there for cargo that did not want inspection.
If Emilia was near that warehouse, she had not left the city freely.
He grabbed his coat and reached the elevator before his phone rang again.
Mateo.
Gabriel answered.
—Where are you going? Mateo asked.
Gabriel watched his own reflection in the elevator doors. Rain-damp hair. Lipstick smudge. Divorce papers in one fist. A man who had frightened enemies but failed to protect the person who had warned him first.
—I am going to find Emilia.
Mateo laughed softly.
—You do not have a wife anymore.
The elevator opened into the private garage.
Three guards stood beside his car. Not his usual night team. Mateo’s men.
The old Gabriel would have reached for a weapon. The old Gabriel would have mistaken speed for control.
Emilia had left him a knight for a reason.
Knights did not move in straight lines.
Gabriel looked at the nearest guard, a young man named Nico whose mother’s surgery Emilia had quietly paid for two years earlier.
—Did my uncle send you to protect me, Nico, or stop me?
Nico’s face tightened.
That was answer enough.
Gabriel lifted the flash drive.
—What he put on Emilia, he will put on you when he needs another name. Choose now.
For a moment, only rain hammered the garage vents.
Then Nico lowered his eyes and stepped aside.
The others followed.
Gabriel drove himself.
The city was not awake yet. Palm trees bent in the storm. Traffic lights blinked over empty streets. By the time he reached Dodge Island, the sky had turned the color of bruised metal. He parked three blocks from the warehouse and walked through rain without an umbrella.
Voices carried from inside.
One was Mateo.
—You should have taken the money, Emilia. Noble women are exhausting.
Gabriel stopped beside a broken window.
Emilia stood in the warehouse under a chain of fluorescent lights, wearing a beige coat over travel clothes, her hair tied back, face pale but unbowed. Her suitcase lay on its side near the door. A cut had reddened her cheek, small but enough to make Gabriel’s vision narrow.
Two men stood near her. Another held her phone.
Mateo faced her with a calm expression, as if this were merely an inconvenient meeting.
Emilia said, —You forged my name badly.
Even then, Gabriel almost smiled. Exhausted, trapped, outnumbered, she still sounded offended by poor craftsmanship.
Mateo sighed.
—Your father taught you too much.
—No. Gabriel taught me too much. I learned by watching men lie and call it strategy.
Mateo’s face hardened.
Gabriel stepped through the side door.
All four men turned.
Emilia’s eyes found him. There was fear in them, yes, but not surprise. Not relief either. She had stopped expecting rescue from him long ago.
That hurt most.
Mateo recovered first.
—Go home, Gabriel.
—This is my home now? A warehouse with my ex-wife held inside it?
Emilia flinched at ex-wife, barely, but he saw it.
Mateo’s mouth curved.
—She has filled your head with wounded stories.
Gabriel held up the flash drive.
—She filled it with your voice.
For the first time in Gabriel’s life, he watched uncertainty pass across Mateo’s face.
It vanished quickly.
—You think recordings save anyone? You think courts care who moved dirty money when your name
