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My brows rise, and I suppress a surge of irritation that she even knows I’m an assassin attached to a clandestine organization. “Is there someone you want me to kill?”
She smirks. “Maybe?”
“Your boss?” Amethyst asks with a tiny smile.
“If you can throw my ex-boss in a truck and scare him into sending me a text, that would be perfect,” she replies, her eyes dancing with mischief.
Amethyst chokes, coughing and sputtering. I rise off my seat, but she waves me off, still laughing. “Cesare from Wonderland?”
“Yeah,” Myra replies with a nod.
“What’s he done now?”
“I told him I wasn’t coming back, and he said okay.” Her features harden into a scowl. “No fight, no questioning, no bargaining. Just a bland ‘okay’.”
“Good riddance,” Amethyst mutters. “Cesare Montesano is bad news anyway.”
Camila nudges my arm. I turn to meet her meaningful look that I translate as a strong suggestion to tell Amethyst about her real family. I force back a grimace and nod, wondering how the hell she’ll react when she discovers her birth father is a second cousin of the Montesano brothers.
Dessert is a red velvet cake to replace the one I destroyed on her birthday. Amethyst picks at her portion, but Myra dives in, her silver fork sinking into the creamy frosting.
“This is so good. Did you make it?” Myra asks.
I nod.
“I’ve never had a red velvet cake like this. What’s the secret ingredient?”
“Blood,” I deadpan.
She chokes, her brows shooting to her hairline. “What?”
“And a large quantity of criollo cocoa beans,” I add.
Myra glances at Camila. “Is he joking?”
“Probably not.” My sister takes a huge bite of cake.
Amethyst picks up her fork and begins to poke at the red velvet sponge, her brows knitted together. “It looks the same as any other cake.”
“Have you ladies heard of cochineal?” I ask.
When all three of them shake their heads, I lean forward. “Once upon a time, there was a little bug who lived on a prickly pear cactus. One day, the bug was just minding its own business,inches away from a juicy, ripe pear when a human crushed it between his fingertips. As life drained out of its carcass, it dyed the man’s skin red.”
“This is bullshit, right?” Camila asks.
I shake my head, my grin widening. “The other humans saw the dye and were amazed by the radiant, deep red. Word spread, and soon humans used the cochineal bugs to dye their clothes, to make art, and even to color their food. And that is the secret ingredient to the red velvet cake.”
Myra sets down her fork and grimaces. “Remind me not to ask how you make salted caramel ice cream.”
Amethyst laughs. It’s a rich, genuine sound that fills the kitchen and lifts my heart. She takes a generous bite of the cake and hums her appreciation. My chest aches that it was Myra who drew out this reaction and not me, but I appreciate it just the same.
After lunch, I light the fire pit outside, and Isabel joins us for coffee, where Amethyst repeats my tale about the red velvet cake. This time, she adds embellishments to the bug’s backstory, and adds a love interest who seeks out the first human to get revenge.
I sit beside her on the bench, hanging onto her every word, enraptured by her story. This is the woman who captured my heart with her Rapunzel retelling. Amethyst made the time I spent on Death Row bearable, and here she is again, lighting up my life.
Guilt twists my heart at the reminder of how I unknowingly mirrored a trauma so heinous that her mother was forced to erase it from her mind.
If Amethyst is ever going to heal completely, then she needs to know the truth. About everything, from the root cause of her hallucinations to why my actions got her captured. If I hadn’taggravated that sore spot in her psyche, she might never have set her crawlspace on fire and escaped into danger.
