Mateo rolled away from José’s body. When he looked up at Sally, his eyes were wide. Shocked. He started to speak. “Sally?—”
She turned the gun on him. “Did you love me?” The question came out calmer than she felt. “At any point, did youeverlove me?”
Mateo pushed himself to his knees, hands raised, palms out. His shirt was ruined with blood and mud. “I cared about you,” he said carefully. “I still care about you.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“No.” The word was quiet. A final nail in the coffin she felt was her heart. “I didn’t love you. Not the way you wanted.”
Sally nodded. She’d known. Of course she’d known. But hearing it was different than knowing it.
“What was your plan?” she asked. “After you killed José, what? You take over Nox in his place? Report to the syndicate or whomever your masters are?”
“What my assignment originally was is irrelevant at this point,” he said. He kept his arms outstretched, fingers splayed, palms facing her. It only confirmed what her father had said before he died. “Tonight I made a deal with somebody. My end of that deal is to kill José and I handle Nox a little longer.”
“Well.” She nodded to her father's body. “You’re welcome.” She still had the gun trained on Mateo.
“Sally, I'm sorry?—”
“Donotapologize to me,” she said quietly, the words laced with years of pain. “You lied to me … And you'resorry?”
Mateo shook his head. “That's not what I was apologizing for. Sally, I'm sorry you had to pull the trigger. Nobody should have to kill their own father.”
This infuriating, lying, idiot,she fumed as she trained the pistol on him.He's genuinely sorry and that shouldn't matter to you.
But it did. It did matter.
Because despite everything, she still loved him.
Sally sighed and lowered the gun slightly. “He was a shit father anyways. That much wasn’t your fault. What else did the deal entail?”
“They take Gabriella away. To safety.”
She scoffed at him. “And you believed that?”
“In my defense,” Mateo said with a shrug, “I thought I was as good as dead when I made the deal. I thought I was pulling a fast one over on the guy.”
“This is yourfriendwith the miraculous band-aid?” she asked as she lowered the gun again, this time tucking it into the waistband of her pants.
“One and the same,” Mateo said. He approached her warily, as if he still expected her to draw down on him again.
Sally looked at the man she once considered her father for the last time before turning her back on his corpse and walking back towards the compound. “I have an idea, Mateo, that I think will work out for all of us. Let’s go chat with this friend of yours.”
She was tired of being led by men who abused and hurt her. She was ready to rule her own fate.
Mateo seemed to sense the change. “Does it involve a woman in power?”
She smiled sweetly over to him. “And a man who has an unfortunate accident in a few months, after training her on how to run Nox.”
Mateo laughed at that. “Can’t fucking wait.”
CHAPTER 25
GABRIELLA
One year later
Tortuguero National Park was exactly as she remembered and painfully different all at once.