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Somewhere, a twig snapped, and Anya flinched. Frowning, I wrapped my arm around her. “I don’t like seeing you like this.”

“I’m not exactly your sunny girl right now,” she acknowledged, grimacing softly.

“Nobody expects you to be.” I hugged her closer, counting to ten. When she didn’t speak, I finally said, “Can you tell me what’s bothering you?”

She twitched under my arm. Not shrugging me off, not exactly. But not settling in either. I tried not to take it as rejection. But the moment stretched, the silence between us lingering. I sipped my wine, not sure what to do next. I didn’t want to push her away. But I needed her to tell me what was wrong.

“I…”

I held my breath, silently urging her to continue.

“I’m here under false pretenses, Drew.”

Her admission came out almost too quietly for me to hear over my pounding heart.

“What do you mean?”

“Anya’s not my real name.” She shook her head, letting out a rueful laugh that broke in the middle. “Well, it is now. But it wasn’t always.”

That broken laugh killed me. Sent me straight to hell. Almost overshadowing the bomb she’d dropped. I’d suspected a toxic family. But changing your identity was extreme.

She worried a string on the hem of her sweater, picking at it until she unraveled the edge, bit by bit. I captured her fingers in mine, threading our hands together.

“Names aren’t that important to me, but can you tell me why you changed it?” I held my breath, not sure what I expected her answer to be.

She laughed again, the jagged sound slashing at my heart. “I didn’t want anything to do with my family anymore. Or my ex-boyfriend.”

I stilled, watching her carefully. She stared into the fire, as if the dancing flames with their hypnotic qualities could soothe whatever hurt she didn’t want to speak about. She kept telling mewhatshe’d done, notwhy. And it was the why that mattered.

“You changed your name to disown your family. That’s a pretty big step, and I’m sure it was hard.” I kept my tone neutral, nonjudgmental. But I desperately wanted to know what they’d done. How was I supposed to help, to fix it, if she didn’t tell me everything? She perched next to me like she might fly away, as if the slightest breeze might send her running. But I needed her to trust me enough to stay. To let me help.

“They made a fool of me.” She said it with such bitterness, I didn’t know how to respond, other than to wait. Now that she’dstarted, she seemed intent on letting the whole story spill out. “They ran—no—runa shipping company. Lots of traffic across the border between Canada and the United States. I used to work for them in the accounting department.” She laughed, the sound mirthless.

My chest hollowed out at the self-derision in her words. The guilt.

“I was so proud to be part of the family business. My mother was the CFO, my dad the CEO. I even met my ex through work. He was some kind of hotshot chief of staff for my dad. I had no idea what that meant. Then,” she looked at me, a wealth of misery in her eyes, “I found out they were really smugglers.” She tossed back the last of her wine. “And they made me an unwitting part of it. They used me and my boat. I was fucking disposable to them. If I’d gotten caught, I’d be in prison right now.”

White-hot anger jabbed me like a sword through the stomach, but I kept a lid on it. She’d given me something precious – her trust. I wouldn’t abuse it by making her confession about me. Anya didn’t need me going off, even if I wanted nothing more than to give her my list of top five places to bury a body.

She wiped a stray tear. I reached for her hand, squeezing. Striving for control over my racing heart.

“I’m so sorry.” I didn’t know what else to say. The level of betrayal she’d experienced was incomprehensible. My family was far from perfect, but they’d never misled me like hers had. I set our glasses aside and pulled her into my lap, wrapping my arms tightly around her. Holding her helped me duct-tape back the rage that wanted to leak out in a toxic stew.

“I discovered the real reason my ex always wanted to sail to Canada on a day trip to Windsor. A cache of drugs in my gear locker. He always sent me off to shop or pick up snacks, something to get me out of the way. He must have been doingshady deals behind my back since the beginning, but I didn’t see it. Didn’t suspect.”

“How did you connect your family to the drugs?” I asked, focusing on the facts she presented instead of how much I wanted to rip her ex limb from limb. “Couldn’t it have just been this asshole’s side hustle?”

“I hoped that was all it was.” She hung her head. “I figured I didn’t really know what was going on. Pretended I had seen nothing. Instead of taking my time on our next trip, I sped through my grocery run and doubled back to the boat. I watched him make the exchange. There was no denying what he was then. But my dad? My mom? I had no idea they were involved.

“I broke it off with Owen without telling him why. But my parents pestered me incessantly about taking him back. Talked about how he was justlostwithout me.” She shook her head. “They’d lost. Lost their mule into Canada. Then Mom gave me a ‘special account’ at work. The one they used to reconcile their illicit activities, to wash out the payments to Owen. It didn’t take me long to match the payments to him with our boat trips.” She shuddered. “They were part of it. Behind it. And they usedme.”

“Honey, I’m so sorry. Did you confront them?” I asked, unwillingly fascinated by her tale. Cold rage settled over my shoulders like a mantle. Part of me wanted to stop probing, avoid causing her more pain. But now that she’d started, maybe excising the wound was best. And I needed to know what I was up against. How deep the rot went.

Anya shook her head. “No. I started planning. Copying whatever evidence I could get my hands on and downloading files. Taking out small amounts of cash until I could fund my escape. My mom took me out to lunch on my last day. She could tell something was wrong, but she made one last attempt at getting me to reconcile with Owen.”

She snorted. “My mom said he was such a ‘good man.’ I knew then they didn’t really love me. Not if they’d set me up with that monster. By then I’d found evidence of more than just the pharmaceutical scam. Drew,” her blue eyes were luminous with tears. “I think they had at least one border guard killed.”

My heart stilled. She was dead serious.