“We’re doing good work. Things I can be proud of. It’s slow, and it’s frustrating as hell, but I believe in my work in the Senate. I think I could do more. What happened to Kennedy—you’re right, I want to continue his legacy of fighting for those who have suffered for far too long. He was my friend. I owe him that, I think.”

Nick is a good man, and despite the time we’ve been together, the countless moments we’ve shared, I still feel that spark of excitement, the humming in my veins that I experienced when we first met. He still dazzles me, but Elisa was right. At some point, you must do the right thing, even when it hurts.

“I will always be a liability for you.”

“I would marry you.”

A tear spills down my cheek. “I know.” I brush at my skin. “Part of me wants that more than anything, thinks I could be happy as your wife. If I could be happy as anyone’s wife, it would be yours.”

His eyes water.

I take a deep breath, my heart breaking at the pain in his gaze. “But I know it would only be a matter of time before I grew restless again, before world events became such that I could no longer turn a blind eye to the U.S.’s actions, before I became involved in something that would hurt you.”

I lay my palm against his cheek, my fingertips growing wet.

“You know I’m right. And you wouldn’t be happy. I don’t want that. I don’t want to wake up one day and feel like we’ve grown apart, become strangers. I don’t want to ruin your career, your chance to fight for the things you believe in. I don’t want to ruin the love we have for each other.

“Your wife—” The words hurt coming out. “Your wife should be someone who shares your hopes for the future, who makes you happy, who supports you, who wants the same things you want.”

“Christ.”

“I’ll clean my stuff out before I go to Cuba.”

He clears his throat, his voice rough. “No. The house is yours. It always was.”

“I can’t accept a house.”

“Sure you can. You can do whatever you want. This house was my dream for us. Maybe that dream didn’t come true the way I envisioned, maybe I only got to hold it for a moment before it slipped through my fingers, but I was happy here with you.”

Another tear slides down my cheek. “I was happy here with you, too.”

“Then hold on to it for us. Be happy here. I don’t want to throw it away, and I can’t imagine another woman walking through these rooms.”

The truth is, I want the house. I want to hold the memory of us close if I make it out of all of this.

“I will.”

“I should go. My flight leaves soon.”

A tremor wracks my body as Nick wraps his arms around me, holding me against his chest once last time, as I wet his shirtfront with my tears.

“Be safe,” he whispers, stroking my hair. He pulls back, and our lips meet, in one last kiss that feels so familiar, and is yet filled with such finality.

Nick releases me, bending down and zipping his suitcase. My gaze settles on the red box sitting on the bedspread, the diamond sparkling in the afternoon sun.

I hand the box to him.

He shakes his head. “Keep it. Please.”

I curl my fingers around the ring box.

A sob escapes. “This feels too much like good-bye. Like we’re over.”

He swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing, as though he, too, is attempting to keep it all together.

“We will never be over. Not good-bye. How about until we meet again?”

“I think I like that even better,” I say through the tears. “Until we meet again.”

And then he’s gone.

chapter thirty-three

In the nearly five years since I last saw Havana from atop my perch in the airplane carrying us to Miami, it seems as though the island has changed. At first sight, I cannot quite put my finger on the differences, only that it feels as though I am looking at a stranger, one’s beloved who is now almost unrecognizable.

The sensation is expressed in overlapping waves—the past and present converging together on an image that is just out of focus, a moment one beat off where it should be.

The Malecón is still there, and El Morro, and La Caba?a in the distance. The buildings are still there, visible in the moonlight, and yet, the city feels different. Eduardo is silent beside me, as though he recognizes the changes, too, as though he is bracing himself for them.

“Is it always like this?”

He told me on the boat ride over that he’s made this trip a dozen or so times since he was released from prison, smuggling others into the country.

“Yes.”

He says the word as though it pains him as much as the image of Havana pains me now.

I imagined relief and a sense of closure at the sight of my homeland, but I confess to only feeling a tremendous sense of loss. I thought it would feel like coming home.

The tiny boat ferrying us bobs with the rising seas.

The journey has been fairly uneventful, no run-ins with the Coast Guard, the waves not too choppy, the stars and moonlight breaking through the inky dark night. Minutes ago, the sun receded over the horizon, bathing Havana in its glow for one beautiful moment before night came.

In an hour or so, I will be on my way to see Fidel.

* * *

? ? ?

Eduardo and a Cuban man who greets him with a quick smile whisk me through the city in a blue Buick, no names exchanged between them, the entire mood of the evening one of urgency. I yearn to linger, have to remind myself this is not the time to explore, that if I am successful in my mission, we will have plenty of days and nights in Havana.

Our destination is the Habana Hilton, now renamed by Fidel to the Habana Libre, a ridiculous moniker if there ever was one.

The capsule of poison Eduardo handed me when we left Palm Beach is tucked securely in my bra. My heart beats against it erratically.

I thought the time spent living in London as a spy had better prepared me for this, imagined that after my experience with Ramon, little could rattle me.

I was wrong.

“You have the plan down?” Eduardo murmurs to me.

I nod, my gaze on the city as it passes us by. If I’m to die in a few hours, let me enjoy these last few moments in Havana.

We arrive at the hotel quickly, and I am ferried in through a service entrance in the back, where another man in a hotel uniform meets us. He doesn’t offer his name, either, merely tells me to follow him up to the leader’s room.

I can’t tell what either of these men think, if they believe I am another one of Fidel’s women and they’re merely arranging a romantic tryst, or if they are also affiliated with the CIA. In the absence of such knowledge, I opt for silence.

“This is where I leave you,” Eduardo says, his words reminiscent of the first time he took me to meet Mr. Dwyer at the restaurant in Jupiter so many years ago.

How far we’ve come.

“You’ll be fine,” he whispers, although I get the sense he is saying it more for himself than for me, and at the moment, I don’t need his reassurance.

I’ve had this date for a long time, and just as when I was a young girl, afraid of the dark and the monsters I imagined loomed beneath my bed, there is power in facing this horror head-on.

With a quick kiss on the cheek, I leave Eduardo behind me, and follow the man in the hotel uniform to an elevator bank, where Fidel’s security men stop us.

I stand still as their hands run over my curves, checking me for weapons, their movements more perfunctory than anything else.

They ask my name, a few more questions, their mood jovial, and I do my best to answer them, to keep my voice steady, relying on the experience I gained from my time in London.

And then we’re boarding the elevator, going up, up, up until we reach Fidel’s floor and the doors slide open, revealing more security men.

They pat me down once more, and then the door at the end of the hall opens, and I cross over into Fidel’s inner sanctum.

* * *

? ? ?

    I’ve imagined this moment for so long, run over the possibilities of how it would transpire hundreds of times, and now that it’s here, I want to savor the moment, but it runs by me too quickly, flashes registering before they’re gone.

Fidel lounges on one of the couches, a customary cigar in hand, flanked by security men.

I stiffen at the sight of them.

Eduardo mentioned Fidel would be alone, that he often entertains his women in the privacy of his suite, this whole evening arranged by a spy embedded in Castro’s government.

Why isn’t he alone?

“Beatriz Perez, we meet again.”

I walk toward Fidel on shaky legs, attempting to steady myself in my heels, a smile affixed on my face. A drink sits in front of him on the coffee table, and my gaze sweeps over it as I run through the possibilities in my mind of how I can slip the poison into the glass.

Why isn’t he alone?

“Sit.” Fidel gestures toward a chair opposite the couch. “You can leave us,” he says to his security personnel. “We won’t be long.”

My legs tremble as I sink down into the chair. Was Eduardo’s intelligence wrong? Is Fidel interested in me as a woman or not? And regardless, will there be an opportunity to slip the drug into his drink?