Chapter 24 - Gabriel
The kitchen is still dark when I set the recipe card on the counter, sunrise an hour away. The yellowed paper feels heavier than it should. Corners soft with age, handwriting that loops in the way of women who learned cursive when it mattered.
I've been holding this for days, waiting for the right moment.
Since before our fight on the kitchen floor, since before she told me about the vault.
I tracked it down through Delgado connections.
Called in favors from people who remember that generation of Cuban women who built Miami's kitchens.
Now I set it beside where her coffee will go.
No ceremony. No wrapping paper. Just placing it there like any other morning object, though my hands shake slightly as I position it.
The grease stain in the top corner catches the light.
Decades old, from a kitchen that doesn't exist anymore.
Abuela Rosa's handwriting. The original, from the restaurant where she worked briefly in the eighties. Before Julian. Before the isolation. Before Sera lost access to the woman who taught her that food was love.
I hear her footsteps on the stairs and turn to the coffee maker, busying myself with unnecessary adjustments. My shoulders are tight. This could be everything or it could be an overstep so massive she'll never forgive it.
"Morning," she says, voice still rough with sleep.
"Morning."
She moves to the counter, reaching for her mug, and stops. Her whole body goes still. I watch her pick up the card with the same care you'd use for old glass, afraid it might break.
"What is…" Her voice dies as she reads Rosa's cursive. I watch her trace the loops with one finger, following the faded blue ink. The recipe is for black beans. Simple, fundamental, the kind of thing you'd teach a granddaughter first.
"How did you…" She looks up at me, eyes wet. "This is her writing. This is actually her writing."
"The restaurant kept their old recipe cards filed. The owner remembered her." I keep my voice steady, matter-of-fact. "Said she was the best cook they ever had. Said she wrote everything down because she was training someone who never showed up."
Sera's hand goes to her mouth.
"You went looking for my grandmother's recipes," she says, not quite a question.
"You said you lost them. When Julian…" I stop. "You said cooking was how you stayed connected to her, and he took that away. I thought maybe I could get a piece back."
The recipe card whispers against the counter as she sets it down. She crosses the kitchen and her arms come around me, bringing the scent of sleep and vanilla shampoo. Her face presses warm against my chest and I feel her shoulders shake once, just once, before she pulls herself together.
"This is everything," she says against my shirt.
She pulls back to look at me, and there's something in her eyes I haven't seen before. Not desire, not gratitude. Recognition, maybe. Like she's seeing who I actually am when I'm not trying to be anything.
Her thumb brushes my jaw, the touch electric. "Thank you."
The recipe card stays on the counter while Sera cooks Rosa's black beans, the apartment filling with the scent of cumin. By the time I finally pick up the phone, the sun has shifted to afternoon angles, and my hand hovers over it for a full minute before I dial the first number.
Then a second.
Then a third.
Security, banking, aviation. Each conversation follows the same pattern: I identify myself, my voice drops to that commanding register, and people who haven't heard from me in years respond like I never left.
"Yes, Mr. Delgado."
"Right away, Mr. Delgado."
"Consider it done."
With each call, the Delgado heir emerges more fully.
The way I hold the phone changes. Not gripping but controlling, the same way I learned to hold everything when I was twenty and being groomed to run an empire.
My free hand doesn't fidget or tap. It rests still, controlled, the patience of someone who never had to hurry because the world waited for them.
Sera walks through while I'm on the fourth call, arranging ground transportation. She stops in the doorway, watching.
I am careful not to look away from her, not to compartmentalize, not to shut her out while I step into my father’s shoes. When I end the call, the silence stretches. My body still holds that posture. The natural authority that all those cold showers couldn't wash away.
She crosses to me, puts her hand on my arm. "Does it scare you? How easily it comes back?"
"Terrifies me." I look down at my hands. Steady, controlled, nothing like the trembling when I held Rosa's recipe. "I spent so long trying to forget this, and it takes less than a week to remember."
She presses closer, her body warm against mine, and I catch the scent of her skin. Vanilla and something musky that makes my cock stir.
"I need both versions,” she says. “The man who finds recipes and the one who commands empires. Especially if you're going to keep me safe tomorrow."
Her proximity makes it hard to think. The curve of her neck is right there, begging for my mouth. I want to press her against the wall, mark that skin, remind us both that whatever happens tomorrow, she's mine. But I force myself to stay still, to be the controlled version she needs right now.
And my will, when it comes to controlling myself around her, grows more compromised by the hour.
Sunday evening, Logan's office transforms into our war room as shadows lengthen, our family dinner switched out for a family mission briefing. The screens are up, data laid out in neat columns, every variable accounted for. Logan stands at the center like a conductor, while Gunner fills the doorway, Isa leans against the wall, and Sera sits forward in her chair, absorbing every detail. Only Adrian and the Siren are missing, since this doesn’t require their skills.
"The vault requires dual biometric," Logan says, highlighting a section on the screen. "Sera's thumbprint. And Reyes's retinal scan, which he'll provide thinking he's helping a widow access her husband's assets."
Gunner's "Simple" is practically poetry from him, but Logan's already pulling up another screen.
"On paper, yes. But we don't trust Reyes. He's either fully aligned with certain interested parties, or he's playing every side. Either way, he becomes a variable the moment they're inside that bank."
"So we control what we can," I say, and feel the room's attention shift to me. Authority threading through my voice, making decisions. "What are our contingency protocols?"
Logan nods, pulling up the operational roles. "I run remote coordination from here. Real-time comms with Sera, plus monitoring Reyes's digital footprint. If he contacts anyone during the operation, I'll know instantly."
"Gunner's our ground asset," I continue, the plan crystallizing. "In Manhattan, extraction-ready if anything goes sideways."
Gunner nods once, already running scenarios behind those pale eyes.
I turn to Isa, and the room holds its breath. She hasn't accepted Sera, hasn't warmed to her presence, but this operation needs her specific skills.
"Isa," I say directly, not asking Logan to assign it. "I need you on counter-surveillance. Monitor Reyes's communications for the next forty-eight hours. Calls, texts, patterns. If he's going to betray us, you'll see it coming."
The silence that follows is heavy.
Isa doesn’t look at the screen. She looks at Sera. A long, measured assessment, the kind she’d give a stranger who walked in off the street claiming to be family.
“No.”
The word lands like a blade on marble. Logan’s fingers pause on his keyboard. Gunner shifts his weight in the doorway.
“Isa—” I start.
“Why would I help some random woman access information that could bring down this family?” Her voice is flat, controlled, but the anger beneath it has edges.
She turns to face me fully. “She shows up out of nowhere, she’s been running a parallel investigation none of us knew about, she’s been lying to you for weeks, and now I’m supposed to spend forty-eight hours protecting her operation?
” She gestures toward Sera without looking at her.
“We don’t know what’s in that vault. Julian Voss’s insurance policy against the Delgados.
Against your father. Against you. And I’m supposed to help her open it? ”
The room is very still. She’s not wrong. That’s the part that lands hardest.
Sera speaks before I can. “You’re right.”
Isa’s eyes cut to her, surprised despite herself.
“You don’t know me,” Sera continues, voice steady. “And whatever’s in that vault might be exactly what you’re afraid of. But it’s also the only leverage keeping Cristian Markovic from killing everyone in this room. Including you.”
The two women hold each other’s gaze. Isa’s jaw works once, the only crack in her composure.
“I’m not asking you to trust me,” Sera says. “I’m asking you to protect them.” She nods toward Logan, toward the doorway where Gunner stood. “That’s what you do. That’s what you’ve always done.”
Another silence. Longer this time.
“Isa,” I say, quieter now. Not commanding. Asking. “Please.”
Something shifts behind her eyes. Not softening—recalculating. The same way she recalculated that first night in the kitchen when Sera didn’t flinch.
“I’m glad you’re not asking me to trust you,” she finally says to Sera. “Because I don’t. And I won’t help you destroy this family.”
Then she turns without another word and leaves the room. Every eye in the room watches her leave, every ear listens to the fading echoes of her footsteps.
“Fuck,” Logan breathes into the silence.
“Not good,” Gunner says.
“We can’t do this without eyes and ears.” Logan bangs his fist on the table. “Fucking Isa.”
I’m on the verge of calling the whole thing off. We can’t give Sera into Reyes’ control without knowing exactly who he’s talking to every single second, and without advance warning of any potential betrayal.