“Like we’re gonna kill you,” Javier clarified, glancing at me briefly before looking away again. “That’s not the plan.”
Not exactly comforting, but I nodded like that was the most reassuring thing I’d ever heard. “Okay. That’s … genuinely good to know. Huge fan of that plan.”
“We just, ah … we needed leverage,” Luis muttered.
I tilted my head slightly, like I was just trying to follow along, like my heart wasn’t still beating a little too fast in my chest.
Sasha is coming. Just keep them talking.
“Leverage,” I repeated quietly, more to myself than to them and nodded in understanding. “Against, um,my side?”
Neither of them confirmed or denied it, but they didn’t really need to. The pieces were falling into place. My stomach twisted, something sharp and cold sliding beneath my ribs, but I forced my shoulders to stay loose and kept a thoughtful expression instead of looking terrified.
“So what’s going to happen when this Rafael guy shows up?” I went on, tone light, almost conversational, like we were discussing trivialities instead of matters of life and death.
Javier hesitated and then exhaled slowly. “Depends.”
On what?Fuck, I really wasn’t built for this.
I wanted to probe further, to coax something more concrete out of him, but the sharp pang of anxiety in my chest warned me not to push too hard, not yet.
So instead, I nodded, like that answer made sense, likedependswasn’t one of the most stressful words he could have possibly chosen.
“Okay,” I said lightly, even managing a small exhale that almost sounded like a laugh. “We’ll circle back to that later, then.”
Luis glanced at me, an uncertain look flickering across his face as if he couldn’t quite figure out why I wasn’t more upset.
Oh, I was. I was absolutely panicking.
“Sooo,” I continued, dragging the word out a little as I shifted on the crate, letting my foot tap once against the concrete because sitting still suddenly felt impossible, “he’s gonna come here and decide what to do with me?”
Javier gave a small, noncommittal nod.
I tilted my head slightly, like I was just thinking out loud, “He didn’t know about this?”
Luis looked away first, his jaw tightening.
Javier exhaled slowly, his brows angry slashes. “We didn’t need someone to tell us.”
I didn’t react right away. I let the words sit between us as if they weren’t a big deal, as if I wasn’t mentally underlining them in bold.
“Right,” I murmured. “You just … saw an opening.”
When neither of them corrected me, my stomach twisted and a quiet, sinking feeling settled in. This hadn’t been ordered or even planned from above. It was justthem trying to prove something. I couldn’t decide if that made things better or worse.
Fucking hell.
“That makes sense. I mean, I gathered things were tense at the moment and this is a way for you to show them you can handle things.”
A stupid fucking way, possibly getting all of us killed but it is a way.
Luis glanced at me, then away again. “Something like that.”
Yeah. No fucking kidding.
I nodded, like I understood, like I wasn’t sitting here as the very tangible consequence of that decision. “Okay. Yeah. I get that.”
And I did, in a sense. It was only natural for people to want more. The problem was, they just didn’t always consider the cost.