Vicente nodded. “When I learned the evidence existed, I knew we had to get out of town as fast as possible. If the truth came out, Costa would hunt me, and every member of my family, until we’d been eradicated.” He paused for a hacking cough against his shoulder. “It was the right choice. Especially since I heard, later, that Bianca was raped that day. I’m sorry, Natalia. That was never supposed to happen.”
I swayed, or the ground underneath me did. I’d suspected that. Truthfully, deep down, I’d known it. Over time, I’d come to understand her ripped dress and the signs of her struggle for what it was. But nobody had ever said it to me outright.
Cristiano’s held me up by my biceps and said against my ear. “Stay strong. For that alone, Vicente will die. Today, if he’s lucky. Or over time, if you decide he’s not.”
Vicente glanced over at his brothers. “I’ve told you all I know. I’ve answered your questions.” He turned his face forward. “So will you meet my condition, Natalia? Spare my family. Please. Gabriel is innocent. My brothers opposed the assassination.”
Still reeling from everything I’d just learned, my legs threatened to give out. Mercy? He was in no place to ask for it. I was in no place to give it. I’d gotten what I’d come for. What Cristiano had sought for me. Closure. But it didn’t feel as if anything had ended. I could finally picture clearly what had happened in my mother’s final moments, and it sickened me. The fear she must’ve felt—it moved through me now, leaving my stomach weak and my head swimming.
A stranger in the bedroom she’d shared with my father.
“I’ll take her upstairs,” Cristiano said, somewhere in the distance. “We won’t decide anything now.”
“Claro,” Alejandro answered.
Cornering her. Violating her.
Before or after he’d raided the safe? And why?
Where had he found her? In her bathroom, by the bed? Had she been in the closet when he’d suddenly appeared from the tunnel . . .?
I let Cristiano guide me toward the exit, unable to see through my haze of mounting questions.
Until . . .
“Wait.” I halted before we reached the door, planting my feet where they were. “Wait.”
“¿Qué pasa, mi amor?” Cristiano asked. “What is it?”
I turned back to face Vicente. Cristiano released me but stayed close. “Only my mother, father, and I knew about the secret passageway the assassin used to enter the bedroom. How did you discover it?”
“Ah. Well. That part is simple.” Vicente’s gaze traveled up, over my head, and fixed on Cristiano. “Someone was more than happy to leave the secret door unlocked for us. To carry out the hit, we needed a little help from the inside. And we found it—in a de la Rosa brother.”
No. Goose bumps started at my scalp and blazed over my skin. Cristiano, my mind said. He’d had some of the highest security clearance at the time. For more than eleven years, I’d blamed him for this crime. I’d had no other explanation. It would be easy for me to slot him into the role as guilty. I turned my head over my shoulder to look at him—my husband.
Cristiano stared back at me. He swallowed but didn’t deny it. I was learning to read him better. A blank expression that once might’ve come off as indifference, was now patience for how long it’d taken me to get here. Anguish that I might not. Struggle not to declare his innocence—and belief in me that I’d arrive at the truth on my own.
My parents had trusted him. He’d been loyal to them. He’d brought me all of this to avenge my mother’s death. I could make up some of my faithlessness in him by having confidence that he’d never have cooperated with the Valverdes.
But if he hadn’t, that left only one answer. And not only did it turn my life into a lie—it called everything about me, as a person, into question. My choices, my feelings, my judgment.
The ache of the truth permeated throughout me, numbing my hands, stiffening my neck as I turned forward again to address Vicente.
I barely heard myself speak the name that I’d once revered, but which continued to fall even further from its long smashed pedestal each day. And now, it seemed, it had finally hit the bottom.
“Diego.”
13
Natalia
In the dark and dank underbelly of the mountain, Vicente Valverde confirmed the truth. “Diego de la Rosa let us into the Cruz compound,” he said from a plastic chair that wobbled on an uneven dirt floor. “But then, he turned my plan against me.”
“How?” Cristiano’s question rumbled through the small room.
“An assassin only works for the highest bidder. He sold your brother proof that I was behind the murder, and Diego threatened to expose me if I didn’t leave.” He took a rattling breath as his expression darkened, the first flame of anger I’d seen in him yet. “I should’ve known if the bastard would betray Costa, the man who’d taken him in as a boy, he’d turn on me, too.”