As soon as he got to the hospital parking lot, Seb parked. I jumped out, and I followed Seb into the right entrance. I hadn’t been in Ecuador by myself, and I was worried that I’d walk down the wrong hallway. Seb waved at the nearby staff, confidently walking towards wherever they had my dad.

  When I saw him in that hospital bed, I almost cried. Dad was really strong. I was used to him wearing bespoke business suits to work and polo shirts with khaki pants to golf and hang out at home. Now, he was wearing a hospital gown.

  “There’s Selena,” he said, with a smile on his face. I threw myself into my dad’s arms.

  “Dad, I thought you might be dead.” I didn’t want to let go of him.

  “It takes more than Ximena wanted to dole out to kill your old man.” He let go of me, so I slipped away from the bed. I sat in one of the chairs for visitors. I noticed that my dad had a juice box. He had clearly eaten breakfast. If he could keep food down, then I was sure he was on the mend.

  “Why did she kidnap you in the first place?” Charlie had his arms crossed. I guessed that he and my dad weren’t the hugging type, although Charlie had gone into the cloud forest to help rescue him.

  “Wrong place, wrong time,” my dad said. “Ximena thought that I had more influence that I really do. I just sell shovels. Ofelia Perez is the real face of the petroleum startup that wants to do sustainable oil extraction in Ecuador.”

  I kept my mouth shut. Dad and Charlie were too humble about what they did. They didn’t bother to pursue owning the rights to oilfields all over the world, but they could procure just about all of the equipment that you needed to extract and refine oil. Black gold had paid for Kayla and me to grow up in Los Angeles.

  “Are the police going to arrest Ximena?” I asked my dad.

  The men in the room met each other’s eyes. “It’s not like that in Ecuador,” my dad said slowly. “As soon as the police heard her name, they left my hospital room. They have photographs of the bruises and lacerations. They don’t want to do anything in this situation.”

  “Aren’t they obligated to?” I asked.

  “Not in Ecuador.” Charlie made a motion with his hand to Seb, who walked out of the room.

  “Listen, sweetie, one of our employees made a mistake in a web cafe.”

  “Really?” I asked.

  “Yeah, not one of our personal assistants, but someone we had hired to train up as an executive here. We paid for her to access a web cafe for some social time. When she was sitting down in a chair with her backpack, someone came into the web cafe and took the backpack.”

  “Oh no! Were the police able to get it back?”

  “No, even though the owner provided the footage to the police and the backpack was distinctive. She didn’t lose much, but it kept us all on our toes. We don’t bring anything into Ecuador that we aren’t willing to have stolen. Don’t even get me started on the nationalization of the oil industry.”

  “You never told me that story.”

  “You were never supposed to be here.”

  Charlie’s wrist buzzed. “It’s Seb. He’s doing a little more digging. I’ll go with him.” Charlie walked out of the room, leaving me alone with my dad.

  I didn’t think that Charlie would be safe, so I wanted to protest. I didn’t have any basis to do so, so I didn’t. Instead, I went to the bed and squeezed my dad’s hand. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”

  “You shouldn’t have come. You’re supposed to be safe at school.”

  “I can watch lectures on my laptop.”

  “Back in my day, we had to go to physical classrooms.”

  “You didn’t go to school after the pandemic, Dad.”

  He sighed. “It’s making me reconsider having your aunt raise you in Los Angeles all those years. I could’ve spent more time with you, instead of nearly dying in Ecuador.”

  I didn’t want my dad to die on another continent. “Is it even possible for you to stay in one place in the United States?”

  “As you know, I keep my tax home in South Dakota.”

  When Dad and Charlie had set up their partnership, they did it in a state where the income tax wasn’t prohibitive. Despite Kayla and I living in Los Angeles, we were living with guardians, not our fathers. Both of them grumbled about the business regulations in California. South Dakota had really loose requirements, which was why our dads kept their home addresses in South Dakota. I couldn’t remember if my dad had bought a house there or not. I thought so, but he didn’t talk to me about the details.

  “I’m glad that you’re here,” he told me. “Even if you should be safe in San Diego.”

  I didn’t say a word about the dangers of San Diego. If he wanted to think that I was perfectly safe at all times in the United States, he could go on thinking that.

  “Kayla probably would have done the same thing if Charlie was in danger.”

  “Kayla isn’t you.”

  “No, she was raised by her grandmother, not her aunt. Her grandmother had old-fashioned values. Do you think Annemarie would be proud of her?” I wanted my dad to talk about Charlie’s first wife.

  “I think so. Annemarie loved Kayla so much. I know that Annemarie would’ve raised her brows about any child of hers getting married and pregnant at nineteen, but they’re happy together. Brandon Adams is a good guy. He watched Charlie’s back during some stuff recently.”

  I was glad that Dad thought Annemarie would’ve accepted Kayla’s relationship with Brandon, since I had lost my v-card to Charlie. “Oh, what?”

  “Nothing you need to concern yourself with.” Dad’s face was somewhat pale. I was worried that I had overexerted him.

  “Are you okay?” I meant to take over the company one day, which I couldn’t do if Dad kept important stuff away from me. I had to pick my battles. Here, sitting in this hospital room, I was just grateful that my dad was alive. The two of them could sell off their oil equipment business if they wanted and go back to living in the United States full-time with Kayla and me.

  I wanted Charlie to come back to the United States, even if it meant I had to transfer to South Dakota. I didn’t know if I could ever measure up to his first wife, but I could try. It would be weird to become Kayla’s stepmom, but I was really getting ahead of myself. Charlie hadn’t been intimate with me this morning. For all I knew, our paths would never cross again once we got everyone back to the United States. While I brooded, Dad fell asleep.

  Charlie came back to the hospital room. Somebody had come in with food for my father and me. Since I’d only had a banana for breakfast, I had been grateful for the Ecuadorian food that she had given us. It was just chicken breast and beans, but it filled me up.

  “Have you eaten?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he told me. “Seb made sure of it. He managed to find a few more men involved in David’s kidnapping, but they’re not going to turn on Ximena. There’s no proof whatsoever to implicate her, and we’re about to cause an international incident. The embassy wants us to get out of the country as soon as David is stable enough to move.”

  “I’ll be able to heal better when I get some sleep.”

  There was some unspoken communication between my dad and Charlie. I felt like an outsider. I trailed behind Charlie, who brought me into a car that he was driving. He didn’t speak to me for the entire trip. When we got to the hotel, I saw that it was the original one we had been in. We weren’t sticking close to the hospital where Dad was staying. We’d have a large suite with separate bedrooms.

  “Do you need dinner?” Charlie asked me.

  “No,” I told him.

  “Great. I’ll see you tomorrow morning to take you back to David.”

  He was acting like my dad had to babysit me. I could feel tears of hurt starting to well in my eyes, so I went into my room and closed the door. I was crying quietly. Charlie had made it very clear we weren’t having a repeat of last night.

  Once we went back to the United States, I would go back to barely seeing Charlie, the way it had always been. I had fallen for a man who didn’t have room in his heart to love me back. I felt like I had been struck by Cupid’s arrow in one of the bad Greco-Roman myths. If I stayed lovelorn like this, I’d ruin my chances of finding a husband in college. I was willing to change my plans for him, but he didn’t have any interest in me at all.

  There was no way that I could pursue him all over the world. Dad and I had discussed me working in the company, but somewhat anonymously. Charlie wouldn’t want me trailing along behind him. He had made some comments about a businessman he knew, Lincoln, who had gotten married to Camilla, who got pregnant very easily. I knew that it could look bad for Charlie if he had a wife who was only nineteen.

  I swallowed my pride and wiped my tears. If I only got one night with Charlie, that was that.

  WARNING NOTE

  Charlie

  MORE THAN EIGHT WEEKS LATER

  “Everything will go ahead as planned,” Ofelia said in her warm contralto voice. She had a slight accent, but she had spent part of her childhood in Illinois, so she spoke fluent English. “We have come too far to stop now. We have so much invested, and people are counting on us. We bid for the rights, and we cannot possibly let our investors down.”

  She was far more concerned with the return on investment than I was, since I was just a vendor in the deal. I still wanted to keep a good reputation. She was talking now about the timeline. I knew that my assistant would keep the notes of this meeting so I could review them. She was good at keeping milestones on my calendar and following up with different stakeholders at key times. I needed to give her a raise. I had been driven over the past few weeks to try to protect the company the best that I could. I felt like it would never be enough. The world was too uncertain of a place, and Ecuador wasn’t a fun operating environment. The food was good, and the people were welcoming. However, the business environment was very challenging. Ofelia wrapped up the meeting, and everybody logged off. I got out of my chair and stretched. I had been sitting for too long. I had read something about cardiovascular health requiring you to walk around for a few minutes an hour, and I definitely wasn’t getting enough activity.

  I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I locked my computer screen and got out of my office. My assistant looked at me inquisitively, but I shook my head. I didn’t have any other meetings today, so I went downstairs to get a breath of fresh air and drink a cup of coffee. It would do me good to stretch my legs and have a change of scenery.

  I went to the coffee shop that was a little further away from my office. They didn’t know me there. They fumbled through my order, which was just brewed coffee with a splash of almond milk. I watched them make it. Then, I sat in a corner and thought about my morning.

  Ofelia Perez had not been frightened by Ximena Jivaro capturing and torturing David. For one thing, she was highly connected herself in Ecuador, so she wasn’t afraid of being kidnapped. She had ties to the police commissioner. As foreigners, we didn’t have the same network inside of the country, which was a big part of why we just sold oil equipment. Owning rights inside of any country besides America was a legal nightmare.

  Ofelia didn’t disclose a lot of information about Ximena, just that she was somewhat of a recluse. She was a spider with a far-reaching web. Again, Ofelia was not afraid of what Ximena would do under pressure. Ofelia lived in the countryside, nearer to the coast than Quito. She kept security guards everywhere.

  I had security trail me wherever I went, but I told them to stay unobtrusive. I basically got to live my life as a boring office worker, even though I might have built up the company into a valuation that was in the millions.

  My phone buzzed, and I looked at it.

  STOP NOW. YOU’LL HAVE WORSE LUCK THAN YOUR PARTNER.

  The message on my screen was from an unidentified number. Since my phone was loaded with corporate spyware used in all of our equipment, I forwarded it to Seb. Getting the warning made me more determined to bring down Ximena, deliver on our contract with Ofelia, and protect David. I didn’t want to think right now about what protecting Selena meant to me.

  Because Kayla was pregnant, I rented a home. I went back to it at the conclusion of my workday, knowing that I had to fly out soon.

  The next morning, I had packed my bags and was ready to leave for a commercial flight to Ecuador. My security team was sending someone to drive me to the airport. Before I left, I heard a knock on the door.

  I frowned, wondering who would be up at this hour. When I opened the door, it was Selena. She was crying, so I let her in. If I had to miss my flight, so be it.

  BABY REVEAL

  Selena

  My hands were shaking. I wiped away some of my tears, but they kept coming.

  “What’s wrong?” Charlie asked, his tone gentle.

  “I have to talk to you.”

  I was in Charlie’s home now, and I sank into his comfortable couch. I had gone back to San Diego after our trip to Ecuador, because Dad wanted me to resume my normal life. My grades had suffered from the bad shock I’d had. I didn’t know if I’d study abroad, now that I had traveled to a country where it wasn’t all roses. I’d been to Paris plenty of times in my life, but Paris was used to American tourists and I had been studying French for a while.

  At first, I thought my loss of appetite after the trip was because of the emotional upheaval. First, my dad had gone missing. Second, I had lost my v-card to his business partner, who had gone radio silent. Third, my dad pretty much just hit the reset button and pretended that everything was going back to normal. It wasn’t, and I wasn’t. There was a certain amount of innocence I didn’t understand that I’d had until it was stripped away by my dad’s kidnapping in Latin America.

  Charlie looked me up and down. “Have you lost weight?” There was a note of concern in his voice.

  “I’ve had a hard time eating.”

  “Have you seen or spoken to a therapist about your father being kidnapped?”

  “Not yet.” I didn’t know if I’d feel comfortable doing so. I felt like a therapist would think I was crazy if I just jabbered about my dad being kidnapped and tortured in Ecuador. I was fairly private. In Los Angeles, the mean girls at school would pretend to be nice to dig up dirt on you.

  “What else is going on? Is school going well?”

  “My grades are a little bit down.”

  Charlie was frowning at me. “It sounds like you need help.”

  He watched as I reached into my purse. “I’m pregnant.”

  His jaw dropped. I pulled out the positive pregnancy test that I had taken earlier this week. I had been a total mess, worrying about whether I should tell Charlie or not. My dad would freak out, but that was the least of my problems. My aunt would always support me, no matter what. I knew that I’d be able to provide for my child.

  My worst fear was that Charlie would treat my kid the same way that he treated Kayla. Both Kayla and I knew that our dads loved us, but they were on the road most of the time. I really wanted my baby to have a closer connection to his or her father; Charlie might not have been my first pick if I had thought about it.

  “Have you had it confirmed by a doctor?” Charlie asked.

  “Yes, I went to the health center. They drew my blood.” I had the lab results, so I handed those to him. He scanned them and said, “I’m happy to set up a trust fund and monthly stipend to take care of the baby. Of course I’ll take care of you and the child.”

  I felt like he had hit me in the center of my chest. Was this what heartbreak felt like? Charlie was clearly planning not to be involved in his second child’s life.

  “Are you going to be the same kind of father to this baby as you were to Kayla? Because if so, you don’t need to be part of the baby’s life.”

  I could see the hurt spreading on Charlie’s face. I felt like an utter tool for saying something like that to the father of my child, but I was really worried about what the future had in store for me and my child. My dad had made it clear with the mentions of Kayla being pregnant now that he was okay with Brandon marrying her. I was just concerned that my dad wouldn’t feel the same way about his daughter being pregnant. I didn’t know if I would tell my dad who the father even was.

  I left Charlie’s home, still crying.

  Charlie called out my name, but I still kept walking. In the front, there was a car. The door opened. Before I could react, two men picked me off of the ground and brought me into the van. Someone put a smelly rag over my face, and I was soon unconscious.

  REVEALED

  Charlie

  I saw the car taking Selena away. After I picked up my cell phone, I called Seb to tell him that a car had just sped away, with Selena inside. He promised to figure out how Ximena had set up an abduction in another country. None of us had really expected Ximena to act while we were in Los Angeles. How could she know that Selena wasn’t in San Diego and would be at my home?

  Seb was going to take point on a task force. I felt like there was weight on my shoulders as I dialed my business partner. I had to tell him the bad news.

  “Hello? Is everything okay?” David sounded bemused.

  He and I normally corresponded by email, which let us send links to the business documents we kept in our secure cloud storage. On the occasions that we spoke directly to each other, we mostly spoke during web conferences with other people. I very rarely called him for one-on-one conversations. He knew something was wrong.

  I didn’t know what to say to him, so I kept it simple. “Selena has been abducted.”

  I heard silence from the other end of the line.

  “Why? Where? How?” David sounded a little out of breath, as if he had been gut punched. I knew that I’d been unhappy when Kayla had been abducted. If I had known that my daughter was pregnant at the time, my panic level would have probably risen. As a military veteran, not very much actually scared me, but the idea of Kayla or Selena being hurt certainly did. I pushed away the thought that Selena was family.