That’s my name. Believing what Emilio is saying should be harder, but that’s my name, the one I thought was respected because of Papi’s influence in the art world, and the bitterness and pain in Emilio’s voice when he says it are real. Cruz. He’s not lying. It’s something dark and evil and fearsome. It hurts.
My mind whirs with signs, inconsistencies, clues, a lifetime of things missed.
“Do you believe me?” Emilio repeats.
I nod, numbly. Do I have a choice? “But I haven’t always known.”
“I don’t see how.”
“I’m only seventeen.”
He laughs bitterly. “You know how old I was when I started working for the Cruz cartel?”
I don’t want to guess. I don’t want to know.
“Eleven. But even then, I was always sure I wasn’t going to get stuck in it. I’d slip through their fingers. I wasn’t going to get pulled in for life just because everyone else was. My uncle and cousins. My friends. My father. They were all trapped, but I was going to be a soccer star.” He shakes his head like his abandoned optimism embarrasses him. “I told you my father left when I was nine, but I didn’t tell you it was in a coffin. My uncle screwed up one of Victor’s big pickups, and one of his guys got killed. The next day a couple of thugs drove by and shot my father in our driveway while he was washing his car. Payback.”
Tears of shock and disgust roll down my cheeks before I can wipe them away.
“I guess you’re right, though,” Emilio continues, ignoring my tears. “I had a choice. I still have a choice, and I choose to stay alive and protect my family. But there’s something you should keep in mind while you’re judging me for that.” He waits. I know he’s waiting for me to look him in the eye, but when I do, I wish I hadn’t. His eyes are clear. Magnetic. They have me, and I can’t look away. “I grew up in the slums. I’ve seen more blood spilled than you can imagine—my father’s, friends’, strangers’ who were at the wrong side of my own gun—all because of your precious Papi. And while I was living that nightmare, you were in a mansion in Miami living on the proceeds.”
Something ugly escapes, both sob and groan, before I can cover my mouth with my palm. How can you live with yourself? Did I really say that to him? I did. I press my hand harder against my lips to keep every sound and thought inside. He doesn’t have to ask me that same question because I’m broken, and he knows it. Everything he’s said makes sense, my entire life makes sense, and the shock and horror that’s ringing through my body doesn’t change that. I want to scream at him. I want to slap his face, but that would be pointless, because it would still be true.
I should have known. My entire life. A lie. How could I not have known?
I slump in the chair, spent, ashamed. My eyes are closed, and my hands are cupping my wet cheeks. I can’t look at Emilio. I think I hate him. And myself.
When I feel his hands slipping under my legs and behind my back I’m startled, but only for a second. I turn my head into his chest as he lifts me onto his lap, and I cry against his heart as he whispers, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” over and over and over into my ear.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
..................................................................
ELEVEN
We waste too much time.
There are things we should be talking about, things we could be doing, but at first the grief is so sweltering I can only melt into myself and let him hold me.
Emilio goes somewhere else too—to a lonely corner of his mind. There’s an uneasy tension in his arms and his torso, and when I reach up and cup his jaw with my hand, I feel clenched muscle. He’s bracing.
“How did you find me?” I ask, my hand still on his cheek, my thumb on his lips.
“I didn’t.”
“But you did.”
“No. When I walked into the gallery tonight and saw Lucien’s arm around you, I thought I was seeing things. Going crazy. Or that you were someone who looked enough like Valentina Cruz to make me feel crazy. I was on the opposite side of the room and you were facing the other way, so I had to watch you for a while before I was sure. You’re thinner now. But even from a distance, I recognized your mannerisms, the way you put your hand under your chin when you talk. Your walk.”
“But—”
“I saw you go into that room and realized it was my only chance. It was just luck.” My hand drops to his neck. I let my fingertips rest on the smooth skin over his clavicle. Luck. After everything he’s told me tonight, luck sounds like a bad word, the curse that made my childhood perfect. Luck is a lie.
“How do you know Lucien?” he asks.
“Just randomly.”
“Tell me how.”
I picture the glittering mosaic by Sherbrooke station where I used to sit, remember the dull burn of an empty stomach. The hungry days seem like forever ago. During those first few weeks I spent nearly every afternoon sitting cross-legged below the mural, playing till my butt was numb and my back ached. “I was busking outside the Metro.”
“What?”
“Playing mandolin.”
“My mandolin, but why were you busking? Don’t you have money?”
“I do now, but I was down to my last few dollars when Lucien found me. I can’t get a real job here without a work visa, and I’d used all my pawned jewelry money on rent. Busking was how I got money for food.” I stop and swallow. The memory is as clear as a cold sky. “Then one day he was there listening. He listened for a while, and then he put money in my case and asked me if I’d ever modeled. The timing was . . .” I trail off, refusing to say it. Lucky. It was lucky.
“Did you recognize him from anywhere?”
“No. What do you mean?”
“Do you think he’d been watching you for a while?”
Would I have noticed? I burrow my face into Emilio’s chest and smell him. He’s the same, but different somehow, too. I don’t want to answer these questions. “I don’t know. I guess he could’ve been lurking without me noticing. I tried not to look up. People walk away if you stare at them.”
He thinks for a moment, then says, “I can’t believe Victor Cruz’s daughter has been begging on a street corner.”
“It’s not begging. And it doesn’t matter, because I make enough working for Lucien now.”
He grumbles something I can’t make out.
“How do you know him?” I ask.
“Lucien keeps turning up at events I have to go to for the art side of Victor’s business. Your father actually does buy and sell art, you know. He’s sort of fanatical about it, which makes it an even better front.”
I think of the galleries Papi’s taken me to. The auctions. The museums. Hours and hours filling years and years spent soaking up what I thought was his legacy. The betrayal feels so sharp, so physical, I might be bleeding.
“I know Marcel a lot better, though,” Emilio goes on.
“Why?”
“Because he parties with the big boys.”
I don’t ask who the big boys are. Marcel can party with the president for all I care.
A long pause hardens the air around us. The longer it lasts, the more impossible it becomes to force out words. I glance up, and he looks so distant and unbreakable with his thoughts that I barely recognize him. I put my head back down on his chest and feel his breaths instead.
“You’re not the one who’s been bought,” Emilio finally mumbles.
“What are you talking about?”
My head rises and falls with him several times before he answers. “Lucien’s working for someone. He’s babysitting you.”
“I don’t understand. I thought—”
“He showed up right when you ran out of money, and now he’s got you dependent on him, right? He’s keeping you here in Montreal, away from Miami but not wandering around the world like you would be otherwise. He’s keeping you safe. And let me guess, beyond that less-than-passiona
te kiss in the car, he’s never actually tried anything with you.”
I’m spinning trying to keep up. Emilio saw the kiss, but that hardly seems like the important part. Nothing makes sense.
“Or has he?” Emilio asks.
“No.”
“He’s never wanted to paint you naked, then?”
No. He’s right. It’s one of the absurdities that became clear at Les Fontaines, and I’ve been cataloging them all, haven’t I? Subconsciously I’ve had to, because snowflake after snowflake they’ve been floating down around me and piling up to something too real to ignore.
“No,” Emilio answers his own question for me. “His boss wouldn’t like that.”
Anger burns in my gut. Lucien is a liar. I thought I despised him, but this new pain, even after the deeper betrayals of tonight, is sharp and real. Did I actually let myself pity him? I squeeze my eyes shut. I want to kill him.
“Victor,” Emilio says calmly. “He works for Victor.”
“No.”
“Trust me. That’s the explanation you want.”
“What do you mean?”
Emilio thinks for a moment. “Lucien works for someone. Better your father than one of his enemies, or someone who thinks keeping tabs on you could be useful at some point. But it’s been too long—they’d have already used you as a bargaining chip. Or killed you.”
I cringe. “But why would my father hire Lucien to watch me? If he knew I was here, he’d come get me.”
“I don’t know,” he admits. “Victor’s been to Spain three times in three months looking for you. Or maybe just pretending to look for you. Maybe he wants you to come back on your own, and maybe he wants you kept safe until then.” Emilio sounds doubtful. He brings his fingers to my hair and pulls them through. I can’t remember the last time someone did this. After so much isolation, being touched feels sweetly painful. I hold my breath.
“Except he never knew why you left,” Emilio says.
“You never told him I was in the closet that night?”
“Of course not. But he sent me here,” Emilio says softly. “To an art show he knew you’d be at—if I’m right and he was paying Lucien to watch you.”
“But he can’t have known I was in Montreal this whole time,” I repeat pointlessly, no argument, no reason. It’s just unimaginable.
Emilio doesn’t answer, twirls a piece of my hair around and around his finger, distracting me with the gentle tugging and his touch on my neck. I can’t follow his hole-ridden logic when he’s doing that.
“This is a test,” he says evenly. “That’s what it is.”
“For who?”
“Me.”
“What kind of a test? Why would he be testing you?”
“It’s what he does. Loyalty has to be proven.”
“But he knows you’re loyal.” I look up at him. “Right? That’s why he made you shoot . . .” I don’t want to say his name. Now that I know it, I don’t ever want to hear it again.
Emilio is staring into the radiator, lost in his thoughts and a handful of my hair. “Do you think he knew about us?”
“No,” I say, without thinking. But then I do think. I’d always assumed Papi would go ballistic if he knew about Emilio—he never liked the boys I hung out with, and they were at least my own age. And Emilio is twenty-four. If Papi had suspicions, I can’t imagine him keeping quiet about them.
But there are all sorts of things about Papi that I could never have imagined. That night on the yacht changed everything. What do I know about who he really is and what he’d really do? Nothing, anymore. I know nothing.
“He must’ve known about us,” Emilio says. “Let’s say he did, but instead of confronting me, he saw it as an opportunity, something to hold on to for later. And when you disappeared, he tracked you down here and saw to it you’d be safe and decided it was a chance to test me. Let’s say he sent me here, knowing I’d see you at Les Fontaines because he had Lucien take you.”
“But why?”
“Because I’d have to decide whether to tell him I found you.”
My heart punches against my ribs. “You aren’t going to, though, right?”
Emilio doesn’t answer.
I turn my face into the pleats of his shirt. “Don’t,” I say into his breastbone. “Please. I can’t go back.”
No answer. His smell—I know what the difference is now. No sea or salt, just spray starch and cigar.
“Come back with me,” he says gently, his hand moving to my back. “You said it yourself—you’re living in squalor. If you come with me, you could be in your own bed by tomorrow night.”
“I can’t.”
His lips are next to my ear. “You don’t want to be with me?”
I slide my fingers up his arms, feeling the muscle beneath. Being with him is all I want. If I could just get that picture out of my head—the blood flower, the crumpled gray heap, Emilio’s perfectly straight arm, the same one I’m holding on to right now—I could have that. I could go with him. “You know I do. But I can’t go back now that I know what he does, and what he makes you do, and what pays for . . . everything.”
His arms loosen, dropping to his sides, and my back is cold without his hands holding the warmth in. I uncurl myself awkwardly and sit up straight, so I won’t fall off his lap. “What happens if you don’t tell him?”
He stares gloomily across the café toward the door.
“Maybe he’d think you just didn’t see me. You didn’t actually see Lucien, did you?”
“But Marcel knows. He’ll tell Lucien.”
Right. I rest a hand on his chest where my cheek was before. “What if you don’t go back? What if we go somewhere else? Together?”
For a few seconds, I know he’s going to say yes. His heart quickens beneath my palm. His hands find my waist. He’s looking at my lips, and I see him remembering. He wants to tell me all the places he’ll take me.
But he shakes his head.
“Why not?” I ask.
“My family. I’ve seen what how he makes people pay. And where would we go?”
“Somewhere he couldn’t find us. Your family too.”
“Be realistic, Valentina. Even if they had that kind of money, there’s nowhere that Victor couldn’t find them. Or us.”
“Of course there is.”
“It doesn’t exist,” he insists. “He found you here.”
He did. I don’t know how, but he did. “Somewhere deeper or wilder. Siberia. The Congo. New Guinea.”
“You don’t want to live in the Congo or New Guinea,” he says drily, “and I’m pretty sure neither of us wants to live in Siberia. It’s not a fluke that he found you here, you know. He’d have found you if you’d gone somewhere else. He has people all over the world, people who can track us anywhere.”
“Not anywhere.”
He frowns at me. “You have to stop being so childish.”
“Don’t say that,” I say, feeling the hurt rolling into anger, picking up speed. “If you don’t want to be with me, own it and just say—”
I can’t finish. Emilio is kissing me. His hands are holding my head like he thinks he can trap me in place and shut me up. I’m too startled to respond. But then his anger becomes something else and I feel it pouring into me, filling me. He’s not shutting me up. He’s telling me something. He’s melding us together.
When he pulls away, I’m lost. For a few seconds I was Valentina, and now I’m nothing. He brings me close to him again, puts his cheek on mine, his lips beside my ear. “I want to be with you. Every time I imagine what my life would be like if it was really mine, you’re in it. You are it.”
I’m breathless. He wants me, but I’m not his. He’s not mine. He’s not even his own.
“Do you believe me?” he asks, still holding my cheek to his.
I nod. I’m not going to speak until my heart slows and my breath comes back. I hate this vulnerability, this feeling like I’ve been spun around and sliced open. He knows what he ju
st did to me, and yet he can just pull away, leaving me shaken and winded with my heart still thundering. Maybe I shouldn’t believe him.
“If I disappear,” he says, “my family will pay. With blood.”
I shudder, revolted. Emilio’s right. I have been childish. I can’t believe I actually wondered if I could love and hate Papi at same time, a man who would kill innocent people for revenge.
I can’t go back and pretend I don’t hate him.
“So I can’t disappear,” Emilio says. “You understand?”
“Yes. But I’m not going with you.”
He frowns. I’ve surprised him. “You realize I can’t lie to him, though. He’ll know.”
“So tell him. He already knows where I am, right?”
“Yes, but . . .” Emilio shakes his head. “He’ll be suspicious if I don’t bring you home.”
“I don’t see why. He can’t expect you to drag me to Miami.”
“But he can expect me to convince you, and nothing is more important than having your father think I’m his most loyal employee. He already doubts me. That’s why he’s doing this.”
“Then don’t tell him. He’ll just assume we didn’t run into each other. Remember Lucien didn’t see us together.”
“How sure are you of that?” he asks.
“Pretty sure.”
“Would you bet my life on it?”
I swallow. Would I?
“And Marcel saw us together,” Emilio continues. “Don’t you think he’ll tell Lucien?”
I sigh and cup Emilio’s face in my hands. I can’t go back because I saw your dead eyes.
“I’ve been miserable since you left,” he says.
I let go of his face and look down at my lap, at the fluted edge of Nanette’s wrinkled dress. Above my right knee, a tiny hole in my stockings is just beginning to open up. Reflexively, before it even occurs to me that they’re reparable, I stick my pinkie in it and pull, watching the web trickle up and down my thigh. It’s something Valentina would do because she can, because pantyhose are expendable. The guilt takes seconds to hit—these cost real money, money I had to earn myself.
“Come back with me,” he presses, pulling my hand from the growing web of lace.
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