The deep V cracks between Aiden’s eyebrows. He rests his chin on his fist, narrowing his eyes at the same marble vein.

Bob turns to me. “Elisa, I know this is an impossible position. But my only concern is your best interest. My advice is that you talk to the DOJ and tell them the truth. It will actually help with your green card. By mid-June, you’ll have what you’ve always wanted.”

My head whips up. Despite Bob’s twinkly eyes, all the anguish makes room for anger. What I’ve always wanted? The chair starts shaking again. My teeth snap together before I can scream. The violence turns inward and propels me to my feet.

“Please, listen!” Bob says, raising his liver-spotted hands. “That’s not what I meant, dear.”

“Elisa? Please?” Aiden says very quietly, rising next to me. I meet his eyes. How can I listen to this with my heart imploding? How can I sit when everything inside is shivering like it did in that morgue four years ago? He puts his hand on my shoulder, pressing down gently. I drop. His arm wraps around me again like a rampart.

While we were looking at each other, something changed in Bob’s face. It has creased as though whatever he saw desiccated it. The lawyer is gone. An ancient man sits before me.

“I know what I’m asking you to do,” he sighs. “But I want to talk like a seventy-eight-year-old man to a…a granddaughter.”

I meet his gray aged eyes. Like the first time I met him, I think of Grandpa Snow.

“I won’t lie and tell you this won’t be the biggest regret of your life. It will be. Some days, it will hurt so much that you may even come to my grave and kick it. I won’t blame you. But then one day, holding your husband’s hand, you’ll bring to life a little boy or a little girl. You’ll hold them in your arms and you’ll think everything was worth it so they could be in this world. You’ll raise them with all the love you’ve been missing, and they’ll go on to do good things, change laws, save a friend. And this thing that feels so monstrous now, will hurt a little less because something beautiful will come from it.

“And maybe someday, you can fix things with your friend. Sneak him back in, make things right for his family. You’ll survive this one, just like you survived your parents. Not whole, but still good in the end.”

The room falls silent. I close my eyes, trying to see what Bob sees. A bright hospital room, Aiden in blue scrubs, a sapphire-eyed boy or a Clare-eyed girl in my arms. I love you, Aiden says. The nurse turns to put a little hat on my baby. Bendita, she whispers and becomes Maria. The door opens and the girls burst inside to meet the baby. My baby. Antonio wheels in too, a pile of Maria-knitted baby sweaters on his lap. And Javier at last. With a beaming smile like the first time I was able to tango again. Sweetheart, you did it, he says.

My face drops on my hands. Sobs start and I can’t stop them. The floor tilts as it did on that January night, four years ago, and I start shivering. Which love am I losing this time? My family or my life?

I hear a harsh oath from Aiden and his arms tighten around me, tucking my face in his neck. “Give us some time, Bob. We’ll let you know tomorrow,” he says.

I hear Bob’s footsteps, a hand clutching my shoulder and the conference room door opening and closing. Still, Aiden does not move or speak. He just holds me and lets my tears soak his jacket. The only thing still right in my world is he.

Chapter Forty-Six

Salvo

In the Rover, I curl on Aiden’s lap, his arms a vise around me. I can’t remember getting out of Bob’s office or into this backseat. I just know Aiden’s sandalwood-and-cinnamon scent. It makes me cry harder as fragments of thought form in my head. Thoughts I’d rather not have. Which love wins?

“How long is jail for obstructing justice?” I sniffle against his throat.

His muscles quiver. He doesn’t answer. Maybe he doesn’t know. Or maybe he doesn’t want to tell me.

“M-m-maybe it’s b-better that w-w-way.” My voice shudders. “Javier will be s-safe. I’ll still be h-h-here for a while. And maybe you can come visit m-m-me?” My tears soak his skin even though the words feel surreal. A plot for imagination, not life.

Suddenly, the Rover stops. We’re home.

Benson gets out and opens our door. Three wrinkles crease his forehead—exactly like Javier’s. I stumble out, Aiden gripping my waist. Benson reaches for my hand.

“Thank you, Benson,” I croak.

“It’ll be all right, Miss S—Elisa.” He exchanges a look with Aiden. “I’ll park and check in with Feign’s tail, sir. Then send out Cardoza to scour for witnesses.”

Aiden nods once and clutches me to his side, and we tread down the fieldstone path to the double doors. I enter the foyer in a trance. He leads us past the living room to his library, never releasing my hand. The moment we step inside, he closes the door.

“Elisa,” he says before the lights have stopped flickering. His voice is quiet.

I turn to face him, to walk into his arms. But his eyes stop me. They’re not midnight anymore. They’re solid cobalt.

“Love, you have to turn him in.”

I see his lips move. And I hear his voice but the words are foreign. “What?”

He takes a step toward me. “You have to give him up.” He speaks very slowly.

There’s no mistaking the words this time. The air turns icy. Sharp like a January night.

“No!” The word whips out of my mouth, piercing and bare. “No! I can’t do that! I won’t!”

My staggering volume startles me but not him. He takes another step toward me, hands out as though to catch me. I step back.

“Elisa—”

“Why don’t you just give me an IED and tell me to tuck it under their pillow, Aiden? That should spare you whatever speech you prepared while I sat there on your lap, thinking you’re on my side!”

He flinches this time. When he speaks, his voice is very soft—counterpoint to mine. “I am on your side. I’ll be there even when you don’t want me to be. But this…this self-execution isn’t right. Think about your future, your dreams, your life, your health. If those die, your parents might as well die again. But this time, you’re behind the truck’s wheel, love.”

His words suffocate me. Because they’re the truth. And they change nothing.

“Did those reasons work for you, Aiden?”

He frowns in confusion.

“When you bartered your life for Marshall’s, did they work?”

His jaws clench. The tectonic plates shift instantly as his eyes darken to slate. “No, they didn’t.” His voice is guarded. Almost cold.

“Then why should they work for me?”

“Because Marshall didn’t break the law. He had a right to be back here.”

I gasp, taking another step back. “And Javier’s life somehow matters less because of that?”

“Not his life. Only his right to be here at your expense when you’ve played by the rules while he took shortcuts.”

“Shortcuts? He works harder than—” I say through my teeth.

“Stop!” His voice fires like a gunshot in the air. “I will not engage in a political debate with you. This is only about your future, your life. And I refuse to watch you go to prison for the mistakes of some Mexic—”

“Mexicans? That’s all they are to you?”

“What they are to me is irrelevant. All that matters is what they are to you. I know you love them but right now, they’re a threat.”

“They’re my family! They’re the people who saved the life of the woman you claim to love!”

I take a step forward to walk away but the change in his eyes locks my feet. A flash of fury strikes in the dark irises—over and over, like an electric current over the heart, failing to revive it. But the plates don’t shift. They’re still as though my words broke them.

“Claim to love?” His voice is low, guttural. His head jerks slightly to the side. “You want to know the full truth, Elisa? If I’d had you back here the day Marshall died, if I knew you were waiting for me to come home, I might not have bartered my life with his. I might have torn through those steel cables sooner. Just so I could see your face again. Even if I already remember every pore of your skin and every strand of your hair. Once I love, I love forever!” He stops talking but his voice reverberates in the library silence.