Page 97 of No Sweeter Poison

“I didn’t tell you in case something happened and my plans fell through. Ibanez and Montenegro were in Italy. They aren’t a problem anymore.”

My breath quickens and my chest expands to the point of pain. All over my body is buzzing, bones aching, skull throbbing until I think it’ll split in half. “Alejandro.”

“I promised that I would see you home safely.” His voice drops to a whisper nearly carried away by the summer wind. “Es tiempo de que cumpla esa promesa.”

I blink to dispel the blurriness gathering along the edges of my vision. When I do, warm tears roll to the ends of my lashes and fall away. “I don’t want to go.”

“Dahlia—”

“I love you.”

I know I shouldn’t have said it but I did and I don’t regret it. I won’t take it back.

This summer has been a terrifying, wild, reckless whirlwind and if given the chance to go back and change anything, I wouldn’t. I don’t care who or what Alejandro is. It doesn’t matter to me what he does or who he hurts and I know…I know that makes me an awful person without redemption. What I’ve seen him do, what I know he’s capable of, is nothing short of malevolent. And I still. Don’t. Care.

“Please…please don’t send me away.”

“I’m not sending you away, Dee. I’m sending you back to where you belong.”

“I belong with you.”

A muscle in his jaw jumps as he applies pressure to his temples. Tension radiates from his body in waves so powerful that every muscle in my body tightens in response.

“I am not a good man, Dahlia. I want to be—I try to be—but the circumstances of my birth didn’t allow much room for me to be the kind of man that could take you on a date in broad daylight without a legion of bodyguards on his tail. You know the kind of life we lead. Diego, Lettie, and I all have blood on our hands. Me more than most.”

I close my eyes as if doing so will make this any less true.

“Life with me will never be easy. It’ll never be safe. There’ll be nights where you’ll stay up late wondering where I am, if I’ll come home, or if I’m even alive. If you’re with me, you’ll always be a target. There’ll always be the risk that someone doesn’t follow the rules and in order to come at me, they’ll come at you.”

I shake my head. “I don’t care.”

“Yes, you do. You do and you should. You’re going to go home and live the life you’re meant to have. Where you’re safe and far away from me, my world, and everything in it.”

The urge to cry overrides whatever shame I feel at breaking down in front of him. My pride demands he be drowned in the pool until he regrets the day he ever laid eyes on me. But I’m too heartbroken to be vindictive or angry. All I feel is loss.

“Do you even care? Does none of this mean anything to you?”

Alejandro grabs my wrists and spins me around so that we’re facing each other. I try to pull away and scrounge up whatever bit of dignity I have left but he holds me firmly in place.

“You have no idea…no idea.” His voice wavers. “What it’s costing me to let you go.”

“When you first brought me here, I didn’t get to choose whether or not I could leave or stay. Let me choose now. I want to be with you. Alex, I love you. Please—please don’t send me away.”

What happens next? Go back to New York and do what? Oh, I know. Sit in my lonely apartment and live my lonely life where I have no family or friends save a nice landlord and a cousin who’s about to marry my archnemesis. There’s nothing waiting for me back home, nothing I’m desperate to get back to. Maybe I wanted to run away before out of fear but I’m not afraid anymore.

Alejandro draws my hands against his chest and he keeps them there, eyes closed, as he presses his forehead against mine. What I wouldn’t give to read his mind in this moment. A glimpse of his thoughts is all I want.

“I need you to go back.”

“Alex—”

“Three months, Dahlia. Give it three months.” He opens his eyes. Hazel and brown. “At least until Karina’s wedding. And then if you still want to come back, I promise, I’ll honor your wishes. I’ll go and get you myself. But you have to give it three months.”

“Why?”

“Because I need to know you lived your life and still chose to come back to me. That’s why. I can’t keep you here like this, like a prisoner. We need a new start and we can’t have that if you stay.”

He brushes away each tear as they fall. I should be over the moon right now, packing my bags this very moment and ready to jump on the next flight back to New York. What’s wrong with me that I’m in pain? Because there has to be something wrong with me to want to be with him in spite of everything. Over and over again I remind myself of the things he’s done and what I’ve seen. How he can be two completely different people is a mystery that’ll confound me for as long as I live. When he touches me, his hands are warm and soft, so gentle as they urge me not to cry. And these same hands have taken someone’s life. They’ve beaten, broken, strangled, gutted, tortured. They cannot be the same and yet they are.