Page 120 of Corrupted Deception

Morales took hold of her chin, tilting her head up and brushing away the tears with his thumb.

“Let’s go,tempesta,” I whispered against her ear.

She shook her head. “No, I have to be here,” she said, like this was somehow her penance, but she had no sin for which to atone.

“No, you don’t.”

She pulled away, not quite out of my grip, just enough to make it clear she had no intention of leaving.

“I have to be here for her,” she said, surprising me. But maybe it shouldn’t have, because beneath all the layers of sarcasm and fury, Charlotte had a heart the size of the moon.

She leaned back into me, clamping her arms over top of mine until I held her tighter.

Morales cocked the gun in his hand, keeping his other hand on Val’s cheek, stroking gently.

“I am sorry, Valentina. I should have seen it in you sooner,” he told her, his voice quiet and filled with regret.

Then he pulled the trigger.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Charlotte Santoro

“Charlotte, are you okay?” Cielo asked. He still had his arms tight around me like he was holding me up or keeping me together. Maybe he was.

Val’s dead.

She’d fallen on her side. She wasn’t moving, not breathing.

Val’s dead.

Tears stung my eyes.

The woman who’d lived in some murky place between friend and sister—the only close female friend in my life—was dead. I had no idea where to put that, where to carefully store it away as a tragedy or a win or just another clusterfuck that had every intention of haunting me forever. I was leaning toward the last one.

And Cielo’s sneaky setup? Nope, I wasn’t ready to figure out where to file that one away yet, not until he and I had a very lengthy discussion about when it was and was not okay to keep me out of the loop.

For the time being, though, I decided to focus on those things I could categorize nice and neatly.

“My dad’s alive,” I said. That was a clear win in my books.

He’d managed to escape. But where the hell was he?

“Well find him, Char,” Julio said. “Or he’ll find us.”

Nope, I wasn’t waiting around for that. He was out there… somewhere. And I was going to figure out where.

I turned to leave, but then paused. “Where are your brother and Aurelio?” I asked Cielo, realizing they hadn’t come back with him.

He shrugged. “I thought fewer people here would be less overwhelming, and Aurelio wanted to get a head start.”

“A head start on what?”

“On finding your father,” he said like the answer should have been obvious.

“How would he even guess at where to start?” I asked, fighting the urge to get pissy that a veritable stranger thought he could do a better job of finding my dad than I could.

Cielo smiled. “It turns out, your father is just as good at recognizing when he’s being followed as you are. So, they’ve been… acquainted for some time now.”

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