Chapter 4

Tears ran down my face and I started laughing.

The man standing in front of me, with his threats and his patience worn thin, I couldn't make him line up with the man who once pulled me behind his body in a hail of gunfire and told me he'd protect me for the rest of his life. Those two people refused to overlap.

Something flickered in Victor's eyes. He reached out and gripped my arm.

"Just say the words. Clear Anya's name on camera, and I'll tear up the contract with her. Proper wedding, Castro name on everything." His voice dropped. "This is the last time I'm offering."

Victor. I never cared about the Castro name. I never cared about the inheritance.

I closed my eyes for one second. Then I pushed past him and stepped in front of the cameras.

"Anya's mother was innocent." My voice didn't shake. "My mother suffered from serious mental illness. She fabricated everything she said about Anya's family. What happened at the docks was her doing." I paused. "I'm sorry."

The room detonated.

The comments flooded in faster than anyone could read them.

My mother and I, nailed to a cross on the fifth anniversary of her death, called every vicious thing the underground could think to call us.

Victor's face was completely still.

My father, standing with his arm around the woman who killed my mother, let out a long, slow breath. Like he'd been holding it for years.

That's when Anya screamed.

She shoved her phone toward the nearest camera, tears already streaming, voice climbing.

"How could you do this! The suite we had ready for us, you had people go in there and pour used oil all over the walls, smash everything, destroy the whole room..."

The screen showed exactly what she described. The suite gutted. Black oil soaking the walls. Glass and broken decorations across every inch of the floor.

The slap came before I even saw him move.

It snapped my head sideways and split my lip, and before the ringing in my ears could settle his hand was locked around my throat.

"I made you a promise." Victor's eyes had gone dark red, something animal behind them. "I told you, clarify this and I'll marry you. And you turn around and pull this."

His grip tightened.

"Since you want to do it this way—" He cut himself off, glanced once at my father, and whatever passed between them made his eyes go colder. "Then the port and the armory don't need to exist anymore."

He dialed with one hand, still holding me with the other.

"The deep-water port and the armory. One dollar opening bid. First come, first served."

"No!!!" The word tore out of me. "Victor, don't you dare!!!"

He pinned me against him, both arms locked down.

I screamed into his chest.

"I'm done. I don't want any of this back. I don't want you. I don't want anything—" My throat was raw. "Just give me the port. Give me back what belonged to my mother."

Victor went still.

He pulled back just enough to look at my face, and for a moment he looked genuinely blindsided, like I'd said something that didn't belong in any version of this conversation he'd prepared for.

"Don't threaten me with that."

"Think whatever you want."

I shoved him with everything I had, grabbed the keys off the table, and ran.

When I got to the armory at the deep-water port, every bit of warmth left in my body drained out at once.

My mother's portrait had been doused in red paint. Words carved into it. Words I couldn't read without my vision going white at the edges.

"Stop—" I lunged forward.

The urn hit the ground before I reached it.

It broke apart completely.

"Miss Anya sends her regards." One of the men grabbed me from behind. "She wants you and your dead mother to spend some quality time together."

They took me to the floor. Three of them, maybe four, I stopped counting. Someone scooped up a handful from the ground.

I clenched my teeth. It didn't matter.

They forced my mouth open.

Ash and grit and concrete dust packed into my throat. I choked and clawed at the floor and couldn't breathe, couldn't get air around any of it. Whatever came out of my eyes didn't feel like tears.

After they left I lay face-down and retched until blood came up.

The heart I'd been carrying around for twenty-six years went quiet.

I found the fuel drums against the far wall.

I pulled the first one over and let it pour. Dragged the second to the crate stacks. Emptied the third across the rest of the floor until there was nowhere left untouched.

I'd had a lighter in my jacket pocket for as long as I could remember.

I flicked it open and dropped it on the wood.

The fire took immediately, spreading fast.

Victor. Antonio. Anya.

Before this is over, I will watch every single one of you lose everything you have.

...

Half an hour later, Victor and Antonio finally showed up, Anya's breakdown had made them super late.

Right then, one of the guys came staggering across the clearing toward them, barely able to get the words out:

"The armory...it's gone, the whole damn building came down...people were inside—"