Page 85 of Convenient Vows

This is what she still does to me after all this time.

I wonder if her eyes still narrow when she’s annoyed—those sharp little slits she gave me when I pushed too far. If she still eats olives one at a time, slowly, like she’s cataloging the flavor in her head. If she still talks in her sleep. She used to say the strangest things.

Fuck, that girl damn near broke me.

I clench the steering wheel tighter.

“She’s not yours anymore,” I mutter aloud. The words fall flat in the car.

“She never really was.”

The truth tastes bitter.

I hit the gas harder, and the engine growls, eager for speed. I need motion. Noise. A rush of something that reminds me I’m not stuck in the past she left behind.

The car surges forward, fast enough to make my pulse finally match the weight in my chest.

Maybe she is happy in her new life. And with someone who kisses her bare shoulder in the mornings and laughs at her awful coffee jokes.

The tires crunch over gravel as I pull into the estate’s private drive. It’s a safe house that's dressed like a luxury retreat. It is discreet, remote, and surrounded by nothing but jungle and silence. The kind of place where secrets can rot in peace or be buried without question.

A guard at the gatehouse nods as I pass. I barely acknowledge him.

Inside, the lights are low. The air conditioner hums against the sticky night heat. I make my way to the bar without pausing,loosen the first two buttons of my shirt, and pour a finger of something dark and expensive into a glass.

I move to the window, glass in hand, and stare out into the jungle where the trees sway like whispers, hiding things I don't care to name.

The shipment’s safe. The cover worked. On paper, everything went according to plan. However, I can sense that someone is playing games. And I don’t like games unless I’m the one dealing the cards.

I take a slow sip of my drink, let the burn crawl down my throat, and run the names through my head again—port contractors, security rotations, customs handlers, crewmen. Someone fed the Feds a sliver of truth wrapped in bullshit.

Someone thinks they’re clever.

I’ll find them.

My mind circles back to the man whose name I didn’t say out loud earlier but haven’t stopped thinking about since.

Thiago Delgado.

He’s never hidden the fact that he wasn’t thrilled with how Mara and I ended. Over the years, in quiet moments behind closed doors, he’s dropped comments. Half-jokes with too much edge.

“You couldn’t have held her interest?”

“Maybe if you’d acted like a husband instead of a weapon…”

“My daughter needed a man who would see her.”

They were words disguised as wit, but I heard what he meant.

He blames me.

Thinks I mistreated her. Thinks I was cold. That I was the reason she walked.

Maybe I was.

But he’s wrong if he thinks she ever wanted to stay. She didn’t leave because I pushed her away. She left because I wasn’t her destination.

I was her exit.

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