Chapter 20 - Marisol #2
And Cesar walked in twenty minutes after I sat down.
The door opens again. The change in air pressure seems to announce him before I turn.
Nico fills the doorframe like violence barely contained in human form.
Of course he found me. That's his job, his nature, his promise to my father. I'm not surprised Nico tracked me down. I expect it, count on it even when I'm running from his protection. It's what we are to each other now.
But I'm surprised, no, disturbed, that Cesar got here first.
Something passes between the two men immediately.
The kind of recognition that makes the domino players in the back stop mid-game, sensing violence in their midst. The air itself seems to thicken.
Nico's hand drifts to where his gun would be, that unconscious motion that means he's calculating how fast he could kill everyone in this room if needed.
"Mr. Rosetti," Cesar says smoothly, warmth never faltering but sharpening into something with edges. "Never off duty, are you? Such dedication. Jorge chose well."
Nico doesn't respond with words. His eyes find mine first, taking in my state: the glass in my hand, the empty one beside it, the slight glaze that says I'm two drinks toward numb.
Then those hazel eyes shift, and I see something dangerous flash through them.
Not disappointment in me. Something darker, possessive, aimed at Cesar's hand still touching my face.
I set the glass down and pull away from Cesar's touch in the same motion.
Cesar's phone rings with timing so perfect it feels rehearsed. He glances at it, sighs with regret. "Business, always business. These transitions require such careful management." The word 'transitions' hangs in the air like a threat. "I'm afraid I have to go."
He stands, leans down to kiss my forehead. His lips are dry, cooler than they should be, and I have to fight not to flinch. "Take care of yourself. You know I worry. Perhaps you shouldn't wander alone anymore. Miami can be… dangerous for a woman in your position."
The threat is silk-wrapped but unmistakable.
At the door, he pauses. Looks back at us: me on my barstool with rum I'll never finish, Nico standing guard like he's ready to tear the world apart to keep me safe. Something crosses Cesar's face, an expression I finally recognize. Calculation. Assessment. A chess player seeing the board clearly.
Then he's gone, leaving his cologne hanging in the air like a poison I've been breathing for twenty years.
Nico moves with controlled precision, takes Cesar's empty stool.
His thigh brushes mine as he settles, and even through my horror at what I'm starting to understand, my body responds to his proximity.
He doesn't order anything. Doesn't mention the rum. Just sits there, radiating that particular tension that means he’s tired of standing guard over my disaster of a life.
"I have proof about Cesar," he says quietly. No preamble, no gentle lead-in. Just Nico being Nico, direct as a bullet aimed at truth.
His hand brushes mine as he pulls out his phone, and that simple contact grounds me more than the rum ever could. He starts showing me evidence, each piece laid out with military precision. Financial documents. Text messages. Photos. No emotion in his voice, just facts arranged like weapons.
"The outlet that ran the embezzlement story has received payments from a company connected to Cesar's operations. Three transfers over the last month, starting right before the first article about you appeared."
My stomach turns, bile rising to compete with rum. But I force myself to look, to see.
"Gunner's been tracking something else. Cesar's nephew has been asking about you. Your schedule, your habits, where you go, who you see. Started three weeks ago, right when the media attacks began."
Each word lands like ice in my chest despite the Miami heat bleeding through the bar's inadequate air conditioning.
"The timeline." He pulls up a document, dates and connections mapped with the same precision he applies to everything. "Every leak contained information only someone in your inner circle would know. Details about your mother's death, specific dates and places, things you only told family."
I want to argue. Want to find holes in his logic. My mind scrambles for excuses: maybe Cesar was trying to protect me, maybe the payments were for something else, maybe, maybe, maybe. But the evidence keeps coming, relentless as ocean waves.
"The yacht photos. The photographer has done work for a company Cesar uses for surveillance."
"That's…" I stop. A coincidence? How many coincidences before they become a pattern? Before they become a betrayal two decades in the making?
"Your phone," Nico continues, and now his hand does cover mine, warm and solid and real. "I track it because that's my job. You know that. But someone else has been tracking you too. The data shows dual access points. Someone else has been following your movements."
“Cesar,” I say.
"He's tracking you," Nico says simply, his fingers tightening protectively around mine. "Has been for a while, probably. You never noticed because…"
"Because I was too drunk to notice anything." The words taste like vomit.
All those nights. All those parties where Cesar would materialize like magic, always knowing where to find me, always there to "check on" his troubled niece. I thought he was protective. Loving. A father figure when my own father could barely look at me without disappointment clouding his eyes.
But tracking me? Following my movements like I'm some asset to be managed, controlled, eventually liquidated?
My whole life. My hands shake as the weight of it crashes over me.
A lifetime of Tío Cesar carrying me on his shoulders at family parties, teaching me to dance salsa in my mother's kitchen while she sang, holding me at her funeral while I sobbed into his Armani.
A lifetime of trust built from before I could walk.
"Maybe there's an explanation," I try desperately, but even I can hear how hollow it sounds. "Maybe he's trying to protect me in his own way. Maybe he thinks he's helping."
"Maybe." Nico doesn't argue, just waits with that patience he's learned, knowing I need to reach this conclusion myself or I'll fight it forever.
I look at the rum in front of me. Still there, untouched since Nico arrived.
The amber liquid catches the bar's dim light, promising the familiar blur that's always been my escape when reality cuts too deep.
But if I drink it now, I'll lose the sharp edges of this truth I'm finally seeing.
And I need to see clearly now. I need to be present for this betrayal.
I push the glass away, sliding it across the scarred bar with finality.
"Show me everything," I say, my voice steadier than my hands. "Every piece of evidence you have. Every connection. Every proof that the man who helped raise me has been planning to destroy me."
We walk out of the bar into the Miami afternoon, and the world looks exactly the same: palm trees swaying in the salt breeze, heat rising from pavement in waves that distort the air, the sound of merengue from someone's radio mixing with distant traffic.
But nothing is the same at all. The humidity presses against my skin like a living thing, and I wonder if I'll ever feel clean again.
Nico stays close but doesn't touch me, sensing when contact would shatter instead of steady me. The evidence sits like poison in my stomach: all those financial threads, those connections, those perfectly timed leaks that could only come from someone who knew our family's deepest secrets.
What if every hug was reconnaissance? Every concern a calculation? Every offer to "help" really meant tightening the noose?
The worst part burns like acid in my throat: I helped him. Every time I got too drunk to notice details, too high to question coincidences. I made his job easy by being exactly the disaster he could point to and say, "See? She's unfit. Someone needs to manage things when Jorge dies."
"If you're right," I tell Nico as we reach the corner where he parked, my voice stronger now, fury beginning to replace shock, "if Cesar has been holding a knife behind his back all these years, pretending to love me while planning to gut me the moment my father takes his last breath…"
I stop, turn to face him in the blazing sun. His hazel eyes are steady, patient, waiting for me to finish transforming from victim to something else.
"Then God help Cesar Vega," I say, and mean it with every atom of my body. "Because I‘m done hiding in bottles and pills and parties while people I trust destroy me. If Cesar wants to play this game, then let's play."