Cam’s mouth closed, and his protest died. But he stayed in front of the door. “If he touches you, I’ll kill him.”

I sighed, hyperaware of the seconds ticking away while we argued. “He’s going to touch me. He’s been touching me for a year and a half, and there’s nothing either of us can do about that.” Except plot his ultimate destruction in new and sadistic ways.

“We can kill him.”

“Yeah.” I nodded. “Maybe we can.” If I could sneak a weapon in and kill him with one blow. My mark would die along with Ruben, so there’d be no resistance pain—in theory, that was as close as I could get to an easy out. However, if I couldn’t kill him with one blow, I’d wish I’d died instead. “But even if we manage to kill Ruben, we’d never make it out of there alive. I have to go, and you have to stay here until I get back. I’ll be fine.”

Cam took me by both arms, below my bandage. “Olivia, you’re not listening.” He stared straight down into my eyes. “I can’t stand the thought of him touching you. At all. I can’t just sit here and wait for you to come back, imagining him all over you. Or hitting you. I can’t.”

I pulled free from his grip, wincing over the fresh pain in my left arm, and returned his steady, pained gaze. “I’m only going to say this once—get over it. If I can deal with the reality, you can survive imagining it. Now move. I have to go.” This time he let me pull him away from the door. I kissed him one more time, then stepped out of the apartment and closed the door.

Cam’s wordless shout of anger and frustration followed me into the hall, chased by the crash of something heavy hitting the wall.

I stomped down the stairs, cursing Ruben beneath my breath the whole way.

The car was a shiny black sedan, a stereotype on wheels. It was also double-parked and idling. As I stepped onto the curb, the back door opened and Tomas climbed out. He grinned. “I almost didn’t recognize you in a skirt.”

“That makes two of us,” I said, sliding into the backseat. He sat next to me, and the car was rolling before he’d even fully closed the door. “I didn’t think he ever let you out of the house.”

Tomas laughed. “I think he was trying to find a messenger you’d hesitate to kill.”

“Smart man.” I had a soft spot for Tomas, because he’d never leered at me, taken liberties while patting me down or made innuendos about my relationship with his boss. But that only went so far. “I’d have killed you in a second if you laid one hand on Caballero.” Assuming Cam didn’t do it himself.

Tomas laughed. “I believe you’d try.”

“You better believe I’d do more than that.”

He looked as if he just might.

Twenty minutes later, the driver parked behind Cavazos’s fortress, and Tomas patted me down in the driveway, while the driver went through my satchel. “A year and a half, and I’ve never once tried to sneak in a weapon,” I said, as the driver handed my bag back to me. “You know that, right?”

“Just followin’ orders,” he said.

I could swear he used to call me “ma’am.”

Tomas relieved the man covering the back door for him, and I continued through the kitchen to the back hallway. Cavazos had never received me anywhere but his office. In fact, I’d only seen a total of four rooms in the huge house—one of them a bathroom—and I’d never been above the first floor.

Exhausted, but even more pissed off, I stomped down the unlit hall, mining my own anger for enough stamina to get me through this unexpected tête-à-tête. I was so focused on the rage I was nurturing that I didn’t realize someone had stepped out of the darkened bathroom as I passed until a hand wrapped around my throat and shoved me backward into the wall.

“What the hell are you doing here in the middle of the night?” Michaela Cavazos’s piquant accent was thick with anger, and her words practically floated on a tequila cloud. She was drinking alone on a Friday night, while her husband was having me tracked.

When I tried to push her away, something cold and sharp poked my neck.

Shit. She’dfinally lost it. My heart jumped so far into my throat I could practically taste it.

“I don’t know.” I swallowed, trying to ignore the blade poking me just below my jaw, praying it wouldn’t break my skin and give her access to even a drop of my blood. “Command appearance.”

“I know you are fucking him, and you will pay for it,” she slurred.

“I’m not…” The knife trembled in her grip, and my pulse raced so fast I could hear it whooshing in my ears. “I swear, Meika, I have never slept with your husband. And I never will.”

“Lying bitch.”

I exhaled slowly. “You’ve seen my mark. You know it’s not red.”

“That doesn’t mean he’s not fucking you. It just means you don’t have to let him.” The knife left my throat, though her hand did not. “The apartment. The bank account. The mark on your thigh. Those do not add up to innocence.” The cold blade lifted my left sleeve to bare the bandage she could probably barely see in the dark. “Fresh ink?”

“Unrelated injury. No ink at all.”

“So it’s just the one mark, whore?” she whispered, and I gasped when she used the blade to lightly drag the material of Van’s skirt up my left leg. “I’m going to cut it out of you, and cut your cancer out of my marriage….”