There was a long silence, the two men holding each other’s gaze, neither one wanting to say the words.

Finally, Mateo stirred. ‘You’re saying you believe that soldier was my father?’

Nathan nodded. ‘I’m afraid I do.’

Charlotte stared into the distance, trying to run the images in a loop through her head – Carlos Mendoza, intent on revenge, had found his target, not knowing he was killing his own sister’s husband. No wonder Marina had hated him; enough hatred to last a lifetime.

‘Dear God,’ Mateo murmured, sitting back in his chair and looking ashen, as the helicopter headed straight for the lush estate, an oasis in the arid sierra. ‘What are we doing?’

He was carried off on a stretcher, a team of white-suited orderlies met by his domestic team and handing over notes, medical kits and bags.

Charlotte and Nathan stayed back, well clear of the down-draught and watching as Mateo ran in a half-crouch towards his father, his jacket splaying out in the wind. They saw him reach forward and clasp the old man’s hand, leaning down to kiss his forehead as the medics carried him over the grass. Behind, Mateo’s wife climbed down from the helicopter and hurried to catch up with them, trying with one hand to stop her long dark hair from flying everywhere.

The team hastened into the house – efficient, deft, silent, no commands needed, doors being held open automatically, everything prepared.

Gone again.

‘Oh.’ Charlotte sighed at the sheer speed of it, feeling somehow disappointed. All they had seen of him had been a shiny head and that thin, pale arm extending from the covers, holding Mateo’s hand.

‘Well, that’s that then. The client’s got what he needed,’ Nathan said flatly, his words a gross understatement to the scale of the tragedy they had just unearthed. He turned and moved off. ‘I can pack and get out of here.’

‘Back to your family,’ Charlotte called after him, a cutting edge in her voice, as he walked off without even glancing at her. She was perfectly aware of the scale of her betrayal, her personal shortcomings – perhaps everything he’d said last night had been true but where was his remorse? Why was he so determined to heap all the guilt onto her? She saw him falter, move as if to turn back and cut her down again, but instead – worse – he carried onwards, disappearing into the house too. Done.

She stared into the void he left behind. She wanted to scream at his back, claw at his skin. Make him react. Make him be sorry. But he wasn’t. He’d done what he’d come to do and now he was leaving without a backward glance. He was packing right now. He’d be gone in the hour . . . It was done. Over. Finally, this was their ending.

Heart pounding, panic flooding her, she grabbed her phone and pressed redial, trying the number again. Forget the hotel room in Madrid, that kiss in the bullring, the way her skin prickled under his every gaze, the flip in her stomach every time he walked into the room . . . She wasn’t Carlos Mendoza. She knew it was happiness that was the best revenge.