Page 16

Diego

“You killed my brother.”

It’s not a question but a statement. She stands at the edge of the bed with my gun in her hand. “You killed my brother and you lied to me.”

My chest seizes. I am completely naked under the sheet. I watch the anguish riddle her face and my heart squeezes tightly.

“Diego,” she spits my name, venom in every syllable. Her voice shakes, but her hands don’t. Her grip on the weapon is steady. “You murderer.”

“Camille, I had wanted to tell you so many times but the time was never right,” I say, my voice hoarse, though it feels like a weak attempt at control. A small, futile effort. “Please, put down the gun and let me speak.”

She’s trembling now, her anger so palpable, it vibrates in the air. The gun shakes slightly in her hand, but she keeps it aimed directly at my head, and I know—I know—there’s no coming back from this.

“You killed my brother and you want to explain your way out of it? Have you no shame? Have you no remorse?” The gun shakes in her hand. I know for a fact that this woman has never held a gun in her life. I could easily disarm her but I don’t. She needs to do this, I want her to have the power in this situation.

“Camille—” I start, but she cuts me off, her voice rising to a scream that cracks with pain.

“No! No more lies, Diego! You killed him. You killed étienne. And for what? Because he was trying to bring you down? Or because it was easier to just pull the trigger?” Her voice breaks on the last word, and it’s enough to make the ground beneath me feel unstable, like everything is crumbling to dust.

The stillness that follows her accusation is suffocating. I swallow, my throat dry as the words finally, inevitably, come to the surface.

“I didn’t want to,” I say, and the ache in my chest almost makes the words sound foreign. “I didn’t… I never wanted to hurt him. étienne had come into the cartel and I believed that he had genuinely been a part of our world. I grew close to him. At one point, I would have even considered him a friend. I didn’t want to kill him but he had been made and I had a job to do. He understood that, he knew that.”

My words only kill her more. It’s like I am twisting the knife that I embedded in her chest.

“You didn’t want to?” she repeats, her voice eerily calm now. “You think that makes it better? All the times you watched me cry, weeping over my dead brother, you probably just sat there laughing. You probably thought I was a pathetic little girl. Right? Right!”

Her screams vibrate against the wall.

I don’t answer. I can’t. There’s nothing left to say. The guilt is suffocating, knotting my stomach into tight, painful coils. I know what I’ve taken from her. But I’ve lived with this burden for years. It was always a part of who I was—an inescapable truth.

A mistake I’ll never fix.

I close my eyes for just a moment, feeling the weight of everything crashing in on me. The life I’ve led, the things I’ve done… all of it pulling me under.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, my voice raw, barely audible. I open my eyes and stare at her tear streaked face.

“étienne asked me to watch over you. He knew that you would need my help to get out of this mess and I still can help you. I know you want nothing to do with me right now, I get it. But please, this fight you are in, the information that the cartel is looking for, they think you have it and they will torture you just to get it. I need to get you out of here. I don’t have to come with you but allow me to get you to safety.”

“Safety?” She scoffs at the word. “I’ve had the information this whole time. The locket my brother gave me has the drive and I plan on using it to do exactly what he intended and that is to put all of you behind bars.”

My eyes instinctively snap to my neck. I see the heart shaped locket on her neck and it all clicks. She was wearing it in his apartment when we went to go check. That was when she began to pull away from me. I felt the shift.

“I hate you,” she whispers, but I hear the pain in her voice, and it breaks something inside me. “I can’t believe I allowed myself to… You are the worst kind of human being.”

And I know, as much as it tears her apart to say it, the feeling is mutual. I hate me too.

The quiet that follows is unbearable. I can hear the faint tremor in Camille’s breath, and I know it’s because of me—because of the man I am. The man I’ve been. I want to say something, anything, to make this right, but I know it’s too late for that. I can already see the walls closing in around us.

“I want to hear it now,” she spits, her voice trembling with rage. “Explain it to me, Diego. Explain how you killed him. Tell me why.”

The way she says it—so raw, so full of pain—rips through me.

I take a shaky breath and lower my gaze. This isn’t easy, but I can’t hide from it anymore.

“The cartel found out étienne was working against them,” I say, my voice low, almost drowned out by the sound of my own guilt. “He was a mole. He was gathering information on them, trying to take them down. They found out, and they ordered me to take him out.”

Her face crumples at the words, and I feel like I’m slowly drowning in the emotion I’m dragging her through.

“I didn’t have a choice. If I didn’t do it… they would’ve killed me. They would’ve killed us both. In our world, it’s a dog-eat-dog system. I have grown up in this darkness and I was accustomed to betrayal. But with your brother, it was different.”

I continue, my voice breaking despite my efforts to keep it steady.

“We were close, Camille. étienne and I. We… We were more than just allies. He was my friend. I considered him family, and that’s what makes this all the harder to live with. He trusted me. And I betrayed him.”

I can’t look at her anymore. I can’t bear to see the look in her eyes—the same look I’ve been avoiding for so long. The look that says she sees me for what I truly am.

I don’t dare look up at her as I speak, my voice barely above a whisper.

“He was standing there, so close. I could see the fear in his eyes, but he didn’t fight me. He trusted me right up until the end. He didn’t even try to run. And I…” I swallow hard, the weight of the memory pressing down on me like a thousand bricks. “I took him out. I shot him. And I watched him fall.”

The words hang in the air, thick with the weight of all I’ve done. All I’ve taken from her. From him.

Her voice cracks as she speaks again, this time softer, almost like a plea. “Tell me you didn’t enjoy it,” she whispers, her words barely audible. “Tell me you didn’t like it.”

I shake my head, my breath coming in short, ragged gasps. “I hated it. I hated every moment of it.”

Her hand trembles, but she doesn’t drop the gun. Her eyes, filled with hatred and heartbreak, bore into me.

“I want you dead, I want to pull this trigger and kill you in cold blood the same way you killed my brother.” The tears are streaming down her face now. “I want to become the cold monster you were and take your life just as easily as you took his.”

I nod, feeling the suffocating weight of her pain hanging between us. I never thought this moment would come, not like this.

I stand slowly from the bed and reach for my boxers. She allows me but her hands still point the gun my way. I hold my hands up, making sure that she doesn’t see me as a threat as I walk toward her. Her eyes hold so much pain and hatred and it shatters me completely.

I wish I could take it all away.

I move toward her and press my chest right up to the barrel of the gun. I stare into her eyes. I lift the veil that I use to conceal myself from the world and allow her in. I allow her to see what she means to me if she so chooses to search for that.

“Pull the trigger, Camille. You can end it all here and you can shoot me dead. But before you do, I want you to take my phone and message the contact that says Vito. He is someone who can help you to leave the country. The documents will be ready soon. They will be legit and you will have a new name and everything. Pull the trigger and kill me, but make sure you do as I say so you are kept safe.”

The gun shakes in her hands. She wants to do it and I can see it in her eyes. It’s the same coldness I had to unlock in order to do my job and now I have drawn her to that point.

We wait in the thick silence. Not a single word uttered between us. Just the gun separating us. My life hangs in her hands and I am willing to accept

I am almost certain she is going to shoot until she steps back.

“Take me home.” She drops the gun to the floor and looks me dead in the eye. “I need to leave this place and I cannot be around you. I don’t care what these cartel people want. I just know that I can’t be around you and I want to go home.”

I want to fight her and tell her it’s not safe but I hold my tongue. There is no room for argument in her tone. I know the dangers that will come with what she is asking for but I can’t play protective man here. She knows the truth and there is no way that she can ever trust me again.

And so, I nod. “Okay, I will take you home.”