“I appreciate the hospitality.” A beat, just enough resistance to be believable. “Though I have arrangements in the city—”
“Already taken care of.” That easy smile, the smile of a man who has never once in his life needed to ask twice. “Consider it done.”
My villa.
Inside the perimeter.
Inside the walls.
Exactly where I need to be.
The villa sits perhaps a quarter mile from the main hacienda along a stone path that winds through low-lit gardens. It’s a separate property within the wider grounds with its own small courtyard and entrance. It is well-appointed in the way everything in Clemente’s world is well-appointed. The ocean is audible from the back window, a low, constant sound that should be peaceful and isn’t.
A servant, a young woman who moves quietly and asks nothing, prepares the room, leaves water and fruit on the table, and disappears without requiring acknowledgment.
I check the room for exits, sightlines, and weak points. Then I stand at the window and look out at the grounds, the gardens, the path back to the main house, the high walls beyond whichthe ocean moves endlessly, and the guards moving in patterns I am already beginning to map.
On the bed, someone has laid out a dark, expensive shirt, pressed to a perfect crease. Clemente’s hospitality extends even to this. The controlling generosity of a man who likes everything in his world to be exactly as he intended it. His house. His grounds. His guards. His guest dressed appropriately for his table.
Moving to where the jacket hangs on the back of the chair, the one I’d arrived in, the one Clemente’s hospitality hadn’t extended to replace, I run my thumb along the inside lining until I find the seam.
Press once.
Still there.
I sit on the edge of the bed and take it out—the three of us in a Blood Brothers’ yard, mid-conversation, not performing for anyone—Ryan, Tate, and Sophia, eight months ago, and a lifetime away. I hold it in the low light of the villa for a long moment. Then I put it back. Press the seam closed. And let myself be Ryan for exactly as long as it takes to breathe through what is coming.
Looking at my left forearm, the ghost of the compass is barely visible, the needle still pointing north, even here, now, and in the middle of all of this.
‘Find your way back,’ it reads. ‘You always do.’
Sophia arrives in my thoughts the way she always does when the days are hard, not as a distraction but as a compass point. The thing that reminds me of which direction north is when everything else is trying to take it away.
Then I put her away.
Marco Reyes doesn’t know Sophia.
Marco Reyes has no one.
Turning from the window, I think about tonight. A room full of the most dangerous people I have ever been paid to sit across from.
Clemente’s table.
Clemente’s house.
Clemente’s rules.
And somewhere in that hacienda, walking those terracotta floors, sleeping behind those high walls, performing the most important and most dangerous role of her career every single waking moment, is Riley.
Not knowing which room she is in, how she is, or what it has cost her to get this far in, to earn this level of trust, to sit at that table as his woman while feeding information back to a Bureau that has gone weeks without hearing from her.
But she is here.
And now so am I.
Hold on, I think into the quiet of the villa.I’m here. You’re not alone anymore.
The grounds outside the window go dark as the sun finally drops behind the wall.
