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I nodded, squeezing her wrist with my hand.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, ‘that I ever let you out of my sight.’
She wrapped her arms around me and squeezed, and we stayed that way for a very long time. It was nothing like I imagined it would be. It was so much better.
After a long time, the agent cleared his throat. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s time for me to take you both, now.’
‘Where are we going?’ my mother whispered.
I saw him glance at me before his gaze settled on my mother.
‘Home. You’re going home.’
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
DORNAN
There was a hollow feeling in Dornan Ross’s chest that he just couldn’t seem to shake. He’d tried to fill it with so many things over the years, with fucking and money, and little lines of flake that made his brain spark and bubble but left him with a hideous comedown afterward. He tried to fill it with children, and wives, and control.
He tried to fill it with everything he fucking could, but it was like a black hole, and it demanded to be fed, and it never, ever fucking closed up. It was never full. It was never sated. It just got bigger, and greedier, until one day, it swallowed him whole.
All these things occurred to him as he watched six Gypsy Brothers lower John Portland’s coffin into the earth. The day was brilliant, the normally hazy Los Angeles sky clear and blue. Sweat gathered around Dornan’s collar as he tugged at his tie. It seemed like far too nice a day to bury the best friend you’d murdered. He glanced across to the second slightly smaller coffin that contained John’s daughter’s remains. Yes, the sky was much too blue to be burying the girl he’d once thought of as his own.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
MARIANA
COLOMBIA, 2014
‘Lindsay,’ I said, smiling broadly as two machine-gun toting guards flanked me – one male, one female. You could never be too careful when the world believed you were dead. Especially when you alone controlled an eightysomething per cent stake in the South and Central American cocaine trade. ‘It’s been a long time.’
Lindsay smirked back at me, raising his arms as Guillermo patted him down for weapons or wires. I might have been happy to see my old FBI handler, but that didn’t mean I trusted him. Men – especially extremely attractive men – were not to be trusted.
After finding nothing, Guillermo slapped him hard on the back and Lindsay lowered his arms to his sides.
My two guards, a black-belt badass by the name of Maria, and a hulksized Colombian called Alejandro, followed Guillermo out of my sitting room, the door closing behind them.
Lindsay shoved his hands in his suit pockets and paced the length of the large room where I spent most of my time. It’s not that I was afraid to go outdoors, but it was summer in Colombia, and as soon as I went outside my flesh turned an angry red. For a native Colombian, it was annoying that I could no longer tolerate the sun in my own country, but ten years spent largely indoors had made my skin and my eyes incredibly sensitive.
‘You haven’t been here in months,’ I said.
Lindsay threw his hands up in mock frustration. ‘You won’t let me see you.’
‘I let you today.’
He laughed.
‘You look beautiful in that dress,’ he said in Spanish. He spoke the language almost as well as I did, a girl who was born and raised speaking the mother tongue.
‘Thank you,’ I replied, in English, smoothing down the black dress I wore. I would only address him in English, which annoyed him greatly, since he’d learned the language purely to impress me. I didn’t need his silver tongue or his sweet Spanish adorations turning me soft. I knew he wanted me; I wanted him, too, and it had been a very long time between lovers. The last man I had slept with was Dornan. But I couldn’t trust anyone, and so I was alone.
It was easier that way. Men only broke your heart. Burrowed in and settled, and then shattered you from within.
My heart was mine alone. It belonged to my children. No man would ever breach its solid walls again.
‘Uncle!’ Adelita cried, her long, messy hair flying behind her as she ran into the room and barrelled straight into Lindsay.
His eyes lit up, a smile he only smiled for her. They were not related to each other in any way, and they didn’t see each other for months or years at a time, but Adelita loved Lindsay as if he were her family.
