I don’t let him see the tears in my eyes. I don’t let him see how his words just moved something in the center of my chest, or how much I want to sit down on the floor and cry. Instead, I kiss his cheek and walk out of the house.
My mind is a puzzle that keeps spinning, trying to make sense of everything that’s happened over the last few hours.
I don’t know how long we’ve been driving until I hear Lupe.
“Alek, where are we going?”
I feel her gaze on me, but I don’t have the strength to meet it.
I want to go home.
I want quiet.
I want to talk to him.
Even if he’s a traitor.
A liar.
I was willing to put my degree on the line, to put distance between myself and my own family, just so his reputation would stay intact.
And for what?
For a man who is, at this very moment, with his wife and child, enjoying his life and laughing to himself at the fool waiting for him back in Ciudad de México.
How could you be so naive, Amalia?
Alek says something back to her, but I don’t catch a single word, too consumed by my own thoughts.
Suddenly, Lupe lets out a sound of shock, and I look over at her.
“¿Qué es eso?”
In Lupe’s hands are several photographs of a woman who looks familiar. I lean closer, and it takes my tired brain way too many seconds to realize that the woman with the honey eyes, dressed in combat gear, is Julia. Our sister.
“Is that Julia?” I ask, and now I look at Aleksandr, whose face, I could swear, looks pleased.
What the hell is going on?
“Creo que sí,” my twin answers. “Where did you get these pictures?” Her gaze shifts to her boyfriend.
Without the slightest sign that he cares that he’s just turned our world upside down, he straightens in his seat.
“I told you I had dangerous people on my tail. These are those people. I barely got out of Russia alive. They run a human-trafficking ring there. Little children,rybka.”
“You’re lying!” I shout at him. “Our sister would never do anything like that.”
“Look at the pictures, Amalia,” he says, emphasizing my name. “One image is worth a thousand words.”
I take several of the photos in my hands and scan them, feeling my already-rattled soul shatter into pieces with every glance.
Children climbing out of trucks, tied with rope, shoved forward or held at gunpoint.
And in every single one of these pictures, Julia stands still…without moving, without a flicker of emotion on her face.
What happened to you, Julia, that you’d allow something like this?
My older sister was the most caring person I knew. I refuse to believe there’s any universe in which she would allow this.
