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The room is thick with the kind of silence that means nobody’s breathing.
I’m still standing near the main screen, the boy’s face frozen in time before me. Viktor hasn’t moved from his position near the window. Lev’s back at the table, eyes glued to his phone like he’s willing it to spit out coordinates.
Then Viktor’s burner buzzes.
He pulls it from his coat and answers with a clipped edge, putting it on speaker as he crosses to the table.
“You have something?”
Thiago’s voice comes through, sounding strained and rough around the edges. But it’s still alert and calculating.
“I just got off the phone with Mara,” he says.
Every head in the room snaps toward the speaker. For the first time since this began, Lev lowers his phone. Viktor straightens. My hands curl into fists without meaning to.
“She says she’s safe. So is my grandson,” Thiago continues. “They’ve been… with Cristóbal Ruiz. These past twenty-four hours.”
The words hit like a gut punch.
“They’ve been what?” I mutter, stepping closer to the table.
Thiago’s voice doesn’t waver. “Apparently, they got married.”
I stop breathing.
Every noise—the hum of the monitors, the tick of the clock—ceases to exist. There’s only that sentence echoing in my skull, ringing louder with every second that ticks by.
Mara. Married. To Cristóbal.
“Say that again?”
“She married him. Privately. Says they’ve been in a long-standing relationship. That he’s been visiting her in Spain. That she wanted to protect herself and the boy before re-entering the public eye. Whatever that means.”
My jaw tightens so hard it clicks. I can feel Viktor watching me. Lev mutters something under his breath that sounds like “bullshit.”
Viktor mutes the call and exhales through his nose. It’s the kind of sound he makes when someone just lied to his face and he’s weighing which kneecap to break first.
My voice cuts through the air like a blade. “And you believe that?”
There’s a pause before Thiago answers. And that pause says more than anything.
“No,” he says finally, his voice lower now. “I know my daughter. That wasn’t her voice. She said all the right things—but none of it sounded like her.”
I close my eyes. Let the fury soak through my spine. My gut already knew it. This just confirms it.
“There’s something off,” Thiago continues. “She was trying too hard. Like someone was holding a script in front of her.”
Of course they were.
Cristóbal.
That bastard didn’t just take her. He dressed it up like a fairy tale. He’s parading her like she’s his willing queen while hiding the leash around her neck.
“You think she’s lying?” Viktor asks.
“I think she’s surviving,” Thiago says. “And I need you to figure out what she didn’t say.”
I turn around and lock eyes with Viktor. He nods once. No words needed.