The leg starts to come back. Helena's antibiotics work. The fever breaks. I can sit up. I can chew.
I start eating everything they bring me. Drinking the water. Doing the small range-of-motion drills I can do with one good leg and one cuff.
I am not going to die down here.
I die down here, the people who put us in this position win clean.
I'm going to live to see how this ends.
I'm going to live to get my sister back out.
A few days later the door opens, and it's Mateo.
Cami is with him.
She's in tactical — black on black, badge clipped at her hip, blond ponytail stripped back. The face I grew up next to, sharper now and wearing the kind of cold a sister has never seen on it.
She sees me, and her pupils blow wide for one second.
Then she puts the cold back on.
The horror she felt when she saw the chain and the leg — gone. Replaced with disgust. With something that wants to spit.
She is acting.
She is acting for Mateo's eyes.
"This is the rat?" Cami says. Cool. A little contempt in it.
Mateo doesn't answer her. He's looking at me. His expression is not one I can read — there's hate in it and there's something underneath the hate, and I can't tell what that something is.
"She looks normal," Cami says. "I don't know how a face like that holds the things she did."
She walks across the cellar to me and kicks my bad leg.
The pain blanks me out for a second. I scream — short, ugly — and the cold sweat is up on my forehead before the sound has finished.
"Cami —"
It's out of my mouth before I can stop it.
She freezes.
Mateo's eyes sharpen at once.
"You know her?" he asks.
"No."
She says it fast. Too fast.
"She's confused. She doesn't know what she's saying."
She turns her head and gives me a look that is pure warning. Stop. Right now.
I shut my mouth. I swallow everything — the pain, my sister's name, the rest of it — and let it sit in my chest.
"Mateo, this is what you do with traitors?" Cami pivots to him. There is sneer in her voice now. "Break a leg, lock her in a basement, and call it justice?"
"That's letting her off easy."
He raises an eyebrow. "And what would Agent Marlow recommend."
"Federal court. Twenty-five years in Coleman. Watch her age out behind chicken wire."
It comes out beautifully, my sister. Honestly, it does.
"Court." Mateo smiles. There is no humor in it. "Agent Marlow. I think you're forgetting where you are."
"There's no court down here."
"Just rules."
"My rules."
He walks to me. He bends down and takes me by the throat and lifts me off the floor.
The air goes.
I claw at his wrist and it is like clawing at rebar.
"Mateo — let her go!"
Cami's voice has cracked.
"Why," he says, not turning. He is half-smiling. "Did Agent Marlow's heart twitch?"
"She doesn't deserve to die."
It is a small, weak thing. Cami isn't built for the lie yet.
"Oh."
The smile sharpens.
"Down here, betrayal is a death sentence."
His grip tightens. The cellar starts to tunnel at the edges.
I'm about to go out when he opens his hand.
I drop to the concrete and breathe in a long, ugly drag.
"Out of respect for Agent Marlow," he says, dusting his palm against his thigh as if I were lint, "I'll let her live today."
"Capital crime down. Lesser charge to follow."
He turns. He pulls Cami into him by the back of her neck. He kisses her on the mouth. In front of me. Not a quick one.
I see Cami's body go rigid. I see her hands at her sides go to fists. I see the half-moons start to print in her own palm.
I can't look away.
I am watching the man I love kiss my sister.
It is a slow, ritual carving. One stroke. Then another. Then another.
There is so much blood inside this room and none of it is on the floor.
After that, he finds the new game.
He brings Cami down to the cellar all the time. With breakfast. With lunch. With Helena's redressings. Mostly just to stand in front of me with her on his arm, putting on the show.
He feeds her grapes off the stem. He tucks her hair back when the cellar AC pushes it forward. He talks to her in the soft voice I never heard him use on anyone but me.
Cami plays it.
She plays it well. Reluctance at first. Then the half-no-half-yes. Then the surrender. By the third week she is curling into him when he sits down. She is laughing at the things he says.
Only I know what's behind every laugh.
A blade behind every smile. Strychnine in every soft sound she makes.
They are running a piece of theater for me.
I am the only audience.
I am the only one who pays.
One afternoon he brings the dress.
It is on a padded hanger, draped in a garment bag, and when he unzips it the cellar lights find diamond-bright beadwork along the bodice and a long ivory train.
A Monique Lhuillier gown. Made-to-measure. The kind of thing that takes a year and a Brickell phone number to get.
"Cami," he says. He's holding it up against her shoulders. "Tell me you like it."
"I had it made for you."
She looks in the mirror he's brought down for her. Her eyes get wet. Real or fake — even I can't tell.
"Mateo. It's too much."
"There's no such thing as too much for you."
He stands behind her. He hooks his chin over her shoulder. He looks at her in the mirror.
"On the day, you'll wear this one."
The day.
The wedding day.
The two words go in like a needle.
I look at the dress.
I know that dress.
I drew it.
It surfaces before the rest of me catches up — a hotel notepad, his bed in Brickell, the lamp on his side. I had been sketching for an hour. Boat neck. Sweetheart. Off-the-shoulder. He'd picked through the pages and said they all look good because you'd be the one wearing them. We landed on this one. The beading along the bodice. The train length. The little dip at the back.
He said when this last thing is done I'll fly us to Paris and have it cut to you.
He had it cut.
For another woman.
For my sister.
"Sis. Do you like it?"
Cami turns. She is smiling at me, all-teeth, the sweet pageant smile of a younger sister in her wedding dress for the first time.
She just called me Sis.
In front of him.
Mateo's face shuts. Right then. Like a door.
"What did you call her."
"I said, Sis."
Cami points at me. Her smile is sunny. She has gone full brat.
"Mateo. You didn't know? She's my sister."
"Blood sister."
The cellar goes silent in a way that has weight.
Mateo's pupils — I see them shrink. The blood starts to drain out of his cheeks in real time.
He looks at me. He looks at Cami. He looks at me again. He looks like the floor has tilted.
"You — "
His voice has a tremor in it.
"That's right." Cami crosses to me. She reaches down and helps me up to my feet, dress and all, and stands beside me. "We're sisters."
"We're both DEA."
She looks at him. Each word lands separately.
"We came for you."
"Mateo Salazar-Vega. You're under arrest."