Theo turns his back to the door, his unfocused gaze on the window. The downpour has eased to a drizzle now, the view outside sodden and colorless beneath the ceiling of oppressive clouds.

“Let’s see what Daddy has to say for himself,” Kano taunts. He turns the lock, and the door bursts open, Alexander rushing across the room in a blur. Allowing a wide berth between him and me, he falls to his knees before Theo, gripping his bonded hands, imploring him to listen.

“Get away from me,” Theo says, refusing to look at his father. He turns his vacant stare to his dresser lined with trophies. Water polo, soccer. Sports I’ve barely heard of.

“Does he have to be handcuffed?” Alexander pleads to Ciro.

“Seems like you should be in handcuffs too,” Theo says sharply.

“Mijo, let me explain—”

Mijo? I’ve never heard a Roth speak Spanish before. Alexander’s mother, Mrs. Roth, does come from a high-ranking Tejano family, but they didn’t carry on the language. Halton never even took Spanish in school.

“Halton was your mijo. You had a second family.” Theo doesn’t say it as a question. He knows it’s a hard fact. A fact his father doesn’t even try to deny.

“I did it for love, Theo. I did it for love of your mother and for you.”

Theo scoffs, and I roll my eyes.

“Mom’s in on this too, then?”

“Where is your wife, Alexander?” Ciro asks, everyone suddenly fearful the woman will barge in and destroy our mission’s headway.

“My personal life is of no concern to you,” Alexander snaps, waving the question away.

“They’re getting a divorce,” Theo answers quietly. “My mom won’t show up here, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

No sympathy, I remind myself.

The entire team relaxes.

Alexander pushes himself closer to Theo and tries to force him to meet his earnest stare, but Theo bows his head, focus locked on the damp floor.

“You broke the law of your country,” Theo whispers, like he’s ashamed we might hear. “And then ran away like some craven sneak. My entire life is a lie.”

“You wouldn’t be alive if we hadn’t fled,” Alexander protests. Knees cracking, he lifts himself up to sit beside Theo on the bed. “My father wanted to take you from me. Are you hearing me, Theo? Your grandfather wanted to send you away. I couldn’t give you up, so we ran . . .”

Governor Roth knew. Of course he did.

“And the governor just let you go?” I ask hotly, fighting to keep back the images that pop into my mind: Roth, my father, the prison cell. The nightmare sound of the shot that took him from me.

“My father despised me,” Alexander answers without looking at me. “I was twenty-three when Halton was born. I’d just been expelled from Strake University—it was all very quiet, the Roth public image never tarnished—and made an officer in his military. I was doing everything I could to get myself out. I was undisciplined, weak willed. Too curious for the role my parents planned for me. An ill-fitted successor, the only thing I did right in their eyes was agree to the arranged marriage that gave them a grandson. An opportunity to raise a proper heir.”

Then why did Governor Roth have his heir killed?

“You say you couldn’t give me up, but you just abandoned him . . . ,” Theo says to his sneakers. “. . . Halton,” he finally names him. “You left him with a man like Governor Roth? I’ve hated that son of a Glut ever since I first heard his name in the news.”

He pauses a beat, letting his reality fully sink in. “Y ahora es mi pinche pariente,” Theo curses in Spanish. And now I’m fucking related to him.

Yes, you are, Theo Roth. And we’re going to use you.

The public needs to know that Alexander and his second wife were never arrested. They should know his family wasn’t marked as traitors and hunted down like mine and so many others. They should be made aware that Roths, according to their own governor, are above the law. Roth is the law, with enough power to bury a monstrous scandal in its infancy.

Well, I’ve dug it up, Governor. The old skeletons in your closet are sitting right in front of me.

“Every day I regret my decision to leave Halton behind, but it was my only choice,” Alexander continues forcefully. “It was my only choice,” he repeats, still convincing himself.

The parents always pick the firstborn. Rayla told me that. They never choose to keep the second child. A nasty jealousy surges through me as I watch Theo, the chosen second-born, sitting on his bed, in his room, living his own life.

I smother the impulse to feel sorry for myself. Don’t think of the past. Make the future.

“If I took Halton,” Alexander continues, “if I left with my father’s only next-in-line, Roth would have come after us. He wouldn’t have let me go. I didn’t know . . . How could I have known it would end up this way . . .”

“That Halton would end up dead?” Kano interrupts Alexander’s frantic appeals for absolution. “And the Common would come knocking?”

Alexander wraps his arms around Theo like a shield, pressing his lips against his son’s ear, forcing him to listen. “The twins and the Common killed your brother.” I hear the urgent whisper. “They’re here to hurt you, mijo.”

Theo lifts his head. He looks past his father, toward me. “Is that why you’re here?” he asks. “To hurt me?” He doesn’t seem afraid.

“We’re here to take you to Dallas,” I tell him bluntly. “Your existence—”

“No!” Alexander shouts, rounding on me.

Ciro steps forward, blocking Alexander’s path. He flicks back his impossibly dry locks, wearing the confident smile of a closer. “Alexander—is it all right if I call you by your birth name?” He places a soothing hand on Alexander’s shoulder. “Of course we would like it to be your decision to join us—”

“Never! We will never—”

“Let Mira speak!” Theo shouts at the top of his lungs, a voice like thunder, shocking the room into silence. He never takes his eyes from mine. There’s an electricity there, a wayward current that seeks to connect us.

No, he’s nothing like me.

He’s a Roth.

“Your existence,” I resume, trying to regain my momentum, “is our ultimate proof. Your grandfather manipulated and deceived the public, coerced them to believe the lie that he did not murder my father. That he did not have his own grandson killed by his agent.”

I throw up my hand, stopping Alexander from his tiresome protests. “I saw both with my own eyes, yet half the country doesn’t believe it. But with you . . . ,” I press, looking at Theo, meeting his open stare, “. . . if they see you live and in person, Governor Roth will have nothing to stand behind. Those still loyal to him will be forced to see their leader is a deceiver. An unpardonable fraud that must be brought down.”

“We’re not going anywhere with you,” Alexander asserts.

“You don’t have to go,” Theo says, looking at his father for the first time. “But I am.”

“Wonderful, now that we have that settled . . .” Ciro swoops in before Alexander can launch into another blowup. “We will be leaving directly.”