Chapter 17 - Gabriel
The bed is empty when I reach for her.
Not gone — I can hear her in the kitchen. The tap running, a cabinet clicking shut, the particular quality of someone making themselves at home in your space. I lie still for another minute, listening to her exist in my rectory, and try to remember the last time silence felt this inhabited.
Afternoon light cuts through the blinds in long amber bars across the sheet. Not dawn. Not the grey morning discipline I’ve run on for three years. The whole day has happened without us.
I find my jeans on the floor. Pull them on. Come to the doorway.
She’s at the counter in my shirt — nothing else, her hair loose and wild — frowning at the contents of my refrigerator with the expression of someone confronting a moral failing.
“You have eggs,” she says, without turning around. “And a heel of bread. And something at the back I’ve chosen not to investigate.”
“I eat at Alma’s mostly.”
“Past tense,” she says. She closes the refrigerator and turns to look at me across the kitchen.
We look at each other.
The strangeness of it, no crisis demanding action, just afternoon light and her in my shirt and time, sits between us.
Her finger finds the scar on my side, tracing the raised line. “You never said how you got this.”
“Childhood stupidity.” I catch her hand, bring it to my lips. “Marisol dared me to climb this wall behind our house. Said I was too scared.”
“Were you?”
“Terrified. Did it anyway. Fell off, caught a piece of rebar on the way down.”
She smiles. “So you’ve always been terrible at saying no to women.”
The joke lands softly.
She presses her face into my chest and breathes, and I hold her. Sometimes the answer to pain isn’t words. Just presence.
We’re quiet for a while.
The light moves across the kitchen floor, afternoon deepening toward gold. Real.
“What happens now?” she asks against my skin.
She’s not asking about breakfast. She’s asking about the collar in the church, the parish expecting Father Gabriel on Sunday, the life I built versus the life I’m lying in.
“I don’t know.”
“Is that okay? Not knowing?”
I think about it. Feel the weight of uncertainty, the terror of not having a plan.
“It’s terrifying,” I tell her. “But it’s honest. And I’ve been dishonest for too long. Terrifying and honest is an improvement.”
She lifts her head again. Studies my face. Then something happens that hasn’t happened in forever. I smile. Not the almost-smile I’ve been fighting at the food pantry, not the wry twist I allow sometimes. A real, full smile that cracks my face wide open.
She kisses me, quick and light. Then she turns back to the counter, already reaching for the eggs, comfortable in my space in a way that makes my chest tight with want and wonder and the bizarre realization that this is allowed now.
She hands me a mug. Our fingers touch on the ceramic, our old language, except now it’s not a substitute for contact. Now she can touch the mug and then my hand and then lean up to kiss my jaw because the distance is gone.
“I’ll scramble the eggs,” she says. “You can do the toast.”
“I can manage toast.”
“Can you though.”
The toast burns. Not slightly — charred through, a solid black brick, smoke curling from the toaster before the eggs are even done. “Shit.”
She laughs, pulling the toaster plug from the wall and dropping the evidence in the sink. “Every time.”
“The smoke detector’s about to…” she starts.
The shriek cuts through the kitchen. She’s on a chair, fanning it with a dish towel while I open windows, both of us laughing like idiots.
We eat the eggs standing at the counter, her hip pressed against mine.
The knot between my ribs, the one that’s been there so long I forgot it wasn’t supposed to be, finally loosens.
The late afternoon stretches like honey, golden and slow.
She commands the kitchen with the authority I use for parish logistics, turning my barren space into something that smells like home. Steam fogs the window as she stirs something complex on the stove. Cumin, definitely. Garlic. Something green and bright.
“Stop hovering,” she says without turning around. “Do your parish work.”
I retreat to the table, spreading out supply requisitions that should matter but don’t. How can I think about next week’s food pantry schedule when she’s right there, humming something low and rhythmic as she cooks? Her body sways slightly to whatever melody lives in her head.
“Tell me about growing up in Miami,” she says, tasting from the spoon, adjusting something. “Before everything got complicated.”
I lean back, abandoning the pretense of work. “My mother used to take us to the bay every Sunday after mass. Not the beach, this hidden spot she knew, where the mangroves made these natural pools.”
“Just you and Marisol?”
“Yep. She’d bring this massive picnic basket, way too much food. Said it was because we were growing kids. She’d laugh. She laughed a lot, before she got sick.”
Sera glances at me, reading something in my voice. “You miss her.”
“Every day. She always thought I was the good kid. I think that’s partly why I chose the seminary when my life went to hell, no pun intended. To be even better.”
She doesn’t offer empty comfort, just nods and keeps cooking.
She reaches for something on a high shelf, shirt riding up to show a strip of skin at her waist. I lose the thread of whatever I was thinking. She knows, catches my stare in the microwave’s reflection, smiles without turning.
“Twenty minutes to simmer,” she says, adjusting the flame. The way she moves, comfortable in my space, makes my chest tight with want.
I catch myself humming, the same tune she was humming, picked up without thought. When did that start? My throat making music instead of measured prayer. She notices, pauses with the spoon suspended, but doesn’t comment. Just smiles this small, private smile
that I file away with the one from earlier.
“What about you?” I ask. “Before everything got complicated. What were you going to be?”
She laughs, but it’s not bitter. “A chef. Can you believe that? I was saving for culinary school, working three jobs. Then I met…” She catches herself. “Then life took a different turn. Seemed easier than three jobs and a studio apartment with roaches.”
“Do you regret it?”
She considers, absently stirring the pot. “I regret what I let it turn me into. But meeting you? Being here? This only happens because of all that. So maybe regret’s the wrong word.”
The simplicity of it, the admission that our damage led us to each other, settles something in me. We’re not broken people despite our pasts. We’re whole people because of them.
She sets down the spoon, turns to face me. “We need to stop by the cottage later. I left my good shoes there. And my laptop.”
The drive to her cottage takes only minutes, but with each turn, the knot in my stomach tightens. When we pull into the gravel driveway, I know immediately. The cottage squats in the evening light looking wrong.
The front door hangs slightly open, not smashed, just ajar, like someone wants us to know they were here. Professional. Deliberate.
“Stay in the car,” I tell Sera.
She doesn’t. Of course she doesn’t.
The cottage has been tossed systematically. Kitchen cabinets opened, spices scattered.
“My laptop,” she manages. “It’s gone.”
The laptop with her research. Her notes on the vault code. How much did she have on there? How much do they know now?
The Gabriel from this morning, smiling, humming, burning oatmeal, evaporates.
What replaces him has been sleeping for a long time but wakes up fully functional.
I sweep the cottage systematically, checking for bugs, cameras, anything they might have left.
My body remembers the protocol: corners first, then surfaces, then anyplace with power outlets.
“Don’t touch anything else,” I tell her, pulling out my phone.
The number I dial comes from memory. All these years, and my fingers still know it.
“Logan.”
“It’s Gabriel.”
A pause. Then Logan’s voice, not surprised but sharper: “What’s changed?”
“The cottage where Sera was staying has been tossed. Professional entry. They wanted us to know. They took her laptop. They’re escalating.”
“Who are they?”
I glance at Seraphina. She hasn’t fully confided in me about exactly what trouble she’s in, so I hedge my bets.
“Professionals,” I tell him. “I need a security team here now.”
“Address?”
I give him the cottage location.
“Done. Gabriel, if they’re escalating like this…”
“I know. We’re coming to Miami.”
“Finally using your brain. I’ll have everything ready.”
I end the call, dial another number. This one hurts more to remember.
“Gunner.”
“It’s Gabriel Delgado. I need a pickup team and a secure transport. Homestead to Miami, two passengers, assume we’re being watched.”
Gunner doesn’t ask questions. Just: “Forty minutes.”
I make three more calls. Each one pulls me deeper back into the infrastructure I abandoned. Security protocols, planned routes, the machinery of the Delgado network coming online because the prince called home.
Sera watches me work the phone, sees the transformation happening in real time.
“We’re leaving,” I tell her when the calls are done. “Pack what you need from here. Five minutes.”
She doesn’t argue. She already moved the essentials to the rectory, toiletries and underwear, but she quickly goes about gathering the rest.
The drive back is silent, both of us scanning for tails, for watchers. Back at the rectory, I’m already moving before she’s through the door.
“We’re leaving for Miami. Now. Pack what you need.”
“You’re not asking.”
“Would it matter if I was?”
She studies me, and I see her recognize something. Not just the threat but the man responding to it. The one who’ll leave bodies before letting them touch her.
“No,” she says quietly. “Not with them escalating.”
She sets down the wrapped spoon carefully. “Your family…”