“Humor me.”
“Well…I went to a trivia night where I met Emilio.”
I coughed, my cheeks heating up. I couldn’t talk about this kind of stuff with my dad.
“Skip over the embarrassing parts.”
I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear.
My dad choked.
“Are you wearing an engagement ring?”
His face was flushing.
“Yes,” I said, blushing harder.
“How in… well, tell me about how you got there.”
“I met him, um, skipping over this part, then I accidentally went into his secret cabin in Quito.”
“Secret cabin?”
“It’s near the TeleferiQo.”
“Good to know.”
I saw my dad turn to look at a pad of paper on the side table.
“Dad, I don’t want you to hunt him down.”
“Pumpkin, I may not have a choice. I’ve been trying to hunt down Emilio Gabria for years…and then he showed up on my doorstep with my daughter, who was wearing his ring.”
I slid the ring off of my finger. At that moment, a ray of sunlight hit the emerald, making it light up.
“It’s beautiful,” I said, my heart heavy. I knew that I’d have to send it back.
“Okay, you accidentally went into his cabin, and then?”
“He was going to make me come back to the United States…he seemed really paranoid, thinking that I was some kind of spy.”
“Reasonable,” my dad said, nodding.
“Daddy!” I frowned fiercely at him. “Going to Ecuador was completely impulsive. I didn’t go there to hunt down a drug lord.”
“But that’s what you caught.”
I glared.
“Do you want me to tell you what happened or not?”
He held his hands up.
“Okay, I won’t interrupt anymore.”
“But they…like I said, they didn’t let us take off because of the baggie of cocaine that the police officer, Aguilera, found in the plane. Then Officer Ortiz let us go.”
“He has half of the police force of Ecuador on his payroll. It’s not like here, pumpkin. If you’re an Ecuadorian police officer, the entirety of the country is your jurisdiction, and half of them are on his payroll. The other half are on the Omega payroll.”