Page 16 of Thaddeus

They’d come and get me.

After that? I’d wing it.

“You can—”

“I can’t, Tatiana. But again, thank you for your offer.”

“Whatever your plan is, it won’t work,” Thad told me.

“You have no idea what my plan is, Thad. So you have no idea if it will work or not, but your concern is noted.”

“Don’t mistake my concern for the well-being of my team for concern over whether or not you get to where you’re going.”

“You think I’ll rat you out to Jefferson’s security team?”

“I don’t know what the fuck you’ll do. Tatiana was incorrect, you’re not free to walk out the door. Not until we’re ready to put your ass on a plane and send you back to the U.S.”

God, why did that hurt so bad when I was thinking the same thing about him?

“Seriously, Thaddeus. I thought you knew me better than that. They’d kill you.”

“I don’t know who you are, and as it turned out, I never did. And, no, sweetheart, they’d try to kill us and that’d waste valuable time. The only thing I give a shit about is finding those girls.”

Shit. That hurt worse. Way worse.

But it was the truth, he didn’t know me. At least not the new me. The starry-eyed girl he’d known in San Diego was long ago dead and gone.

Once the verbal dagger he’d successfully used to obliterate my heart started to fade I thought about what he’d said about the girls.

He was right.

The girls were the most important thing, and if it meant I had to trust them and they turned out to be not-so-good people after all and killed me, then at least I’d died trying to save innocent women who needed help.

Wasn’t that what I told myself every morning I’d woken up in the bed of a vile man? Over the years hadn’t I told myself a thousand times my crusade was worth dying for?

I dropped my shoes and set the earrings I’d been holding on to the buffet I’d been standing next to, and on a swift exhale I asked, “Is there some place I can use to clean up? I’d like to at least wash Carlos’ blood off my face, and maybe some of the puke, too.”

“Yeah. Come on, I’ll show you where the bathroom is and get you some clean clothes, I should have something that will fit.”

“Thanks.”

I followed Tatiana, and as I went, I glanced around the room that would’ve been a decent-sized sitting area if five large men weren’t taking up all the space. None of them had sat down during their questioning. All of them had stood with their vests still on and rifles still in hand. Their presence was ominous, none of them looked friendly. Except Tatiana—she seemed to be the voice of reason and I briefly wondered what they would’ve done with me if she wasn’t there.

The entire feel of the house was pretty much the opposite of Jefferson’s preferred opulence. The bungalow wasn’t horrible, it was clean and utilitarian. Lacking the grandiose ambiance Jefferson needed to feed his over-inflated ego.

Weirdly it fit the men who were staying there. If I’d had my choice, I would pick the cottage over the villa any day.

Even though Tatiana had told me their names, I couldn’t remember any of them. I didn’t have the mental capacity to store such useless information. There were more important things to worry about—like how I was going to get myself out of the clusterfuck Thad had gotten me into.

Once again, I had nothing. I was back at square one. Only this time it was worse—Thad had said they were taking me back to the U.S. It would cost a fortune to get back down to South America on my own and I hadn’t picked my next mark yet.

I smelled like puke, had a dead man’s blood on me, but I straightened my spine, schooled my features, and did what I always did—prepared for a world-class performance. I was playing a part—and I was a good freaking actress. I could do this. Always on my game even though on the inside I was scared as hell. I had no idea what I was going to do.

I was so screwed.

The only silver lining of me being worried about my new situation was I wasn’t thinking about how the man I’d loved for the last ten years had annihilated me with his words.

Any part of my heart that had been left intact after I’d left him was now crushed.