Page 20 of Gabriel

I didn’t answer. The image of Jet that night at the club—smiling like a man already inside the house—haunted me more than I wanted to admit.

“Firstly, Jet’s not normal. Secondly, he was too casual when he asked about her,” I said eventually. “And even more casualwhen he accepted my denial. It was almost as if he’d already made the decision and coming to me was an afterthought, a twisted courtesy of sorts.”

“Well,” Luis muttered, “let’s hope you’re right.”

“I’m confident I am,” I replied, draining the rest of my glass. “And if I’m wrong, it won’t matter. I’ll correct the mistake with blood.”

Luis said nothing else. The line went dead.

I stood in the darkened suite, letting the hush settle around me. Outside, the city still smoked.

Somewhere behind that mess, Amara was breathing. And Jet might be running. Plotting.

But I had men in every district of Paris. I had his scent now.

And when the time came, Jet would learn the truth.

Nadie se mete con un Santos y vive para contarlo.No one messes with a Santos and lives to tell the tale.

Amara

One minute, Paris was offering you champagne and a three-course meal, the next it was coughing up smoke and secrets.

We left Élan in the back of a stolen ambulance because Jet, in all his brilliance, had disappeared, leaving only wreckage and a single cryptic text, like he thought we’d be fine sorting through a bomb scene in designer shoes and soot-filled lungs.

The air outside the restaurant still stank of gunpowder and melted wiring. Sirens wailed in overlapping directions, echoing off the stone buildings. Cops. Medics. Fire crews. Cameras. Civilians.

Too many eyes.

We’d slipped through the smoke easily, cutting down a side alley behind a shuttered flower shop. My legs were trembling and my lungs burned, but Elira didn’t slow down. She disposed of her heels almost immediately and broke into a sprint, dress torn, face streaked with ash and stained with blood.

Elira spotted the ambulance first.

It was half concealed behind a boulangerie, still idling, doors flung wide like someone had left in a hurry. No crew. No stretcher. No lights.

Just keys swinging from the ignition like an invitation.

I hesitated. She didn’t.

She climbed into the driver’s seat, fingers already flying over the controls, adjusting mirrors and ripping off a lanyard from the dash that might’ve belonged to someone still inside Élan.

“Get in,” she droned as she turned the engine over. “Now.”

I did as she said, the vinyl seat catching against my scraped palms. The sirens were getting louder again as we took off around the corner.

Two minutes later, we were swallowed by the backstreets of Paris, red taillights bouncing off wet cobblestone like a pulse.

We didn’t speak for a while.

The city blurred around us, fractured and flickering, as if Paris itself were trying to forget what had just happened.

And maybe we were too.

“You can tell me if you were responsible, you know. I can handle the truth,” I muttered, gripping the overhead bar as she swung us through a maze of alleyways, her hands steady on the wheel.

She smirked. “Wouldn’t have used that much smoke. Too dramatic. We’d be dead if it were me.”

“You have issues.”