And deep down, so do I.
My father huffs a sigh on the other end of the line, pain audible in every breath. “I know,” he says quietly. “This isn’t about forgiveness anymore.”
I close my eyes tightly, dreading what’s coming.
Seeing my father tied up in that basement changed things. Not because it erased what he did.Because it definitely didn’t.There are still years of lies, corruption, and blood attached to his choices. People were hurt and died because of him. I can’t magically forgive him for all of that.
But seeing him bound to that pipe—bleeding and terrified—made me finally understand what he had been trying to protect me from all this time. The monsters are real, not theoretical. They are real men capable of torture, murder, retaliation, brutal enough to haunt someone for a lifetime.
I don’t forgive him, but I do understand why fear consumed him, and why he kept making one terrible decision after another, trying to outrun consequences that were always going to catch up with him eventually. There were better choices—God, therehadto be better choices—but I understand now that not once, since this started a decade ago, did he ever stop trying to protect me. If anything, maybe that was the problem.
“I need to atone for what I’ve done.” My father’s voice strains, and his breathing falters briefly. “The years of harm I caused. For myself. For you… For your mother. I’m going to do the right thing. I love you, Mackenzi.”
My throat tightens painfully as I try to swallow the lump rising in it. Fresh tears spill down my cheeks. “I love you, too.”
I’m met with silence and look down to see the call has disconnected. I stare at the dark phone in Gunnar’s hand as the reality finally settles fully into my chest.
He’s not coming home.
He mightnevercome home.
A broken sob tears out of me before I can stop it. Gunnar pushes from the couch and wraps his arms around me before he fully makes it to his feet. “Easy,” he murmurs quickly, pulling me into his chest as the first real wave of grief crashes over me.
I can’t stop crying. I bury my face in his shoulder as sobs wrack through me violently, every emotion from the last two days finally detonating at once inside my chest.
Fear.
Relief.
Anger.
Loss.
Love.
“We’ve got you,” Gunnar soothes quietly, his hand cradling the back of my head as I fall apart against him. “Just breathe.”
But breathing hurts. My heart hurts.
Everythinghurts.
The last three days have felt like three fucking months.
Everything fucking hurts.
My ribs ache from bruises that are still in the process of healing properly. But they are nothing compared to the exhaustion sitting heavy behind my eyes from sleeping in scattered thirty-minute stretches on uncomfortable chairs inside DEA offices while Richard Bradenburg emptied ten years of cartel operations onto conference room tables.
The DEA satellite office in Bogotá became our entire world the second we dragged the ambassador out of that basement alive. In an instant, my life went from warm bed with Mackenzi curled against me to gray walls, fluorescent lighting, horrible fucking coffee, and endless interrogations.
The ambassador sat at the center of it all, looking ten years older than when I first met him, bruised hands folded tightly together while federal agents and Colombianofficials dismantled his entire life, piece by piece, around him. He has a wealth of knowledge about the Cartagena Cartel—names, routes, politicians, money laundering channels, shipping manifests, corrupt customs agents—that hasn’t even been tapped into yet.
There was no hesitation or bargaining for immunity. He promised to give them everything, letting the cards fall as they may.
For publicity’s sake, he officially resigned his position yesterday morning, under the guise of “medical complications following a recent security incident.” The press release is vague enough to explain his disappearance from public view without triggering a media frenzy or political fallout.
The real truth will stay buried where it belongs, at least publicly.
Privately, though, the price for avoiding prison time is steep enough to make most men break. Protective custody, indefinitely. His cooperation agreement means he’ll spend the foreseeable future helping the DEA and Colombian authorities dismantle what remains of the Cartagena Cartel, using the decade of intelligence he spent building from the inside.
