Page 186 of From Rivals to I Do

“We can go after work,” she said. “It just so happens that I know a place that’ll be open after we close up here.” She pulled away from him, then went to her desk and looked over the calendar in her blotter. “There’s nothing big happening in town, so it won’t even be any busier around here than usual. What do you say?”

Abel playfully tilted his head back and forth before saying. “Okay. Sounds like fun.”

He walked over to her and took her in his arms, kissing her again. Gentle kisses stirred up a warmth within him. He could spend his life kissing her. Afterward, he just smiled at her, a glow started to radiate around her.

“I’d better get back to work,” he said.

“Yeah, I should say so.”

He left the office, his happiness chasing away the blues inside of him. Rafael was wrong. He could have Camilla and keep everything moving forward. It was like she said. This was

Chapter seven

Chapter Seven

Abel wasn’t a mathematician, but he imagined the actual odds had to be astronomical. Of all the women he could have been on a date with in all the cities in the entire world…

He went straight home, panic rushing through his veins. It couldn’t be. There had to be another dude named Santiago. It was a common last name, right? Especially in their area with a large Latinx community. Abel had known at least three in his lifetime. It had to be someone else.

The longer he walked, however, the more the pieces started to match. The man that owned the old hole in the wall that they didn’t even think was open half the time. The same man who everyone was saying lost his wife and kid after he gambled away their life savings. The same man who came to Rafael’s house during one of his gangland game nights…

Rafael was in the kitchen when he got home, the smell of whatever he was making for lunch wafting all through the house. Normally, Abel would look forward to his cooking, one of many things he’d direly missed when he was in prison. Right now, however, his stomach was in a million knots.

Rafael looked up from the sauteed onions on the stove and smiled briefly. “I was just about to call you. Lunch is going to be—”

“Robert Santiago,” he said. “He owned a failing restaurant.”

Rafael’s stirring of the onions slowed a little as he grimaced. “Yeah? So?”

Abel didn’t know how to ask. He didn’t know exactly how to just say it. He stood there, his mind spinning for a moment. Rafael turned to him. “Hey, hey. You okay, ‘mano?”

“No,” he said. “I’m very not okay.”

Rafael’s stirring had slowed even more. “What’s going on?”

There was no other way to say it. There just wasn’t. He thought of Camilla and how her last name was so different. Rafael probably didn’t even realize it.

“I think…I think Camilla Nunez was Robert Santiago’s kid.”

Rafael froze. He didn’t respond. Instead, he looked away, back to the stove and the smoking onions in the pan.

“Raf,” Abel pressed. “Did you hear me?”

“I heard you,” he grumbled. He turned off the stove and put the pan on a dead burner. Stepping away, he rubbed his hands through his hair.

“Where were you today?” he asked.

Abel blinked, confused. His tone sounded accusatory, like he already knew. “What does that—?”

“Abel. You were with her today, right? You went on a date with Camilla?”

Abel just stared. He hadn’t told him about the date. The odd way he’d acted the other day when they talked about him walking her home put him on alert. Now he felt like he had a bullseye on his chest. Rafael looked away from him, swearing in Spanish. “I literally told you to stay away from her.”

“Raf,” said Abel carefully. “You didn’t know about this, did you?”

“Of course not,” he said, a little too defensively. “You think I would just drop you off in her lap if I knew?”

Abel didn’t know how much sense that made. The air felt like it was leaving the room in a whoosh around them, so it was hard to feel anything except terror.

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