Page 100 of Obsession & Oath

“Telling you this could get me killed. Amos does not want anyone else to know.”

“Who else knows about this?” I ask.

Melissa sighs, “Officially? I am not sure. But there were rumors before Carmen returned. Rumors that she had become engaged to a man in Emilia-Romagna.”

“Emilia-Romagna?” Rocco bursts out in surprise.

“In Italy, yes,” Melissa nods. “It is why Lacruz left Cancún so early.”

“But—” Rocco gives me a pointed look.

But I’m just as surprised. “I never?—”

Then it hits.

It hits like a freight train.

There’s only one person who could have made that assumption. Only one person with connections this side of the Pacific to leak information like that, knowingly or not.

Rina Roma had fucked us over.

Rina Roma was the reason Amos Rubio had finally requested the return of his daughter, to see if the rumors were true, to try and keep the peace with his scorned ally, to prove to Lacruz that they had no merit.

Except, the truth is worse.

Carmen isn’t engaged.

She’s pregnant.

I exhale slowly, trying to pull myself together, trying to think through the storm raging inside me.

There’s only one thing I need to know.

I turn to Rocco, my closest friend. My voice is hoarse when I ask, “Are you with me?”

Rocco exhales through his nose, shaking his head like I’ve just asked him to rob a Vatican bank. “This is the stupidest idea in the world.”

I hold his gaze, my heart pounding.

Then he lets out a resigned sigh and claps a hand on my shoulder. “But you already knew that. And I already knew I’d follow you to the end.”

The tension in my chest eases—just a little.

I turn back to Melissa. “Then tell me everything you know.”

Chapter28

Carmen

Days have blurred into a shapeless void, marked only by the dwindling light through the high, barred window at the end of each day. No one has come. Not the guards. Not Dr. Alvarado. Not even my father.

I’m not sure I want to know what that means, but the possibilities circle my mind anyway, like unrelenting vultures.

They’re waiting, letting me rot here until I go mad enough to fall back in line.

Melissa didn’t find Dante. Worse, Dante didn’t care when he found out.

Lacruz knows the truth, and now he’s tormenting me.

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