Page 34 of Cara
“Someone came to see you today.”
My feet still. “What?”
No one knows where I live. I’ve made sure of it.
“A man?” I ask, unable to help how my heart swells in my chest.
Please, be him. I need it to be him.
Enzo shakes his head, wiping flour from his hands with a cloth. “A woman. She might still be there.”
My eyes dart to the entrance of my apartment, widening as someone shifts into view. Someone I thought was dead.
“Victoria.”
Sophie/Cara
My sister is practically unchanged from the last time I saw her. Unlike me, time and circumstances haven’t altered her appearance. Her tight ringlets still hang just below her ears. An oversized raincoat conceals her thin stature, a ballcap stretched over her brown eyes.
If I weren’t a changed person entirely, I could imagine it hasn’t been a day since I last saw her. Enzo has returned to his busy work, and we’re still staring at each other.
My first instinct is to rush to her, to cry with relief to see someone I know, someone with a connection to my past. My baby sister. The girl who was latched at my side throughout our terrifying, unusual childhood. For a long time, I fought to protect her. I did whatever I could to spare her my father’s wrath.
Time has complicated us.
The choices we’ve made in our lives have complicated us.
As I look at her, I see my failures. I see the horrors I suffered to save her life, to have her standing in front of me. She has no idea what Xavier and I have endured to ensure shecontinues breathing. As quickly as I wanted to hug her, I want to strangle her in equal measure.
She is no longer someone I can trust, and given that she’s in Madrid, blocking my front door, I’m right not to.
She’s here, which means she’s found my location.
Which meansothershave found my location.
Still shaking from the confrontation on the street, I begin to wonder if they were just drunk or if their plan to get me alone was premeditated. I question the people I encountered at the café this morning, the eyes that tracked me through the market. Anyone could be an enemy.
“Sophia,” she whispers finally, smiling like she’s seen a ghost.
To hear her voice is jarring. Reality kicks in. This is real.
My first words to her come out measured. I speak them slowly to ensure she understands. “I don’t want to see you.”
She didn’t expect that. The smile vanishes from her face as I trek the rest of the stairs, brushing past her to unlock my door. She slips her hand through the barrier to prevent it from closing behind me. By the time her foot is in the doorway, my hand is gripping a gun, and it’s aimed at her face.
Her eyes drift from the end of the barrel to my own.
If we didn’t know each other before, we’re complete strangers now.
She’s my sister, Xavier.
Don’t do this.
We can find another way.
It was a lifetime ago when I was that naïve. Those pleadings fill me with shame. That pointless begging led Xavier to believe there was no way through this but out. He couldn’t bear to hurt me, and it caused him to take risks he wouldn’t have made before. He never blamed me, but I know. Keeping Victoria alive led me to this place, here on the run. God knowswhat life Xavier is living because of my sentimentality for family. A family that turned on me at the first chance they got.
“Sophie, you don’t want to shoot me,” she says.
