The office was lavishly decorated with a plush red carpet, a cherry wood desk, and expensive-looking knickknacks strewn about. There were no photos or anything that I thought could be personal, just a large display of wealth. It showed the priorities of the man who sat behind the expensive desk watching me, even as I tried to get a read on him from what I was seeing.

He was a man who valued wealth, that much was obvious from the office, the expensive desk, and the lavish leather chair that he sat in. He wore a tailored white suit, was clean-shaven, and there was quite a bit of gray in his receding hair that he didn’t seem vain enough to try to cover up. He liked making money and showing it off, but he likely didn’t have a large ego. I could work with this, but I would need to be careful. If he thought that there was money to be made by stabbing me in the back, he would likely do so with no hesitation.

For a long moment, we both engaged in a silent staring contest as we tried to get a read on each other. Aguila was the first to break, plastering an almost-convincing smile on his face as he gestured for me to take a seat in one of the pair of plush hunter-green armchairs across the desk from him. His English was good when he finally spoke and I could barely place an accent; I would say that he was probably bilingual. “Ah, Miss Li, it is a pleasure to meet you. Maria said that you were lovely, but I see now that the word hardly does you justice. I was most curious when I received your request for a meeting. May I ask how you heard about my services?”

I sat down in the offered chair as I formulated a response and tried to stick to the role that I was playing. I ignored his compliments and got right on to business. “Friends in low places, Señor Aguila. I found the local black market to be disappointing, so I asked around. Your name came up as someone who might have what I’m looking for.”

“Ah yes, and what is it that you are looking for exactly? I offer a wide variety of services, you see,” he inquired as he leaned back in his seat with a pensive expression.

For an arms merchant, he seemed very reluctant to peddle his wares. I would have thought that he was planted by the police or some government agency if it wasn’t for the fact that neither his body language nor his scent indicated deception. I could hear that his heart was racing a little though, despite his outward calmness, and it took a moment for me to realize why. He wasn’t some kind of plant, he was worried that I might be.

To be fair, I had contacted him abruptly using code phrases that I had gotten from Sandro, and since we had never done business before that could be seen as suspect. I needed to figure out how to allay his suspicions without doing something to further them. I considered being direct, but if I just came right out and said that I wanted to buy weapons, then he would probably think that I was trying to get him to admit to being an illegal arms merchant. Fuck it, time to go all in.

I let out an exasperated sigh and told him in a no-nonsense tone, “Look, I’m not here to bust you or anything, I’m here for a simple business transaction. I give you money, and you provide me with the weapons on my list or reasonable alternatives. If I was wearing a wire, a weapon, or a badge, that goon of yours would have found them when he felt me up. Believe me, he was thorough. I need a shower after that. This time, I allowed it as the price of doing business with you. If it happens again, I kill him, and if you think that I need weapons for that then you would be sorely mistaken.”

To my surprise, my candidness and the threats of physical violence and death to Enrique caused him to relax and bark out a laugh. Just like that, the tension in the room seemed to evaporate. “I will be sure to remember that for our next meeting, Miss Li. You mentioned a list?”

“See that you do,” I replied with a cool and casual calmness as I extracted a folded slip of paper from my purse and slid it across the desk toward the arms merchant. That’s my wish list. If you can get me everything on there, or some good quality alternatives, I would be grateful.”

“How grateful?” he asked with a slight smile as he looked me over again.

“Not that grateful,” I immediately countered. “Even if I were interested in men, I doubt that my fiancée would approve.”

“You can’t blame a man for trying,” he replied, still smiling as he shrugged it off. Then he carefully unfolded the paper and looked over the list thoughtfully for a moment. “I can get you most of this easily enough, but I might have to make some substitutions for the heavy artillery. I could have it ready to go in two days, but that’s a lot of weapons for one person. What do you plan on doing with all of that?”

“Nothing that will hurt your bottom line, I assure you. Most of it is for home defense. My employers have enemies, and we would rather be prepared in case they decide to come calling while we’re here. I hope that we will finish our business and be out of Cuba before that happens, but an unprepared mercenary is a dead mercenary, and I rather like living,” I explained calmly.

Thankfully, Aguila was professional enough not to ask about my ‘employers’ or their business in Cuba. Instead, he nodded as he agreed, “I am in favor of preparation, especially when it brings me business like yours, Miss Li. Now, let us discuss price and payment…”

We haggled for over fifteen minutes. My parents had told me what would be fair prices for what we needed, and I was able to save a little by buying many of them by the case instead of individually. I would rather have too many weapons than not enough, especially since we were buying more than one of each anyway. Was I going to turn down case of four rocket-propelled grenade launchers with grenades because we only wanted two? No, I was not. Especially not when we could afford it at the moment.

Once we were finished haggling and deciding on numbers and overall price, Señor Aguila snatched up a sticky note from inside a drawer in his desk and scribbled down something. “Be there at the appointed time, and bring the payment in American dollars,” he told me as he slipped the sticky note across the desk toward me.

“I’ll be there,” I replied as I glanced at the note. It was little more than an address, a date, and a time. Ten minutes before midnight, less than forty-eight hours from now. I allowed myself to relax just a little once I had left the office and the club and returned to my borrowed car. On the one hand, I was relieved that the meeting had gone somewhat well, and we would be getting the weapons relatively soon. On the other hand, a lot could happen in two days, and I was going to be on edge until I knew that those weapons were functional and back at the villa to keep my family safe.

Only once I was safely back in the borrowed car and had made certain that nobody was watching me did I duck out of sight and change my features. I owed Sandro a favor, and he had wasted no time in collecting. Using the cheap burner phone in my purse, I called Sandro’s number. My encrypted phone, along with my car keys and other important items connected to my current identity had been sealed in the safe inside my hotel room since I didn’t want anything on me that could be traced to me or my family.

As soon as I heard his voice on the other end, I said, “The meeting is over, and I got what I needed. Now, what is the favor that you wanted in return? Is it something that needs to be done tonight? I’m getting kind of tired.”

“No, mi belleza,” he replied, careful not to use my name. “You see, there’s a party tomorrow night on a yacht, and I need a date, someone who could fit in with a bunch of wealthy Americans, and who can take care of herself if trouble comes up.”

Great. I knew that I shouldn’t have given him an open-ended favor like that, but he had come through for us in a pinch and he hadn’t thrown us under the bus. At least he wasn’t asking me to be a wheelman on a big job or something. “Tomorrow night? I do owe you a favor, I guess, but a party on some yacht? That doesn’t seem like it would be your kind of thing.”

“That’s why I need someone who looks like they belong there,” he replied. “I… appropriated a very special car for the host of the party and we’ve been working on it for a while to get it ready. He sent me a couple of invites to this party on his yacht so we can exchange the keys and payment there. I don’t trust him completely so I could use some insurance as well.”

“So, I’ll be acting as your date and your bodyguard then?” I clarified. There were worse favors that he could have asked. When he answered in the affirmative, I thought for a moment before telling him, “I would rather not have my current alias or my face connected to this, so I’ll be using a fake name and disguising my features a bit.”

“Sí, that’s probably a good idea. The invites don’t have names attached anyway, and it’s not like they’ll be checking IDs or anything. The party is mostly for his rich friends and other guests that he has personally invited.”

“Okay, send the details to my usual number and I’ll call you tomorrow to work out the specifics. I’m going to drop off this car where I found it and pick up my things so I can head home for the night,” I told him. I wasn’t lying about being tired. It had been a very long day and I was feeling it.

~ No, ~ Kara’s voice insisted in my mind. ~ I can feel how tired you are in your mind, Naiya. And you’ve been pushing your shifting ability hard lately. I’m your mate and an empath, so you’re not fooling me. You are not driving that long to get back here when you have a perfectly good hotel room to sleep in. You need rest, and the three of us can take care of Maddie and Nat. ~

~ But I want to stretch my fins and… ~ I began to object.

Her mental tone turned pleading as she sent all the love that she felt for me along our mental link. ~ Naiya, honey, please. I know that you want to be here with the others, and me, but you are being a big help by doing the things that nobody else can do right now. As long as you stay hydrated, sleeping in an air-conditioned room for one night in your base form shouldn’t do you any harm, and you can take a nice soak in the bath in the morning before driving back here. ~

I relented. There wasn’t much else I could do since I knew that as much as she too wanted me there to hold in her arms, she was suggesting this for my own good. ~ I… fine, I’ll get some rest here and come back in the morning. Not that I’ll likely have much time to spend with you tomorrow. I’m going to have to prepare for that party tomorrow night and figure out what to wear, and I can guarantee that Mom is going to want to spend most of the day teaching me all of the manners and stuff that I’ll need to know to blend in with those snobs on the boat. ~

~ Good. I’ll let the others know what is going on. Get some sleep, my love. I will see you in the morning, ~ my mate replied as she wrapped me in a mental embrace. I held on to that embrace for as long as I could before she finally released me with a stern, ~ Sleep now, my love. ~

Sleeping on a bed in my Naethari form was strange. I was used to sleeping in the water, and the lack of that familiar comfort made it difficult to fall into a restful sleep. I also had to get up a few times to rehydrate myself. I thought that I might have gotten the necessary six hours by the time I woke up at ten o’clock to check out. I wouldn’t say that I felt rested, but at least I didn’t feel exhausted and half asleep.

I was a bad girl and had fast food for breakfast after checking out, mostly because it was fast, cheap, and would allow me to order enough to fuel my Naethari appetite. I ate in the car and called Sandro, and then made one more stop before leaving Havana to return to the villa. That stop was a fancy dress shop where I went in with the altered appearance that I planned on using for the party that night.

I didn’t bother looking through the racks. I just approached the sales clerk and told her that I was going to a high society party that evening on an acquaintance’s yacht and that I wanted to look my best. I let her take the lead and soon I was loaded up with an evening gown and accessories that would flatter my figure and go well with my coloring for the evening.

I could have probably done that before the party, but I didn’t want to leave it to the last minute, and I figured that Mom was going to want to make sure that I was properly prepared for the evening before I left the villa to meet Sandro. I didn’t want to make another trip into the city, unless it was unavoidable, until then. Hell, I wouldn’t even be going to the party if I hadn’t promised Sandro a favor for putting me in contact with a reliable arms merchant. I wanted to be with the people that I cared about, not at some party for rich people.

It was lunchtime when I returned to the villa and Kieshala was currently watching over my sister and Natalie. After talking things over with Mom and Dad, they sent me to the poolroom with my lunch in hand. Kara and Jenny were both eating at the poolside and I joined them to eat before getting some time in the pool relaxing in my mate’s embrace while catching up with her and her sister.

I told them about how making contact with Señor Aguila had gone, and they told me about how Uncle Jack and Aunt Carmen were starting to teach both of them to use firearms whenever they weren’t watching over Maddie and Nat. We didn’t have many weapons or ammo to go around at the moment that weren’t specialized, like Maddie’s sniper rifle, but for now, they were being taught the basics using their adoptive parents’ personal handguns.

Mom and Dad let me have almost two hours of relaxation with them in the pool to recharge before Mom entered the poolroom. “Naiya, we need to go over some things if you’re going to be ready for tonight. We don’t have much time for me to teach you what you need to know before we have to get you ready.”

She was right. It was almost three o’clock and Sandro’s text said that the party would be starting at nine. That would only give me six hours to get ready for my role, get prettied up, and get to the party. That wasn’t even taking into account the travel time to get back into the city and navigate the traffic to get there on time. It was going to be a very long afternoon.