Chapter 6 #2
“There’s this quote. Something you said in an interview years ago.
You were young, and you probably don’t even remember saying it…
Could you write it down for me? In your handwriting?
” I said, realizing I did sound crazy. “Forget it. Forget I said anything. That was stupid. Let’s go back to the compensation talk—”
“Miley.”
I stopped.
“It’s fine.” He tilted his head. “Tell me the quote.”
I gulped and looked at him. “You don’t have to earn the right to exist. You just do.”
Christopher went still. He looked at me like I’d said something in a language he thought only he spoke. His lips parted, and he stared at me for what felt like forever.
“Where did you hear that?” His voice came out stripped back, nothing like before.
“An interview. Late night.” I swallowed. “It stuck with me.”
He held my gaze for another second. Then he looked away, toward the dining room entrance, and signaled to a staff member. He asked for a pen and paper. The man came back with a sheet of cream stock and a pen.
Christopher picked it up and started writing. I watched his hand move across the paper.
He slid the paper across the table.
His handwriting was bold and slightly slanted and he’d written it exactly right.
You don’t have to earn the right to exist. You just do.
I picked it up. My fingers were shaking, which I hated, because I didn’t want to be the girl who cried in front of Christopher Vale twice.
“Thank you,” I said. It came out breathy.
“You’re welcome,” he said quietly.
I folded the paper along the center, and slid it into my bag where it pressed against my hip like a second pulse.
The interview happened three days later.
The reporter was a woman named Claire Devereaux from one of the major entertainment networks.
She’d been running pieces about the incident for two weeks, each one more sympathetic to me and more damaging to Christopher, and the narrative she’d built was compelling: powerful celebrity ruins hardworking small-business owner and walks away without consequences.
It made great television. It also wasn’t true.
We sat across from each other in a studio that smelled like hairspray. The lights were bright and the cameras were close. I was wearing a blouse Trisha had sent to my house. Courtesy of Christopher Vale.
Claire started gentle. Background questions. How long I’d been cooking. What Sazón meant to me. She was good. Warm enough to make you forget the cameras, sharp enough to steer you where she wanted you to go.
Then she pivoted.
“Miley, many people have expressed outrage on your behalf. Do you blame Christopher Vale for what happened to your restaurant?”
“No.” I said it without hesitating because it was the truth. “The allergy communication was a gap. Not malice. Christopher reached out personally to make things right, and he’s been nothing but kind and accountable.”
Claire tilted her head. “Some would say that’s a very generous interpretation, given that your livelihood was destroyed.”
“Some people weren’t in the room.” I kept my voice steady. “I was. I saw what happened. And I’m telling you it wasn’t intentional.”
She tried a different angle. “Can you tell us about the compensation? There are rumors that Mr. Vale offered a significant financial settlement. Can you confirm that?”
She leaned forward when she asked. Hungry. This was what she wanted, a dollar amount, a scandal, something she could turn into a headline that would fuel another week of coverage.
“Christopher offered me anything I wanted,” I said.
Claire’s eyes lit up. She waited.
I didn’t continue.
She blinked. “That’s… that’s all?”
“That’s all.”
She tried to recover. Asked follow-up questions. Pushed on the financial angle from different directions. I held my ground because the truth was simple and simple things are hard to twist.
And honestly? I was starting to get annoyed.
Sitting in that chair, watching Claire try to spin Christopher into a monster, something protective rose in me that I hadn’t expected.
This was the man whose words had saved my life.
He had flaws, probably, everyone did, but the version Claire was constructing wasn’t him.
It was a character she was writing for ratings, and I wasn’t going to help her cast him.
She’s trying to taint my man, I thought.
Then I caught myself.
My man? Where did that come from? Who said that?
Nobody said that. I did not say that. That thought did not belong to me and I was evicting it immediately.
“Is there anything else you’d like to say?” Claire asked, wrapping up.
“Just that Christopher Vale is one of the kindest people I’ve met,” I said. “And I say that as someone who had every reason to be angry. He didn’t owe me anything. He chose to do the right thing. That should be the story.”
Claire smiled politely. The cameras stopped. She shook my hand and said the segment would air next week. I smiled back and walked out of the studio on legs that felt like they’d been holding me up for three days straight.
Trisha was waiting in the hallway. She was leaning against the wall, scrolling her phone, wearing a blazer over a tee that read “PROFESSIONAL OVERTHINKER” in small block letters. She looked up when I emerged and gave me an approving nod.
“Nailed it,” she said, giving me a thumbs-up as she fell into step beside me. “Speaking of Mr. Vale, he wanted me to pass along his thanks for doing this.”
“It was my pleasure,” I said as we walked toward the exit.
“So,” she said, in a tone I was learning to recognize as her preamble to something significant. “Mr. Vale has a proposition.”
“Another one?”
“Different kind. Less dramatic. Probably.” She stopped walking and turned to face me.
“Your restaurant’s going to take a while to rebuild.
Weeks, maybe months. In the meantime, he’d like to offer you a position.
Temporary. A job to keep you working and earning while Sazón gets back on its feet. ” She paused. “If you’re willing.”
I stared at her. “A job doing what?”
“His grandmother needs a chef and he thinks you’d be ideal, the pay is good, and it comes with zero strings. You say no, nothing changes. The compensation still happens. The public statement still goes out. This is separate.”
“Why would he do that?”
Trisha looked at me with an expression that was half amused and half something else, something she covered quickly with her usual brisk energy. “Because he’s trying to be a decent human being, and frankly, he could use the practice. Don’t tell him I said that.”
She pulled a card from her blazer pocket and held it out to me. I took it. On it was a phone number, handwritten, no name.
“Christopher’s private line,” she smirked. “In case you need anything. And I mean anything. He doesn’t give this out, so don’t sell it on the internet or I’ll have to kill you, and I like you too much for that. You can learn more about this job he’s offering.”
She winked, waved, and walked out of the studio like a woman who had seventeen other things to handle before dinner.
I stood in the hallway holding the card. A phone number. Christopher Vale’s private, personal phone number, written on a card, in my hand.
I had Christopher Vale’s private line.
Me. Miley Torres.
I had his number.
I looked at the card again. Then I looked at the hallway Trisha had disappeared down. Then I looked at the card again.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out with my free hand. A text from Anna.
ANNA
How did it go???
I stared at my phone. Then at the card. Then at my phone.
I typed back.
MILEY
I think my life just got very complicated.
Anna’s response was immediate.
ANNA
Oh no. What happened?
I looked at the card one more time. Christopher Vale’s handwriting. His private number. The memory of his lips on my knuckles and his voice saying he was in my favor and his cologne that smelled like bad decisions I was probably going to make.
MILEY
I’ll explain everything later when we meet.
I put my phone back in my pocket and looked ahead. Things were going to take a very different turn.
Torres sisters never sink. But I think this one’s about to swim in very deep water.