Chapter 39 Nina
Nina
Chris finds me half an hour later, Wyatt a half-step behind. I’m back by the fountain, a fresh glass of sparkling water in hand. They move through the courtyard like they’re clearing a room—Chris’s gaze sweeping the perimeter before it lands on me, Wyatt tracking exits even as he smiles.
“Hey.” Chris’s hand finds the small of my back, proprietary in a way he hasn’t been in public before. “Sorry we disappeared on you. I’m done with meetings for the night—I’m all yours.”
“I’ll hold you to that.” I lean into his touch slightly. “How was the briefing?”
“Handled.” He doesn’t elaborate. His eyes cut toward Vicente, who’s deep in conversation with Drake near the bar, then away. “You need to sit?”
“I’m okay.”
Wyatt appears at my other side with a glass of sparkling water and a plate of empanadas. “Thought you might be hungry. You barely touched the ceviche.”
“You were watching me eat from Arturo’s office?”
“I was watching you before.” He says it simply, like it’s obvious. Like it’s his job. “You’re six days post-op and running on fumes.”
Between them, I feel bracketed. Protected. It should feel suffocating with two large men flanking me like bodyguards, but instead it feels like exhaling. Like I can stop holding it all together for a moment.
Chris’s hand hasn’t left my back. His thumb traces a small circle against my spine, almost unconscious, but his attention is elsewhere, tracking Vicente’s position, noting who he’s talking to, cataloging every movement.
I take the glass from Wyatt, sip. “Celeste showed me her father’s art collection. It’s even more impressive than he lets on.”
A shadow crosses Chris’s face. “Did she show you all of it?”
“I don’t know. Maybe?” I think back to the gallery, the locked rooms Celeste mentioned. “There were some pieces she said weren’t ready for display yet.”
Chris takes a long pull of his beer but doesn’t respond.
The silence feels pointed, but I can’t find the shape of it. I go back to the appetizer plate, filing it away with all the other things Chris knows that I don’t.
Marco and Sadie arrive as the sun is turning the courtyard gold, apologizing about traffic from Malibu. Sadie looks different than I remember from the wedding: shorter hair, new ink climbing her neck. But her energy is the same. Fierce. Unapologetic.
She spots the three of us before she’s even fully through the gate. I watch her gaze move from Chris’s hand on my back to Wyatt standing close at my other side, the geometry of us unmistakable.
“Hey, Doc.” Her grin is sharp and knowing. “Still curious, or did you figure it out?”
Heat rises to my cheeks. “I—”
“Relax. I’m just giving you shit.” She glances at Chris, then Wyatt, then back at me with an expression that’s far too satisfied. “Looks like you figured it out.”
Marco appears behind her, offering a warm nod. “Good to see you, Nina.”
“You too.”
Sadie’s already moving toward the bar, but she throws one last look over her shoulder—approving, maybe, or just amused. I’m not sure which is worse.
“She’s not wrong,” Wyatt says mildly once Sadie’s out of earshot. His mouth curves. “You did figure it out.”
“We’re still figuring it out,” I correct. “All three of us.”
By the time Elena announces dinner, the sky has gone violet at the edges, the first stars emerging above the city lights.
The heaters are glowing now, casting comfortable pools of warmth along the length of the table.
Near the pool, the fire pit flickers with low gas flames, and the cluster of people chatting around it—Celeste and Maddox, Drake and Elle—rise and drift toward the table.
Twenty people plus Zoey find their seats.
I end up between Callie and Marcella, safe ground, clearly strategic on someone’s part.
Chris is farther down, flanked by Mason and Maddox, with a clear sightline to Vicente but enough bodies between them that direct interaction would require effort.
Wyatt is across from me, next to Elle, close enough that his foot finds mine under the table and stays there.
The food comes in waves: turkey and stuffing alongside pozole and carnitas, Elena’s green chile cornbread, a sweet potato dish that Marcella apparently makes every year.
The tamales make their appearance without comment, though I notice Toni pointedly not looking at Vicente when the platter passes her.
Conversation layers over itself. Elle teases Ben about a story that makes him flush.
Toni and Leo have their heads together, speaking softly, reconciling after the tamale incident, maybe.
Drake and Arturo debate some art acquisition while Maddox interjects with opinions that make both of them laugh.
I eat what I can, pacing myself, feeling my energy flag as the meal stretches on. But I can’t stop watching the table’s invisible architecture: who leans toward whom, who avoids eye contact, who’s faking relaxation and who actually feels it.
Chris hasn’t looked at Vicente once. Not when Vicente laughed at something Arturo said. Not when he passed the wine. Not when his voice carried across the table, that low velvet register I recognize from our sessions.
But Vicente looks at Chris.
Not constantly. Not obviously. But I catch it—a glance when Chris reaches for the salt, a slight turn of the head when Chris says something that makes Mason snort. Vicente’s attention slides over him like a hand remembering the shape of something it used to own.
Possession. That’s the word that keeps surfacing in my clinical brain. Or maybe memory. The distinction blurs when I try to examine it too closely.
I think about Vicente in session, the way he describes the people who’ve mattered to him. I don’t let go easily, he told me once. When someone belongs to me, they belong to me forever. Even if circumstances separate us.
I’d noted it as a control pattern. Attachment issues rooted in early abandonment, manifesting as possessive tendencies in adult relationships. Clinical. Containable.
But watching him watch Chris—the patience of it, the certainty—I understand what I’m seeing. This isn’t abstract. This isn’t a pattern I’m analyzing from a safe therapeutic distance.
Chris belonged to him. For years, Chris belonged to him.
And Vicente still thinks he does.
How much I wanted what he was giving me, even knowing it was poison.
Chris’s voice in my memory, rough with something I’d taken for shame.
Maybe it was. But shame about what, exactly?
What was Vicente giving him? I want to believe it was drugs, but Chris hasn’t exhibited any signs of that kind of dependency. Then what?
Wyatt catches it too. I see his gaze sharpen, tracking the same dynamic I am. Under the table, his foot presses against mine—I see it. I’m here.
The meal winds down in the amber glow of the heaters. Zoey has made her rounds and is now asleep in Marcella’s arms. The servers arrive with dessert: tres leches cake, pumpkin pie, a flan that Elena made from her grandmother’s recipe. Coffee appears. Conversations splinter into smaller clusters.
I need air. Space. My midsection aches from sitting too long, and my head is spinning from too many observations I don’t know how to process.
“I need a minute,” I murmur to Callie. “Where can I—”
“Fire pit.” She nods toward the seating area by the pool. “It’s lit now. Quieter over there.”
Chris half-rises when I stand, but I wave him off. “I’m fine. Just need to rest my eyes.”
He doesn’t look convinced, but Wyatt’s hand on his arm stops him from following. I’m grateful. I need to think without their protective warmth clouding my head.
The fire pit is quieter when I sink into one of the cushioned chairs. I’m calmed by the flicker of gas flames, the distant murmur of conversation from the main table, the city glittering below us in the darkness. I close my eyes and focus on slowing my breath.
The clinical part of my brain won’t stop cataloging. Vicente’s micro-expressions when he looked at Chris. Chris’s deliberate non-looking back. The way Vicente asked about him. Not curious, not casual. Proprietary. Like checking on an investment.
I’ve treated survivors of coercive control before. I know the patterns. The way abusers create dependency through intermittent reinforcement. How they blur boundaries until victims can’t tell the difference between love and manipulation, care and captivity.
He made me into something. Someone who craved the control he had over me.
Chris’s words keep circling back. I’d assumed—what? That Vicente controlled Chris through fear? Through operational necessity? The cartel hierarchy, the constant threat of exposure, the violence that must have surrounded that life?
But “craved” isn’t a word you use for fear. “Craved” suggests something else entirely.
What if I’ve been reading this wrong? What if the control wasn’t just psychological?
I don’t want to follow that thought to its logical conclusion. Not here, in Vicente’s house, with Chris somewhere in the courtyard trying to survive a meal with the man who—
Who what?
A few minutes. That’s all I need. Then I’ll go back over there and finish pretending I didn’t just watch a predator track his prey across a dinner table.
“Thought I saw you sneak off.”
Sadie drops into the love seat across from me. Marco settles beside her, two glasses of wine in hand.
“We’re not interrupting?” he asks.
“No. Please.”
Sadie accepts a glass from Marco, takes a long sip.
“Hell of a gathering,” she says. “You’d never know half these people have tried to kill each other at some point.”
“That’s family,” Marco says mildly.
Sadie snorts. “Speaking of complicated—how’s your boy handling being back in Vicente’s orbit?”
I blink. “My...?”
“Chris. Your—” She waves her hand. “Whatever he is. Third point of your triangle.”
“Sadie.” Marco’s voice carries a warning.
“What? It’s obvious.” She takes another sip of wine, her expression going distant.
“We had our own history with Vicente. Just a few months ago, actually. He’s not easy to shake.
Gets inside your head and makes a home there.
” She glances at Marco, then back at me.
“But you know all this. You’re with the man who spent five years in Vicente’s bed. ”
The words hit like ice water.
Everything stops. The crackle of the fire. The distant murmur of conversation from the main table. My own heartbeat.
“I—what?”
Sadie’s eyebrows rise. “He hasn’t told you?” She looks at Marco, then back at me, eyes widening. “Shit. I assumed—I mean, the three of you are clearly together, and Chris lived through it, so I figured—”
“Sadie.” Marco’s voice is sharp. “Stop.”
“Fuck.” She drags a hand through her short hair. “I’m sorry. I thought you knew. When you walked in together, I assumed he’d already—”
“It’s not our story to tell,” Marco cuts in, that protective streak surfacing hard. “That’s Chris’s. When he’s ready.”
But it’s too late. The piece I was missing—the piece I didn’t want to find—just slotted into place.
How much I wanted what he was giving me, even knowing it was poison.
Not psychological control. Not just fear or operational necessity.
Sex. Vicente controlled Chris through sex.
I think about every session I’ve had with Vicente. The way he talks about intimacy. Connection. When someone belongs to me, they belong to me forever. I thought I understood what that meant. I didn’t understand anything.
My body goes very still.
Sadie is watching me, stricken. “Nina, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
“It’s fine.” My voice comes out steady. Clinical. The therapist mask snapping into place like armor. “You didn’t know.”
“If there’s anything we can do…”
“There isn’t.” I stand. My legs hold. “Thank you for telling me. I mean that.”
Sadie blinks, clearly expecting a different reaction.
“I should get back. Chris will worry if I’m gone too long.”
“Nina—” Marco starts.
“I’m fine.” I smooth my dress, a gesture that feels automatic. Professional. “Really. I just need a minute to process.”
I stand and walk away at a normal pace, heading toward the garden wall where the shadows are deepest. Only when I’m sure no one can see me do I stop, press my palm flat against the stucco, and let myself feel it.
Five years. In Vicente’s bed. While I’ve been sitting across from that man every Tuesday, listening to him talk about attachment and connection and the people he loves.
My hand is shaking against the wall. I watch it like it belongs to someone else.
I need to find Chris. I need to find Wyatt. I need to get out of this house where Vicente Amador is watching my boyfriend with the eyes of a man who still thinks he owns him.
But first, I need to remember how to breathe.