“She’s alive,” I say, far too hastily. But the alternative is not something I am willing to consider just yet. “If they were just going to kill her, they would have dumped her body like the others.”

Ana draws in a shaky breath. I can see it on her face as plain as day. She wants to believe me. She doesn’t. But oh, how she wants to.

“We’ll find her.” There is more confidence in my voice now. This, I can swear to. Alive or dead, we will find her.

Ana nods as if she hears the words I do not say.

“And the first place we need to look,” I say, “is the magistrate’s villa.”

We wait for night to fall before we make our move. The darkness will provide excellent cover for sneaking into a place we’re not meant to be.

Magdalena helpfully draws baths for us when we get back to the villa. She scrubs the jail grime from my hair with nary a grimace.

“What did my father say about us being gone?” I ask as she works at a particularly stubborn bit of I-don’t-even-want-to-contemplate-what on my hands.

“He didn’t even notice,” she says, shaking her head. “He’s taken to his rooms with a fit of gout.”

“How bad is it?”

She purses her lips. “I think it’s less the gout than it is his heart. It’s broken, my lady.”

I bite my bottom lip hard enough for it to hurt. “Yeah. Mine too.”

We fall silent as we prepare for the night’s activity. Soft, quiet boots. Dark breeches and coats to make sure we don’t draw attention to ourselves. And, of course, our weapons. I sincerely hope we do not need them. Inciting violence on a government official’s property is never a good thing.

My father does not emerge even once.

Soon enough, night falls and we are gone, Rocinante’s and Tornado’s hooves the only sound to pierce the still dark.

Magistrate de la Vega is no stranger to me. The man is a frequent visitor to my father’s estate, especially fond of popping by when word spreads of a new shipment of art arriving. His expensive tastes are known far and wide, much to the detriment of his financial situation. He has a list of creditors a mile long, but he somehow manages to live a lifestyle considered extravagant even amongst the aristocracy which, honestly, is saying something.

From the outside, his villa looks like any other. Marble fountains pepper the property, each one more erotically charged than the last. They look more lurid by moonlight somehow, their forms outlined as if in silver. There is a grouping of figures at the center of the gardens contorted into an elaborate tangle of limbs that I’m not certain is even physically possible.

Beside me, Ana whispers, “Money can’t buy taste, can it?”