Page 121 of Corrupted Deception

More ties between us that I’d never even seen.

I looked at Cielo, then Val. There was a lot I’d apparently never seen, and it threatened to make my world shift a little, like maybe I wasn’t as skilled as I’d thought.

“What are you thinking, Charlotte?”

“He never told me.” I said. My own father had deceived me.

Cielo shrugged. “He wanted what was best for you—that’s not the worst thing in the world.”

“No, I suppose it isn’t,” I conceded grudgingly. Not only was I grateful for the years with my father, but the butterfly effect was a scary thing. One change could have had repercussions I couldn’t even have imagined.

But while the past was in the rear-view mirror, the hear-and-now was entirely within my control.

“I have to find my dad,” I told Cielo.

Cielo nodded, but as I glanced over at Nacio, I hesitated. He was still standing in front of Val, his gun in his hand, staring down at her. He wasn’t crying—I knew he wouldn’t.

“But I can’t leave him,” I whispered.

Nacio had put a single bullet in Val’s head. No drawing it out, trying to find succor in her suffering. How much pain was a man in to know not even that would bring the slightest modicum of relief?

“Sí, you can,cariño,” Nacio said.

He looked at Val a moment longer, then nodded, as if to himself, and looked away. I could see him tucking it all away, burying it all back down where he kept it deep inside him.

“It’s done now,” he said quietly.

I met his gaze, seeing the pain in them but also the determination. There was no point in arguing with him.

It seemed I had a knack for surrounding myself with stubborn men.

“I have to gothere,” I said, looking back and forth between Cielo, Nacio, Julio, and Aiden. “He escaped from Val and hasn’t made his way back here. Something’s wrong.”

All three men nodded.

“We happen to have a plane on standby,” Cielo said, then he kissed the top of my head.

***

He adjusted his grip on the steering wheel of the Mercedes-Benz G-Wagon—the ultimate in off-road luxury—and glanced at his watch as we drove closer and closer to the border of Val’s estate. We’d been driving around, searching for two hours now. Aurelio was at the opposite end of the vast property, searching just like we were.

“You should be with your family,” I said. It wasn’t the first time he’d glanced at his watch.

He shook his head. “It’s a full-on assault; they don’t need me there for it.”

Lucianos and Nacio’s men, battling it out withLos Cazadores Sangrientos. Yeah, it wasn’t my kind of party, but that didn’t make it a universal opinion.

“But they’re your family, and I remember what you said about protecting them. It’s important to you.”

“So are you,” he said matter-of-factly.

Stubborn men,I ranted silently, pretending it wasn’t guilt hiding beneath it.

I caught sight of an old shack up ahead, probably a guard post from some bygone era.

My heart started to beat in double time, just like it had at every one of the dozen places we’d stopped so far, from old buildings to clusters of fallen logs.

Cielo slowed the SUV as we approached the shack, and he’d barely shifted it into park when I hopped out and darted for the ramshackle building that couldn’t have been more than six feet squared.

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