark circles under her eyes. The tension in her jaw.
"Bad," I say. "Really bad."
Marina's expression doesn't change. She expected this. Of course she did. She's not stupid.
"Define really bad."
"The man I went to collect money from." I set the phone on the nightstand. "He's been laundering money for a Mexican cartel. I killed the man who shot me. The man I killed worked for them."
Marina's face goes pale. Not the dramatic kind of pale from movies. The real kind. The blood draining from her cheeks, leaving her skin almost gray.
"Cartel," she repeats.
"Lorenzo and Nico are flying in with twenty men. They'll be here in six hours."
"Twenty men." Marina laughs. It's not a happy sound. "Twenty men. For what? To protect you? To start a war in my city?"
"To make sure this doesn't become a war."
"But it might." She's not asking.
"Yes."
Marina turns away. She walks to the window, pulling back the curtain just enough to look down at the street.
"I have a job I love. An apartment that's mine. A routine that doesn't involve checking for exits or wondering if someone's going to shoot me."
Her voice cracks on the last word.
"Marina—"
"And you show up, and suddenly I'm back in it. All of it." She doesn't turn around. "The guns. The phone calls in the middle of the night. The men in SUVs watching my building."
I don't have a defense. She's right.
"I'm sorry."
"Don't." She spins to face me. Her eyes are bright. Angry. "Don't apologize. You don't get to apologize for something you're not actually sorry for."
"I am sorry."
"You're sorry I'm upset. You're not sorry you came here." Marina crosses her arms again. "You had a choice. You could have gone to a hospital. You could have died in an alley somewhere instead of dragging me back into this."
"You're right."
That stops her. She blinks.
"I had a choice," I say. "And I chose your door. I chose you." The words cost me something. I feel them scrape against my throat on the way out. "I'm not sorry for that. I'm sorry for what it's costing you."
Marina stares at me. The anger doesn't leave her face, but something else joins it. Something I can't name.
"Six hours," she says finally.
"Six hours."
"And then what? Lorenzo shows up with his army and you all go to war with a cartel?"
"Then we figure out how to make this go away without anyone else getting hurt."
