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Nik leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees.

“There’s something else you need to understand.”

I waited.

“All that filth attached to Isabella Delgado out in the world? It belongs to her. Not you.”

My throat tightened.

“She ruined my name.”

“Then we separate the two.”

He said it as though disentangling years of lies was simply another problem he intended to solve.

“For now, Isabella Eliana Duarte gets you safely into the United States. After that, you decide who you want to be. And you aren’t limited by the fact that Ciro kept you out of the normal world. If you decide you want to go to university, build a career, start a business, travel, or whatever else you dream up, we’ll make sure your identity gives you a foundation to do it. Education, history, documentation—whatever you need to walk into your new life without spending the next twenty years explaining why the first twenty-five barely exist on paper.”

I blinked at him.

“You can do that?”

A quiet confidence came over his expression.

“Yes.”

There was no hesitation in the answer. No suggestion that I owed him anything for it either.

Something loosened inside my chest.

Marcela had spent years defining my stolen name with lies and ugly ambition. I’d assumed that if I ever escaped, I would spend years trying to separate myself from everything she’d done while pretending to be me.

But maybe I didn’t have to inherit any of it.

For the first time, having almost no history of my own didn’t feel entirely like something Ciro had stolen from me.

It could also mean I got to decide what came next.

A blank page.

“And my mother?” I asked. “Did you find anything about her family?”

Nik’s attention sharpened.

“I started looking. Princess Eliana Sofija Dravik was exactly who you said she was, and the Draviks are Eslovenya’s royal family. I haven’t had enough time to go much further than that, and I’m not going to give you half-verified information just because I know you want answers.”

My heart began to beat faster.

“Can you find out what happened after my mother disappeared and whether her family might accept me as part of their lives?”

“Yes.”

I touched the locket under my blouse. Mamá had told me about them so many times—her parents, her brother, the home she had lost, and the family she insisted would love me simply because I was hers.

Until now, they had existed only in her stories and the tiny photographs inside the locket.

“And if they would?” I asked quietly. “Could you help me contact them?”

“I can find out who they are now, what their circumstances are, and the safest way to approach them.”