Page 122 of Forbidden Fate

Cruz stands very still beside me, flexing his bloody hands at his sides.

I finally look at him fully.

Really look.

A bruise is already forming near his jaw. His throat is marked where Zabala must have grabbed him. His shirt is torn near the collar, and one sleeve is dark with blood.

He looks like a man standing in the wreckage of the only home he ever had.

My heart aches.

“You’re hurt,” I say.

“Not badly.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know.”

“Cruz—”

“We have to move.”

He looks down the hall where Esmeralda has disappeared and then back at me. His eyes are hard now, not with anger but with urgency.

“I need to get you to the car,” he says. “We leave now.”

“The embassy?”

“Yes.” He reaches for my hand.

Part of me wants to let him pull me down the stairs, past whatever horror waits in the foyer, out to the car, onto the road, toward the embassy, toward phones and brothers and lawyers and safety.

But safety without truth is just another locked room.

I look at his hand.

Then at his face.

And I shake my head.

His eyes narrow. “Robin.”

“We need to finish our conversation first.”

34

CRUZ

For one full second, I think I misheard her.

I must have.

Robin Bellamy can’t possibly be standing in the hallway of a brothel with blood on the floor downstairs, terrified women rushing past us, Zabala dead on the porch, Señora Valentina dead in the foyer, and Vega’s men likely already being dispatched to finish what Zabala started, telling me we need to continue our conversation.

But she is.

She stands there in that too-large robe with her chin lifted, hair falling around her face, eyes too bright, mouth too firm, and she looks at me like she’s not being completely unreasonable.