CHAPTER 2: THE BROTHER I HID
1083 Words
SAMUEL'S POV
"You are still awake, young lady."
I already knew the answer. I stood holding the door curtain, my eyes on the papers beside her. Camila sat cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by printed documents, a red pen in her hand, a warm drink at her elbow. She stayed where she was without looking up.
"Come in or stay out," she said. "But close the door. The breeze is scattering my documents."
I closed it and dropped my jacket on the chair. I knelt beside her and picked up the nearest document without asking.
She snatched it back and slid it under her left leg.
"That is not for reading."
"You left it there." I pointed at the floor.
"I left it in my apartment." She finally looked at me and gave me a playful side-eye.
I sat down in an armchair facing her. Her eyes followed my every move. "Sam, what are you…"
I bent down and kissed her forehead. She tried not to smile, then turned back to her papers.
"How was the conference preparation?" she asked.
"Good." I reached over and picked up her drink. Warm. I set it back down. "You forgot to drink this."
"I was busy."
"You are always busy."
She watched my eyes closely. "Is that a complaint?"
"Not really, but an observation."
She paused, something warm moving behind her eyes, then she looked back at the page. I watched her read, her lips moving silently over the words that mattered most.
"Samuel."
"Hmm."
"Come and look at this."
I leaned over her shoulder. She held up a page of financial records, one column highlighted in red. Her finger moved down the numbers.
"Imagine this record. Same amount," she said. "Different banks in the same week. Five times in two months."
“What does that mean?” she asked, frowning.
I moved closer, my eyes fixed on the document.
"It means someone is moving money elsewhere and trying not to get caught."
She set the page down and reached for another. "The Cruz Foundation runs twelve active charity programs. I have found documentation for four of them. The other eight..." She spread her hands.
“Camila. I thought...”
“I know.”
She didn't let me finish.
My eyes went to the documents across the room. ORTEGA CRUZ. Something pulled tight in my chest.
“How far have you gone with this?”
She sat back on her heels. "Far enough to know it is real."
I looked at the documents. Then at her. "Who else knows?"
"My editor, of course. He knows the outline. Not the name."
"Better off like that." The words came out harder than I had thought. Her expression froze for a second before she forced a reaction.
“You acted strange around me, like you had heard something,” she said carefully.
She looked at my face for a moment, then placed her hand on my chest.
My heart pounded beneath her palm. Heavy. Uneven.
She didn't move it.
I met her eyes and stayed still.
“Permit me to call your editor,” I said. “Let me tell him to give the assignment to someone else.”
“No, Samuel.” She turned away from me. “If I stop this now, those people involved in these fraudulent activities will never stop. They will be free to walk around outside.”
She looked at the documents one more time, then back at me, twisting the fingers of her left hand with her right.
“Sweetheart, I said I can handle this.”
I moved closer and held her left hand, staring into her eyes. "Is that what you really want, Cam?"
"Promise me you’ll be careful."
She reached up and held my cheek with her right hand. "I promise you, Samuel Luis. Nothing is going to happen to me."
The tension left me.
A few minutes later, I was in the bathroom when I heard a scream.
I froze.
The sound came again.
Then silence. And my name, quietly.
"Sam… Samuel."
I rushed out of the bathroom with a towel tied around my waist.
Camila stood at the bathroom door with a box in her hands. Her eyes remained on the open pendant, her photograph and mine beside it.
"Cam. It was my gift to you," I said, standing before her.
She lifted the pendant by the chain and held it up. The silver caught the corridor light.
"This stands for our love." Her voice dropped around the words. “It means we'll never be apart.”
I took the pendant from her hands. She lifted her hair without being asked. I fastened the clasp at her neck, my fingers resting there for a moment after. She turned. I kissed her neckline and held her for a few seconds.
She pressed her palm flat against the pendant at her throat.
Neither of us spoke.
The morning I was leaving for the conference, she stood at the gate in my old hoodie, arms folded against the early cold. A smile rested on her face.
“I have a surprise for you, but you’ll get it when I get back,” I said, loading my bags into a hired car that would take me to meet the others.
"Tell me."
"Then it would not be a surprise."
She twisted her face, narrowed her eyes, and crossed her legs in protest.
“I hate surprises.”
"You will like this one."
I walked back to her and gently brushed my thumb on her lips, then turned toward the car. Her voice caught me at the door.
"Samuel."
I turned.
"I will miss you."
Something tightened in my chest at those words. I smiled, got in, and we moved.
She was still standing by the gate when Daniel Flores pushed the parked car across the street, his eyes following her until she turned back and disappeared inside.
He did not move for a long moment after that.
Just stood there in the grey morning light, her name turning over quietly in his mind like something he had already decided to keep.
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