Page 154 of That Last Summer

“River?”

I’ve never seen my oldest brother so affected, so anxious. Something is happening here. Something he hasn’t told us.

“Guys, you have to promise me this won’t leave this room.”

“You can take that for granted,” Hugo points out.

“My marriage to Catalina...” he pauses to take a deep breath. “It was a sham.”

We don’t say a single word. We’re all silent. A sham? What does that even mean? Okay, I know what a sham is, but... what the hell does that mean? We need him to explain.

“What do you mean?” Adrián asks for all of us.

“I had to marry her for... my job.”

“What, your IT job?” Hugo asks.

“I don’t understand anything,” Jaime says.

“Your job was so shitty you needed a sugar mama to provide for you?”

“Marcos!” Hugo and I reprimand him. That was rude.

Catalina is the mayor’s daughter. Her father’s been in that position her entire life, and she comes from money—her family, both on the maternal and paternal side, has been among the wealthiest families in the region for generations.

“No, dammit. None of that. I mean my other job.”

“What other job?” I ask.

“My job for the government.”

Oh. My. God.

“What?”

“What?”

“How—?”

“Excuse me?”

“Fuck. You never left the academy, did you?”

I look at Marcos. He asked that last question, and he seems to be the only one who understands what’s happening at all. The academy? The police academy? River quit that years ago, when he was about to finish his training. He joined after finishing his computer engineering degree but left suddenly and without any explanation beyond “it wasn’t my thing.” Shortly after, he found a job in IT at a company in Alicante, and that was it. Until today.

“No, I didn’t drop out of the academy,” he says with a sigh.

“What academy?” Jaime asks, even more confused than I am.

“River was training to join the police,” I explain, “but he dropped out before the final tests.”

“It looks like he didn’t. Intelligence contacted you, right? You’re with the CNI,” he says, without a shadow of doubt.

“Yes,” River confesses.

“What?” Hugo asks.

“How—?” Adrián’s turn.