Page 81 of The Verdict

“Morte.”

“Mercury.” As he’d introduced himself back then.

“And they never suspected you were a cop?” Dare was incredulous.

“I can be very convincing,” I replied flatly, catching the other man’s stare flick to Rhys for a second. “And so could my records,” I added. “There was no record of Merritt Vilaró being a police officer. No record of me attending the academy. Only dozens of news reports painting me as the Queen of Thieves. And if Saba was right about the mole in the department, that person would confirm I wasn’t a cop. He’d have access to personnel records and information, he’d know I wasn’t law enforcement.”

“So, he used the mole in his favor?”

I nodded.

“What made him tell you?”

My jaw snapped shut, pain and guilt blooming in my chest.

“I was at the warehouse. It was the week before the heist. Mercury was…” I winced. “The closer we got to the job, the more deranged he became. Like just the thought of crime was turning him on. I went to the back of the warehouse for something, and he cornered me. Started getting handsy.” The tension in Rhys’s body started to rumble like an impending earthquake. “I punched him. He came back and held a knife to my throat.” I could still feel the cold edge of the blade to my skin. “Spun me around?—”

I broke off, catching sight of Rhys, who looked like he was about to explode. Rage eked from the flare of his nostrils and pumped hard through the veins in his neck.

“Saturn found us and pulled him off me. Saturn usually kept everyone in line—kept Mercury from getting out of control when Jupiter wasn’t around.” I cleared the thickness from my throat. “Anyway, Saturn knocked him around a good bit until Jupiter showed up. He sent Mercury away with Neptune and pulled Saturn into his office.” I paused, guilt grinding away at my stomach.“Three shots,” I finished. “They echoed through the warehouse, and the rest of us just stopped.We couldn’t believe he’d killed Saturn so close to the operation.”

And it was my fault. The man had saved me from Mercury, and he’d been killed for it.

“No,” Rhys said low like he could read my thoughts—read my expression.

“What happened then?” Harm probed.

“Jupiter came back out, furious. Screaming—threatening about how we were a fucking team and if we couldn’t work together here, we were never going to get the diamond. He went off about how the cops were hovering, and we had to pull this off.”

“What did you do?”

“I panicked,” I admitted. “I’d never seen Jupiter act like that before, and to kill Saturn… out of all of them…” I shook my head. “I was furious and afraid. I contacted Saba and told him he had to arrest them now. That there was a dead body in the warehouse and he could get them for murder… but he wouldn’t stray from the plan.”

“That was when he told you the truth.”

“No.” I shook my head. “I threatened to walk away from the operation—go to the police with what I knew. They’d have to bring them in, and I’d ID them. Tell them about Saturn and the heist…”

“Like I was going to,” Rhys murmured, realizing that this morning he’d reacted like I had, and that was why I’d had to tell him the truth, just like Saba had to tell me.

“That was when he told me he was sure they had someone on the inside—that if I went to the police now, they’d get off. Disappear. That we had to catch them in the act.”

“But he never figured out who it was? Even after how everything ended?”

“He was killed,” Ty answered for me, pulling up the muchsmaller article that reported on the incident in the paper. “Home robbery gone wrong the day after the heist?—”

“It wasn’t a robbery, it was them,” I said thickly. “I know it was. Whoever Jupiter had in his pocket went after Saba and killed him.”

“Jesus Christ,” Rhys swore.

“I went to Saba’s house right after the robbery. He would’ve known what to do. Except he was already dead—the only man who had proof of my legitimacy—could prove my innocence.”To the rest of Barcelona, I was a thief. “With him gone and Jupiter after me, I ran. Used my American passport to get out of Barcelona—out of Spain. I came here. Became a teacher.”

“And you don’t think Saba gave you up?”

“No,” I said without missing a beat—without even pausing to think. “Sometimes, you just know who a person is at their core in an instant.” I glanced at Rhys, catching the flicker in his gaze. “And I know Saba never would’ve given me up. Ever.”

“So, what would you propose we do, if not turn them into the police?” Harmon asked with that steady drawl of his, always an unmoving rock against the tide.

“Send me.”

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