Chapter 19 - Nico
“How do I look?” She catches my eye in the reflection, attempting her cheeky smile. “Innocent? Wrongly accused? Definitely not embezzling from the family business?”
The joke falls flat. She knows it. I know it. The white dress is a shield, but nothing can hide the terror in her honey eyes.
"You look like you're about to face something difficult."
I set down the file I've been reviewing. Gabriel Delgado, twenty-eight, fled to seminary at twenty, ordained five years later. The file is clean. Too clean. Men don't flee to God without demons chasing them.
"Something difficult." She laughs, but it cracks at the edges. "That's one way to describe seeing my brother for the first time in eight years."
I cross to her, hands finding her shoulders. The muscles beneath are rigid with tension. Even through the thin fabric, I can feel her pulse racing. My body responds to her proximity, always does now, but I lock that down. She needs steady, not hungry.
"You don't have to do this. We can meet him another time. Or never."
She shakes her head, leaning back into my touch for just a moment before straightening. "If I don't face him now, I never will. And with everything that's happening…" Her voice trails off.
The tactical assessment runs automatically: neutral ground selected.
The Setai hotel lobby, public enough for safety, private enough for conversation.
Multiple exits, minimal security, easy extraction if needed.
She insisted on somewhere that wasn't her penthouse (too intimate), wasn't the estate (absolutely not), wasn't the club (too loaded with memory).
Smart choices for someone who claims she doesn't think tactically.
"We should go," she says, turning from the mirror. "I want to get there first. Control the ground, right? That's what you always say."
I don't point out that she's been listening to my security protocols. Don't mention that her hands are still shaking as she reaches for her purse. Just follow her to the door, watching the way she holds herself together through sheer force of will.
The drive to the hotel is silent except for her knee bouncing against the leather seat.
I reach over, hand covering her knee until it stills.
The touch is meant to be calming, but heat shoots through me at the contact.
Her skin is warm through the thin fabric, and I have to force myself not to stroke my thumb across her thigh.
"He's just your brother," I say.
"No," she replies, staring out the window at Miami streaming past. "He's never been just anything."
The Setai's air conditioning fights a losing battle against Miami humidity that seeps through the glass doors every time they open. Chlorine from the pool deck mingles with Cuban coffee from the bar. Outside, South Beach traffic crawls past. Lamborghinis and Ubers in equal measure.
I position us at a corner table. Sight lines to both entrances, back to the wall, two exits within twenty feet. Marisol clutches a cup she won't drink, checking her phone every thirty seconds.
"He's late," she says.
"Three minutes."
"Priests are supposed to be punctual. It's like, a virtue or something."
I'm about to respond when I see him.
Gabriel Delgado walks through the lobby doors, and my threat assessment immediately shifts into overdrive.
Priest's collar, black clothing, hands clasped in front of him, all deliberately non-threatening.
But there's something underneath the practiced serenity.
The way he moves, controlled and aware. The slight tension in his shoulders.
One soldier recognizing another, even if one wears cloth instead of kevlar.
Every woman he passes turns to stare. The concierge actually stops mid-sentence.
Two women at the bar abandon their conversation entirely.
I can see why. The priest is tall, with broad shoulders, a commanding presence, a strong jaw, and dark hair that would make God himself jealous.
Gabriel either doesn't notice or has trained himself not to react. Both options interest me tactically.
"Mari." He stops three feet from our table. Not close enough to embrace, not far enough to be cold. Calculated distance.
"Gabriel." She stands but doesn't move toward him.
Eight years of silence packed into two names. The air between them practically vibrates with things unsaid.
His attention shifts to me, and the assessment is quick, professional. He's done this before, sized up threats. His dark brown eyes intense even through the priestly calm. "You must be the Rosetti security Marco sent."
I don't offer my hand. "Nico."
"Father Gabriel Delgado." The title is deliberate, a shield and sword combined.
"He knows who you are," Marisol says, voice sharp.
We sit. The conversation that follows is like watching people dance around landmines.
Gabriel asks about the embezzlement accusations carefully, like he's drawing out confession.
Marisol's answers are defensive, clipped.
They circle the real conversation without ever touching it.
The night that sent him to God and her to bottles.
"The articles are lies," Gabriel says. "I know that."
"Do you? You haven't known anything about my life in eight years."
"That's not…" He stops, swallows. "I deserved that."
"You deserve worse."
Then Marisol mentions Cesar. "Tío Cesar has been helping. He's been there through all of this, with Papa sick and everything falling apart."
The reaction is immediate and violent, though I don’t think Marisol catches it.
Gabriel's face maintains perfect priestly composure, but his hands betray him completely.
Fingers pressing into the table hard enough to turn his knuckles white, tendons standing out like rope.
Something dangerous flashes behind those holy eyes before he locks it down.
This isn't casual dislike. This is specific rage, barely controlled.
"Cesar." His voice achieves perfect neutrality, and I can see he is a man who hides himself from the world. "Yes. He would be… involved."
Marisol doesn't notice the pause, the way he has to search for a neutral word. She's looking at his face, not his hands. But I note every micro-expression, every tell. Gabriel Delgado knows something about Cesar Vega. Something that makes a man of God contemplate violence.
"Can I speak with you alone, Mari?" Gabriel's request is soft, but there's urgency underneath. "Just five minutes."
My instinct says no. Every tactical protocol screams against leaving her vulnerable. But Marisol nods, something desperate in her eyes.
"Five minutes," she agrees.
I relocate to the bar, close enough to maintain visual contact but far enough that their words become murmurs. The bartender tries to make conversation, something about the weather, the usual Miami brightness. I ignore him, focus locked on the siblings.
Gabriel reaches across the table, takes her hand between both of his. She flinches but doesn't pull away. He's speaking low, urgent, leaning forward with intensity that cracks his priestly composure. She shakes her head. Once, twice, more emphatic with each denial.
Her eyes fill with tears she refuses to let fall. His jaw works like he's fighting words that want to escape. For a moment, just a breath, I see who they used to be. The golden son and the wild daughter, before death and secrets tore them apart.
Then she pulls away. Not just her hand but her whole body, creating distance that might as well be an ocean. The wall goes back up, reinforced with eight years of practice.
When I return, the conversation is already over. Whatever Gabriel was trying to say, she's shut it down completely. He stands with the careful movements of someone afraid to break something.
"I'm staying in Miami," he says. "At St. Augustine's. If you need me."
"I've needed you for eight years. You weren't there."
The words land like bullets. Gabriel absorbs them, nods with something that might be acceptance or might be resignation.
"I know. I'm here now."
"Are you? Or are you just visiting until things get hard again?"
He doesn't answer, which tells us both everything. At the door, he turns back, meets my eyes over Marisol's head. The look is complex. Warning, question, recognition. Whatever he knows about Cesar, whatever he's not saying, he's trusting me to protect her from it.
The priest walks away, but I recognize the predator's gait underneath the holy man's shuffle. Whatever Gabriel Delgado did before finding God, it required the same skills I use. The same capacity for violence.
Then he's gone, leaving three more women watching his exit while Marisol stands frozen, eight years too late for any of this to matter.
Back in the car, her hand finds mine across the console. The touch is innocent, but my body's reaction isn't. Even after everything we've shared, her skin against mine sends heat straight through me. I should pull away. Instead, I interlace our fingers, feeling her pulse race against my palm.
She doesn't speak for the first ten minutes of the drive back. I count them. Six hundred seconds of silence while her breathing gradually slows from combat-ready to exhausted. Minute seven: a sharp inhale like she's about to speak. Minute eight: her hand unclenches in mine. Minute ten: she breaks.
"He looked good," she finally says. "For someone who abandoned his family."
"He looked like someone carrying weight."
"We all carry weight. He doesn't get special credit."
"I'm not giving him credit."
"Then what are you doing?"
"Observing." I take the turn toward her building. "He reacted when you mentioned Cesar. His hands gave him away."
She turns to look at me fully. "Gabriel doesn't do violence. That's why he ran to the church."
I say nothing, but I'm thinking about those white knuckles, that flash of something dangerous quickly suppressed. Everyone does violence. Some people just dress it in different clothes.
My phone buzzes. Message from Logan. The text is coded but clear. Cesar's moving money through shell companies. The kind of financial gymnastics that happen before someone makes a power play. Or orders a hit. Could be standard operating procedure for him. Could be something different.
Back at the penthouse, she walks straight to the bathroom, the lock clicking with finality.
The shower starts immediately. I wait in the living room, checking my phone again.
This time it's not Gunner. It's an unknown number.
The message is just a photo: Marisol entering the hotel today, taken from across the street.
Someone's watching. Someone wants me to know they're watching.
Twenty minutes pass before she emerges, eyes red-rimmed but face carefully composed.
"He said he stayed away to protect me." Her voice is flat, emotionless. "That seeing him would just remind me of that night. That he thought I could move on if he wasn't there to be a constant reminder."
"Do you believe him?"
"Maybe. Gabriel can justify anything if he frames it as sacrifice. It's his superpower. Turning abandonment into nobility."
She makes it to the couch before the tears come.
Not sobs, just silent streams down her cheeks, eight years of hurt working its way out.
I don't ask permission, just sit beside her and pull her against my chest. I hold her properly, arms wrapping around her shaking form as she struggles with the impossible contradiction of loving and hating the same person.
She's crying against my chest, and I'm the worst kind of bastard because even now, with her breaking apart, I notice how her body fits against mine.
The warmth of her breath through my shirt.
The way her leg presses against my thigh.
I shift slightly, hoping she doesn't notice my body's traitorous response to her proximity.
"He's my brother," she says against my shoulder, her tears soaking through my shirt. "I hate him and love him and I don't know how to exist in the same city without wanting to scream."
"You don't have to figure it out today."
"What if I never figure it out?"
"Then you don't." I continue to hold her, one hand moving through her hair in gentle strokes meant to soothe. "Some things don't get resolved. You just learn to carry them differently."
She pulls back enough to look at me. "Is that what you did with your sister?"
The name Sofia forms in my mind but I can't say it. She left me too. The pain continues even when I'm holding another broken woman. But the sharp edge has dulled.
"I'm learning."
She studies my face for a long moment, then settles back against my chest. "At least you're here."
"I'm here," I tell her, the word 'always' catching in my throat. Can't make promises I don't know how to keep.
She falls asleep against me within minutes, emotional exhaustion finally winning. Her breathing evens out, warm against my neck, one hand fisted in my shirt like she's afraid I'll disappear if she lets go.
I should move her to bed. Should establish proper boundaries, maintain professional distance. Instead, I stay perfectly still, letting her rest.