Chapter 28 - Seraphina
Igo to La Sirena with Gabriel because I have nowhere else to go. It is the default position, the easy route. We debrief with Logan and Gunner then head to bed in our suite. His suite.
Gabriel sleeps beside me, the first real sleep I've seen him get since we met.
His face in the darkness is younger without the weight of consciousness carving lines into it.
The jaw that's been clenched for hours has finally released.
His hands rest open on the pillow, palms up, fingers slightly curled like they're holding something invisible.
Those hands killed a woman during sex. Those same hands killed Cristian Markovic earlier today.
Julian trained me to read danger in men's hands: the tells before violence, the grip that means control, the relaxation that precedes a strike.
Gabriel's hands carry death in their history and violence in their capability, and I feel nothing but the absence of fear.
The absence bothers me more than fear would.
I slip from bed, careful not to disturb his finally-peaceful breathing.
The suite's living area is dark except for streetlight bleeding through the blinds.
I sink onto the couch and open my new laptop.
The vault records still fill the screen from earlier, when I couldn't stop reading them.
The third time I've returned to these files.
The records read like an instruction manual. Not just for managing money or moving product, but, I realize with dawning horror, that Julian used the same approach on me.
He stopped me from cooking, from connecting with my abuela, and all of it was planned.
Orchestrated. The more I read the files, the more I realize the truth—he never left anything to chance.
Including me. The systematic isolation of Abuela Rosa from my life was calculated strategy.
The dinner reservations that coincidentally conflicted with Sunday visits.
The "concern" about my mood after seeing her.
The apartment location that made Hialeah inconvenient.
And I learned his ways right down to my bones.
Like last Friday night at Reyes's dinner party, I see it clearly now.
Every grateful glance, every moment of performed vulnerability was executed with Julian's precision.
I read Reyes's vanity and fed it exactly what it craved.
Made myself smaller, needier, more dependent with each interaction.
The strategic touches on his arm. The tears that threatened but never quite fell when discussing my "complicated grief. "
I used Julian's playbook to extract information from Reyes, deployed the same approach that once caged me. I wasn't resisting Julian's training. I graduated from it.
Then the third wave hits, uglier than recognition: my body's response to Gabriel's violence earlier.
When his fingers closed around Cristian's throat, when I heard the wet gurgles of a man who couldn't breathe, my thighs pressed together involuntarily.
Wetness gathered despite myself. My body's betrayal was immediate, responding to violence the way Julian taught it to.
Not from fear. From something else, something my nervous system recognized before my mind could interfere.
Rosa used to say I run hot, that I need to be careful not to burn everything I touch.
But maybe she saw what I'm only now understanding.
I'm drawn to men who burn hotter. Julian's control, Gabriel's capability.
Different men, different intentions, but my body doesn't distinguish between architecture and protection.
It responds to power. To hands that can hold or harm.
I wasn't afraid of Gabriel's hands because Julian programmed me to tolerate dangerous men. To find violence arousing rather than terrifying. The tolerance for violence wasn't a flaw in the programming. It was a feature.
I need to break the cycle. To reinvent myself and become the woman I want to be, not the woman I was engineered to be.
The realization sends me to my feet, body moving before conscious thought forms. Packing is muscle memory now.
Grab the essentials, leave the rest, move fast and light.
The bag fills quickly. Clothes, laptop, charger, toiletries.
Everything that matters fits in one bag because I've been ready to run since my first year of marriage.
This is a skill set, not a decision. My hands know exactly what to take and what to abandon.
I go downstairs to the kitchen with the bag, set it by the door.
The wooden spoon sits on the counter where it always does, next to the oil, next to Rosa's recipe card that Gabriel found for me.
Rosa's handwriting loops across the yellowed paper, each letter formed by the hand that taught me to cook, to feed people, to make kitchens into homes.
I stand between the bag and the counter. The exit and the anchor. Then I cross over and grab the wooden spoon, snatching up the recipe card too.
Isa appears in the doorway. Not dramatically, she's just there, the way people at La Sirena materialize when they've been watching longer than you realize. Her eyes take in the scene: me, the bag, the kitchen that's become mine. She reads it instantly because Isa reads everything instantly.
She doesn't speak. Doesn't ask what happened or where I'm going. She walks to the cabinet, pulls down a bottle of whiskey and two glasses. Pours both. Sets one in front of me, keeps one. Drinks.
The silence stretches between us. Isa's not someone who fills quiet with words. She stands there in her black clothes, hair pulled back severe as always, and waits.
When she finally speaks, her voice is flat, controlled. "Running is the smart move."
I look up, surprised by the honesty.
"A woman with your skill set could disappear, survive indefinitely. You have the money now, the leverage. You don't need this place. Don't need the danger. Logical analysis says run."
She takes another sip, eyes never leaving mine.
"But here's the data on Gabriel. Years of nothing.
Not failed attempts at relationships, not brief flings that didn't work out.
Nothing. He went from killing that woman to the seminary without stopping.
No one before you, no one during. Just performance and penance and cold showers. Years of absolute fucking nothing."
The whiskey burns my throat as I finally take a drink.
"Then you." Isa's voice doesn't warm, stays matter-of-fact. "I've watched him these past weeks. It's not just that he's fucking you, though that's remarkable enough given the man used to flog himself for impure thoughts. It's that he's present. Actually here, not performing being here."
She sets down her glass.
"So here's how this goes. You leave now, fine. That's your choice. But if you leave, you never come back. Never return. You don't get to run when things get hard and return when you miss the kitchen. You break him once by leaving, you don't get a second shot. I'll make sure of that."
The ultimatum hangs between us, delivered without emotion. Isa's not making an appeal. She's stating facts.
"You think I'd break him by leaving?"
She doesn't bother answering, just huffs out a laugh then finishes her whiskey in one swallow. "Make your choice. But understand: walking out that door is permanent. There's no coming back from that."
I look at the packed bag by the door. Everything I need to disappear, to become someone new in another city where I can finally leave my past behind. Then I thump Rosa’s wooden spoon against my palm, rhythmically.
Rosa never ran from a kitchen in her life.
When money was tight, she cooked. When her husband died, she cooked.
When I showed up at nine years old while my mother worked three jobs, she put me on a step stool and taught me to cook.
Her response to everything was to feed people, to make wherever she stood into a place that nourished.
Rosa's kitchen was about feeding everyone who walked through the door.
Julian programmed me to run. To pack efficiently, to leave without looking back, to survive by disappearing. But Rosa programmed me first: to stay, to cook, to make a home.
I turn my back on the bag. Not dramatically, not with finality, just the simple action of turning away from something wrong. Then I toy with the wooden spoon, feel its familiar weight, and place it back on the counter where it belongs.
Isa watches all of this without expression. When I meet her eyes, she gives one nod. Not approval, not welcome, just acknowledgment. Noted.
She turns to leave, then pauses. "Finish the whiskey. You look like you need it."
Then she's gone, her footsteps fading down the hallway, and I'm alone in the kitchen past three in the morning with two glasses of whiskey and a decision that feels less like victory and more like exhaustion.
I drink what's left in my glass, then pour another.
The alcohol burns but doesn't numb what needs numbing.
I sink to the kitchen floor, the same floor where Gabriel and I fought and fucked after our confrontation about secrets.
The tile is cold through my clothes. The lingering smell of garlic mixes with whiskey on my breath.
The refrigerator hums its mechanical lullaby while I sit here with empty glasses and the knowledge that I almost ran.
The kitchen floor holds me as dawn approaches, cold and hard. Gray light starts bleeding through the windows, that uncertain pre-sunrise that makes everything look like a memory of itself.
I haven't moved from this spot. Not because leaving is wrong.
Isa was right, it's the smart move. My past is gone, I have the chance to move on before I get involved with another dangerous man.
A woman with forged documents and stolen millions could disappear into America's sprawl and never surface again.
I’m still here because running is what Julian's program tells me to do. The only way to resist Julian's programming is refusing to execute it. That's not healing or victory, just the decision to stop being Julian's wind-up toy, even if that means staying in the path of an oncoming storm.
Gabriel will wake soon. He'll reach for me and find empty space, and some part of him will know immediately what happened. He knows what running looks like.
I wonder if he'll be angry. If those hands will clench into fists. If the man who killed with his bare hands will surface, or if the priest will return with his careful distance and measured restraint.
The whiskey sits heavy in my empty stomach. My body aches from hours on the cold floor. But I'm still here, waiting for morning, waiting for whatever comes next, because the alternative is letting Julian win from beyond the grave.
Footsteps in the hallway. Gabriel's tread, heavier than usual. Searching.
He appears in the doorway and his eyes go straight to the bag.