He looked past Sally to Gabriella—a single look, direct and loaded and carrying more than she had the context to fully decode—then pointed to the bed with a flat, unequivocal. “Stay put. We’ll finish our conversation later.” Before he followed Sally out the door.
The door closed.
Gabriella stood in the room, in the jaundiced afternoon light, with the stale air pressing against her from all sides, and looked at the cot she'd been pointed at like a dog being told to wait.
Real, he'd said.Everything between us is real.
She let out a sardonic scoff. Once again, left in the dark. How many secrets did he have?
Too many, she thought bitterly. Now, it was up to her to decide, would she stay with a man like Mateo or would she find a different path?
She sat down on the edge of the cot. The springs groaned beneath her weight, a thin and mournful sound in the close quiet of the room. Outside, the town went about its business. Inside, she pressed her fingers to her lips—to the places his teeth had been—and stared at the wall and thought about whatrealmeant when the man saying it walked out the door with someone else.
Figure it out, she told herself.I am a scientist. I have worked with worse data than this.
She wasn't entirely sure she believed that.
CHAPTER 22
MATEO
Sally led Mateo through the compound, her hand in his, pulling him along with an entitled insistence. He had tried to pull his hand away twice—the first time casually, the second with more deliberate intent—but she had made it a point to gather it once more each time, her fingers lacing through his with a possessiveness that made his jaw ache.
Fuck, that didn’t go well with Gabriella. She’s confused, hurt, and now alone.
That thought arrived with an assassin's precision and stayed, cutting through every other calculation running through his head. He could picture her exactly—sitting on the edge of that cot in the mildew-bloomed room, pressing her fingers to her lips where his teeth had been, staring at the water-stained wall with the expression she wore when she was assembling data she didn’t yet have enough of. The image of her alone in that room, turning over everything she’d witnessed, everything she didn’t understand, was a worse discomfort than anything Sally’s hand in his could produce.
She trusts me.The thought was an indictment.God help her, she actually trusts me. And I confessed my love like an idiot thinking she would jump for joy.
The compound around them was a patchwork of corrugated iron rooftops and crumbling rendered walls, built for function rather than permanence and had overstayed both. The afternoon light was failing now, the sky above the rooflines bleeding from gold into the bruised purple of early evening, throwing long shadows between the buildings that puddled in the doorways and alleyways like spilled ink.
He needed to stay. He needed the contacts from José—the names, the routes, the thread that would unravel the whole operation from the inside. He was so close to Obscura.So impossibly, agonizingly close.
Years of his life lived inside this hellish fiction. Years of building Mateo—not the man, but thecharacter, the version of himself that could exist inside this world and survive it. He had constructed that identity from the ground up, brick by deliberate brick: the history, the particular brand of controlled ruthlessness that men like José respected. Mateo had earned his place in this organization through acts he would carry in the marrow of his bones long after this was over, through choices made in the dark that no mission debrief would ever fully account for.
And now I am so close I can taste it. Obscura.Is it worth it? Will it be worth it if I can’t get Gabriella to safety?He didn’t know how to answer that.
Sally stopped at a small house near the end of the main street—a squat, single-story structure with a rusted metal door and a window that had been boarded over from the inside, the boards warped and splitting at the corners. Despite the fact it was still early evening, a bare bulb burned above the entrance.
“I’ll come back in a bit to get you,” she commented, her accent soft and lilting, releasing his hand hesitantly before adding. “Please, just agree to what he asks Mateo. We can’t fight his plans.” She looked smaller, her shoulders slumped in a way that breathed defeat.
He knew what she was asking of him. Take her as his wife. Head Nox with the same iron fist her father did. He couldn’t. Not when he loved Gabriella.
“I’m sorry Sally but I can’t. Even if he views it as betrayal.”
“Then I hope he’s willing to listen,” she replied, before eventually waving him goodbye and walking off without ceremony.
He stood at the door for a single breath—one moment, just one—and thought about Gabriella before he went inside.
José sat at the table, his walkie-talkie positioned in the center. Maps spread across the scarred wooden surface, their edges curling in the humidity, marked with routes and coordinates in José’s cramped handwriting. The single bulb overhead threw a cone of yellow light across the table that made everything outside its radius retreat into deep shadow. The room smelled of cigarette smoke and stale bodies. If the windows hadn’t been boarded up, Mateo would have opened one to let some fresh air in. A glass of something amber sat at José’s elbow, half-empty.
Without looking up, the older man said, “You took long enough.”
And there it is.That voice. That particular brand of authority that wore patience like a costume over a foundation of absolute, unquestioned expectation of deference.
For someone who doesn’t want to be in charge, he sure as hell acts like he is.
Mateo kept his expression neutral, his shoulders loose. “Your daughter took her time leading me here.”