Page 82 of Twin Deception

Now, I was free to just live my life and never face any danger from the Cartel or anyone else my father wanted to dupe or deceive.

We were…

“Free.” I blinked at Miguel as he crouched close to me. Blood showed at a new cut on his lip, but otherwise, his stern concentration was on freeing me.

“We’re free,” I whispered.

He turned his head to face me, gazing at me like this was the moment our lives would truly begin.

Helping me move my arms forward, he hauled me into his arms and kissed me hard.

Free.

Free to love, free to be with him.

Free to start a new future without any danger to stop us from true happiness.

Under his lips, accepting his kiss and reply in kind with all the hunger I wanted him to know I had for him, I sighed and rejoiced that the dark chapter of our lives was over.

And now, it would only be happiness and peace.

31

MIGUEL

Three weeks later…

Christmas on the beach wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be. After everything settled down following Louis’s and Graciella’s deaths, I flew Isabel to Cancun for a change of scenery.

She’d come to Mexico for a holiday vacation, and I told her there wasn’t any reason we couldn’t wrap it up and ring in the New Year there.

Choosing somewhere further from Acapulco, where the crime scenes with our involvement were too many, we relocated to Cancun.

Where another tropical storm came through and knocked out the power at our resort. Being in the dark was fine. We passed the time… creatively and in bed. But the lack of AC wasn’t so fun.

Then we tried to make love on the beach again, where I got bitten by sand ticks and she got sand in some not so great places for grit.

Sex on the beachcouldbe fun, but the reality of it was that it could sting. Literally.

Giving up on a vacation, we moved to San Diego so we could start preparing her apartment for the market.

A house was necessary if we wanted a lot of kids.A lotwas open for negotiation, but we would start with the one we had coming right now.

Her timing had been off—or perfect, if anyone were to ask me. We’d only known each other for such a short time, and we’d only had sex a couple of times, but once was all it took.

She was pregnant. And excited and optimistic and in love. We both were.

Once we got some headway on preparing her apartment for sale, we traveled to visit Esmeralda at the rehab facility.

With all the news about Isabel being one of two twins, and the deaths of Esme’s husband and other daughter, we agreed that some closure would help. With the assistance of a staff member at Bayshore Residences, she explained about all that had happened. The older woman was too far gone, though, too lost in her mind to really understand that Louis and Graciella were dead. Isabel didn’t go into too many actual details, obviously, but she’d conveyed the news and hoped that it would reach her.

It didn’t. Esmeralda was locked in her mind, unable to process it all.

Understandably, Isabel was sad for quite a while. She receded into her mind a lot, just wanting space or time to think. I wouldn’t push her. I didn’t push her. Because I knew how it was. I recalled that numbing state of shock at losing a family.

When the corrupt military official had my parents killed, I was distant and aloof like that too, needing the emptiness to zone out and think. To process it all and compartmentalize that my life, my existence, would forever be different now.

Taking a pregnancy test and learning that she would be a mother was the change that made all the difference. Happy and thrilled, she focused on the fact that she’d be bringing a baby into the world instead of the sadness that she’d never have her family back, with all of them either dead or dying.

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