Page 27 of Damon

"I know this is difficult," she continues. "I know you want me home. But I need you to trust that I'm safer here than I would be anywhere else right now. And Papa?" Her tone softens. "Remember what you used to tell me when I was little and I'd have nightmares? You'd say that sometimes the monster under the bed is actually there to protect you from the real monsters."

A family saying. Personal, intimate, a fact only Roberto would understand. Perfect.

"I love you, Papa. Tell Mama and my brothers that I love them too. And please don't do anything stupid while I'm gone. I need you all to be safe so I can come home to you."

She looks directly into the camera for another moment, then nods at me. I stop the recording.

"Good?" she asks.

"Perfect."

And it was perfect. The right tone, the right message, the right balance of reassurance and information. She managed to humanize me without compromising anything, managed to ask her father not to retaliate without sounding like she was under duress.

"Will you tell him I said that? About you saving my life?"

"If it comes up."

"It should come up. Because it's true."

I save the video and slip the phone into my jacket pocket. "I'll be back in a few hours."

"What if Papa doesn't believe the video, or what if the people who tried to grab Sofia find you?"

"Calm down, nothing's going to happen."

"You don't know that."

She's right. This meeting could go sideways in a dozen different ways, and if it does, she'll be stuck here alone with no way to contact anyone and no way to get home.

"There's a safe in the master bedroom," I tell her. "Behind the painting of the sailboat. Combination is your birthday – month, day, year. Inside there's cash, a clean phone, and a gun."

"My birthday?"

"I memorized your file."

"Oh." She looks oddly touched by this, like the fact that I know her birthday means more than basic intelligence gathering. "What else do you know about me?"

"Enough. Like you're scared but trying not to show it. Like you're tougher than your father gives you credit for. Like you're attracted to things that are bad for you."

"Am I bad for you?"

The question hangs in the air between us, loaded with implications and possibilities and dangers I can't afford to think about.

"Yeah," I say finally. "You are."

"Good."

"That's not good, Viviana. That's the opposite of good."

"Why?"

"Because I don't have room in my life for complications."

"What if I'm something else besides a complication?"

"Like what?"

“Something worth the risk."