Chapter 10.

I turn my head at the last second, and his mouth catches the corner of mine instead, soft, brief, deliberate.

He goes still. Something flickers behind his eyes, not anger, more like recalculation.

"That wasn't a no," he says quietly.

"It wasn't a yes either."

"No." He studies me a moment longer, and whatever he finds seems to satisfy him enough to let it go. "You're not ready. I can tell the difference." His thumb brushes my jaw once before he steps back, giving me the space I didn't ask for out loud. "I've never needed to rush anything I actually wanted to keep."

"You say that like patience is your strong suit."

"It isn't." A faint, private smile. "But I'm trying it out for you, Elena."

We end up back on the deck, the city glittering distant and small across the water, glasses refilled more than once. I bring the second bottle myself, pour his glass a little fuller than mine, and it's not until he's laughing at something I've said, unguarded in a way I haven't seen from him yet, that I let my hand pass over his glass and drop the pill I'd found tucked in my bathroom cabinet this morning, small, white, unlabeled, exactly the kind of thing Isa leaves behind for a night she suspects I might need it and never says so out loud.

He doesn't notice. Men like Rafael never expect the danger to come from the hand refilling their drink.

Within the hour, his words start slowing, his head tipping back against the cushions, and by the time I walk him to the bedroom, he's already gone soft and heavy with sleep, murmuring something in Spanish I don't catch before his breathing evens out completely.

I lie beside him a long while, watching the ceiling, before I finally let myself sleep too.

It's a little past midnight when his phone wakes me first, a single sharp beep against the nightstand, then another.

I go still, listening to his breathing, slow, steady, undisturbed. Carefully, I ease up onto one elbow.

The screen glows faint in the dark. I reach for it before I can talk myself out of it, thumb hovering, pulse loud enough that I'm certain he can hear it even asleep.

It unlocks. No code, and that stops me cold, because a man like Rafael doesn't forget to lock anything. Either he trusts the water around us more than he should, or this is a trap he left open on purpose.

I scroll, quiet, careful, every small motion timed to the rhythm of his breathing. Messages I can't parse fast enough. A contact labeled only with initials. And then, a photo.

A man, beaten badly, one hand held up toward the camera, missing a finger, blood dark against pale skin, his face turned just enough that I can see the fear still frozen into it.

My stomach drops.

This is him. The one from the call. The one Rafael ordered found, ordered marked, without a flicker of hesitation in his voice.

I fumble for my own phone on the floor beside the bed, hands shaking, and photograph the screen fast, badly, twice, just to be sure.

Rafael shifts.

I nearly drop both phones. I set his back exactly where it was, angle untouched, screen dimming itself back to black, and slide down against the pillow half a second before his arm finds my waist in his sleep, pulling me back against him like nothing happened at all.

I don't breathe again for a long time.

……..

I wake to an empty bed and a rising panic before I've even opened my eyes fully.

Rafael's side is cold. My phone is gone.

I sit up fast, scanning the room, the nightstand, the floor, my mind already running through everything sitting on that screen that shouldn't exist, a photograph I have no business having, no reasonable excuse for.

Then I notice it, the low hum beneath the floor, the gentle sway that isn't the same stillness as last night.

We're moving.

I cross to the window, and there's nothing. No skyline, no coast, no land at all. Just water in every direction, endless and gray under a pale morning sky.

I move fast toward the door, pulse hammering, and stop dead.

Rafael is standing there, leaning against the frame, my phone held loosely between two fingers.

"Looking for this?"

"Yes." My voice comes out smaller than I want it to.

The silence that follows isn't like any silence we've had before. It has weight to it, edges.

"Tu batería estaba baja, y te ayudé a cargarla, cariño." He passes my phone back to me. (Trans:

Your battery was low, and I helped charge it).

Something mischievous flickers behind his eyes, and I know instantly he's lying.

I collect it without thinking, and only after do I realize what I've given away, that I understood him instantly, no delay, no confusion, nothing that should exist in a woman who claimed only a little Spanish.

Something shifts in his face. Recognition. He doesn't say anything about it. He just smiles, slow and unreadable, and holds his hand out.

I don't take it. I can't make my feet move.

He crosses the space instead, closing his hand gently around my wrist, and guides me, not ungently, toward the small dining table set up on deck, pancakes, tea, waffles, all of it steaming like nothing on this yacht is wrong at all.

Instead of pulling out my chair, he pushes me into it, firm, final.

"Eat."

We sit. He eats like it's an ordinary morning. I try to.

"Where are we?" I ask, keeping my voice light.

"Past Biscayne Bay." He doesn't look up from his plate. "Good place for a man who needs fresh air.”

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one you need right now." A pause, and something almost amused flickers behind it. "Also, hypothetically, an excellent place to dispose of a body. No jurisdiction to complain about it."

I choke on the bite I'm chewing, coughing hard enough that my eyes water.

"Cariño." He slides a glass of water toward me, unbothered, watching me drink like he's simply waiting for me to catch up to the conversation. "Careful."

"You're joking," I manage, once I can breathe again.

"Am I?"

"Rafael."

"Relax, Elena." He leans back, studying me over his cup. "If I wanted you gone, we wouldn't be having breakfast first."

"That's supposed to be reassuring?"

"It's supposed to be honest." He sets the cup down. "I don't waste good food on people I've already decided about."

"And what have you decided?"

He doesn't answer that either. He stands instead, abrupt, chair scraping back, and holds a hand toward me. "Come."

"Where?"

"Bedroom."

I stand slowly, and the second I'm within reach he pulls me flush against him, one hand splayed low on my back, his mouth close to my ear.

"You're quiet this morning, cariño." A pause, unreadable. "Which makes me wonder what you're not telling me.”

He walks me the rest of the way in silence, and once we're inside, he sits at the edge of the bed, watching me the way a man studies something he already owns.

"Take off your clothes.”