"They think you killed him. My cousin's contacts inside confirm it. You go missing right after the hit and you're the obvious answer. Cops, the family, everyone. Someone takes the fall for this." His jaw flexes. "I cannot let it be you."
"Oh." The word comes out hollow.
I pull my knees to my chest, suddenly aware of how exposed I am, how the room is pressing in again, the drip resuming its count. "So what now? You frame me anyway? Hand me over?"
"I would burn everything down before I let that happen." He drags a hand through his curls. "But my cousin is already circling. He offered to handle you earlier. I almost put him in the ground for it."
"Then what?" My voice goes very small. "We run?"
He reaches out. Pauses. Then tucks a strand of hair behind my ear, careful, like he's afraid of how I'll receive it.
"I'll figure it out," he says, more to himself than me. "I always do. But you have to trust me now. No running. No questions. Not until this is over."
Trust the man who chained me here. Who just confessed to murder and touched me like the world was ending.
My pulse won't slow down. He's right about one thing: someone takes the fall for this.
I just don't know yet which one of us it's going to be.
CHAPTER 29
DIEGO
I can't believe we just fucked.
My stomach churns with something that isn't quite regret but sits right next to it, and my body hasn't gotten the message yet. My cock traitorously hard under my jeans, still wanting her in a way that doesn't care how complicated this already is.
This changes everything. I knew it would. I did it anyway.
I drive to Raul's on instinct, needing to talk it through with the one person who's seen me at my worst and never flinched.
His Cadillac’s headlights cut through the humid night when I pull into the gravel drive. He's waiting outside the trailer, cigarette glowing orange in the dark, arms crossed like he heard my engine from the road.
"Hey, cuz." He flicks the butt into the dirt.
"We need to talk." I kill the engine and slam the door.
"Oh shit." He reads my face. "That serious?"
"Did you fuck her?" He asks it before I can say anything else.
"Dude—"
He barks a laugh and claps me on the shoulder hard enough to rattle my teeth. I punch his arm. He winces dramatically, grinning through it.
"Knock it off." I step closer, dropping my voice. "I'm serious, Raul. I think I need to turn myself in."
The grin dies. "Why the fuck would you do that?"
"Because I can't live like this anymore. Watching over my shoulder, waiting for the door to come off its hinges. And I cannot let anything happen to her." Her face surfaces in my mind, flushed and unguarded in the storage unit light, looking at me like I was something other than what I am. "I just can't."
"We can find someone else to take the fall," he says. "Burner call, fake witness, easy."
"No." I drag a hand down my face. "She was there, she vanished, they've got her name and her prints on everything. It's too tight."
"Let me handle it." His hand lands on my shoulder, grip firm. "You trust me or not?"
I look at him. My cousin. My brother in everything that matters. We're six years old again in my head, rolling in the sand at South Beach while Ma and Ernie set up a picnic behind us, Raul pinning me down and laughing with dirt on both our faces. Ma snapping a Polaroid and calling usmis diablitos. The day I broke her seashell necklace, Raul told her it was him without hesitating.