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“Maybe after dinner,” I said, keeping my voice warm, “we can spend a little time in the playroom.”
Ciro went quiet long enough for me to know he was picturing it.
“Wear white.”
I looked down at my navy suit and laughed under my breath. “Of course.”
“And Isabella?”
“Yes?”
“Do not fail me with the Irishman.”
“I won’t.”
“I want him in my hands before Volkov realizes where to look.”
“He won’t see this coming.”
“No,” Ciro said. “Because men rarely understand women like you.”
The line went dead.
For a moment, I stood in the middle of my office, a smile spreading slowly across my face.
Good men.
Bad men.
It never mattered.
They all wanted something.
Lachlan Byrnes wanted to save me.
Ciro Delgado wanted to use me.
Both of them had made the same mistake.
They thought I belonged to the game because a man had put me there.
They had no idea how long ago I’d started playing for myself.
They saw the soft mouth, the polished hair, the cross at my throat, and decided they understood me. Ambitious, maybe, but manageable. Pretty enough to look good in their orbit. Smart enough to be useful, but not dangerous.
Men were idiots.
Isabella Marcela Reyes had not survived growing up in San Antonio mostly alone, law school, rich men, cartel money, and Ciro Delgado by waiting to be rescued.
I’d learned early that power was poverty with better shoes.
The thought of the path I should have taken, the respectable path, made me sick. Clawing my way to a corner office, renting a tasteful apartment, spending a decade smiling at international law firm partners as they steal my work and call it mentoring, then wasting forty years protecting fortunes I would never touch?
No, thank you.
Ciro’s records had crossed my desk by accident, and I took full advantage of the situation.
Shell companies. Private clubs. Construction interests. Charity fronts. Offshore transfers hidden under names that belonged on plaques in hospital wings and university buildings. Dirty money from arms deals and controlling drug pipelines, yes, but so much of it. There was enough to turn an MS-13 thug with bad grammar and worse manners into someone senators answered.
