Chapter 18
Three days since the garden. Three days of letting myself have this: morning coffee while she dances, her body claiming more space in my apartment with each passing hour.
I count how many mornings I have left to watch this before Tuesday's operation. Tuesday after next: the deadline I've set myself, before hell comes to visit.
My phone buzzes, but I can't look away from Daphne's dance. When she stops, sitting on the bed in a graceful heap, I check it.
Three quick taps at the door. Adrian's pattern, the one that says he's coming in whether you answer or not.
The keys in his hand feel like handcuffs when I open the door. Nine years I've kept myself contained in four hundred square feet, and now he wants to crack that open. My jaw tightens, but Daphne's already standing from the bed, and fuck if I don't want to see what kind of future she'd choose.
"Hermosa," Adrian greets her first, stepping past me into the apartment like he owns it. Which, technically, the Delgado family does. "You're glowing this morning. Must be all that dancing."
His eyes catch the dancer's mirror, and his mouth curves into that smile that makes senators' wives confess their secrets.
"Look at this. She's transformed your bunker into a studio.
Nine years, hermano. Nine years you've been living like a monk in a closet while the rest of us pretended not to notice. "
The brass ring spins on his finger, three sets of keys catching the light. "Time to stop punishing yourself. I've got realtors holding three properties since eight this morning, and we're going to look at every one."
"I don't—"
"Need a new place?" He cuts me off, still smiling but with steel underneath. "Brother, you're living in a storage room with this beautiful woman sleeping in your bed. Even you have to see how that's beneath both of you."
The observation lands wrong. He sees what everyone sees: the surface of our arrangement. But Adrian doesn't need to know how far gone I am.
Daphne crosses to us, and I catch her scent. Vanilla and the faint trace of sweat from dancing. "Where are we looking?"
"Ah, she's interested." Adrian's grin widens. "Then let's go see what Miami has to offer."
We descend the back stairs, through the loading dock where the perpetual chill makes Daphne shiver. Adrian's car waits in the bay like a yacht on concrete.
The 1976 Cadillac DeVille convertible gleams cream in the fluorescent light, tan leather interior soft as skin, top already down.
Cuban radio plays at low volume. Benny Moré crooning about love and loss.
Adrian drives, I take passenger, Daphne slides into the back.
She's been in Miami over a month and seen maybe ten blocks of it. This is her first real look at my city.
"So," Adrian narrates as we pull onto Calle Ocho, "this is where your captor's been hiding you. Little Havana, the heart of Cuban Miami since the sixties. See that bodega? Best café con leche in the city, but don't tell Yamila at Café Cuba I said that."
He continues the tour as we drive, four or five observations that paint the city for her: "That building with the roosters painted on it? Used to be a cockfighting ring in the eighties. Now it's a yoga studio. Gentrification's a bitch."
"The Brickell skyline coming up. All that glass and steel? Built on drug money from the eighties, cleaned and legitimized. Half those penthouses are owned by ghosts."
"That park? Where the old men play dominoes? Same men, same table, forty years running. They've outlasted three mayors and a hurricane."
I watch her in the side mirror, catching how her eyes track everything. She's taking Miami in the way she takes in everything, all at once, like she means to keep it. I want this city to be hers. Want her to choose it like she's chosen me.
The Brickell tower spears up fifty floors of glass and money. The doorman knows Adrian, waves us through without questions. The elevator rises smooth and silent, Daphne watching the city shrink below us through the glass shaft.
The unit's on the 38th floor. Corner placement, floor-to-ceiling windows on two sides, white marble, everything sterile, untouched by human hands except to clean.
Daphne walks the perimeter like she's casing an escape route.
Her fingers trail along the glass, not exploring but testing for weak points.
This sterile box reminds her of being kept, I can read it on her face.
My jaw clenches. She doesn't touch anything, doesn't engage, just moves through the space with her body showing nothing.
The view of Biscayne Bay spreads out like a postcard nobody asked for.
Adrian catches my eye, already knowing this is dead. "Well," he says after six minutes of silence, "this has all the warmth of a medical examiner's table. Should we traumatize ourselves somewhere else?"
Back to the Cadillac. North toward Wynwood, Adrian narrating the transition: "Former garment district, then cigars, now artists and trust fund kids pretending to be artists. But the bones are good."
The converted factory sits on a corner, brick and timber, real history in the walls. Ground floor unit, Adrian unlocks with the second key. The door opens onto eighteen-foot ceilings, exposed brick on three walls, polished concrete floors.
Daphne goes straight to the first brick wall.
Places her palm flat against it, fingers spreading to read the texture.
The brick is original, late nineteenth century, mortar showing decades of Miami weather.
She moves her hand across the texture, learning it.
Then crosses to the second wall. Touches it. Then the third.
She's claiming this space with her hands, and I can't make my lungs work right. She wants this. A future with me in these walls. I can see it in how her hands move over the brick.
Adrian steps away, phone to his ear. His voice drops as he handles whatever fire needs containing. I catch fragments: "shipment," "Hialeah warehouse," "make sure he understands the consequences." Even here, the work continues. The violence that funds these pretty dreams.
After four minutes of touching brick, Daphne crosses to me. Takes my hand briefly, squeezes it. Just that small acknowledgment that we're looking at this together, as a place we could be. The contact burns through me, makes my body respond instantly.
She continues exploring: the kitchen area with its industrial fixtures, the mezzanine that overlooks the main floor like a stage, the bathroom where brick continues on three walls, the small back patio where a palm tree older than both of us provides shade.
Adrian returns, slipping his phone away. "She's practically purring," he observes. "I haven't seen anyone fondle brick with that much enthusiasm outside of certain clubs in South Beach."
We leave without verbal commitment, but the Wynwood loft is in the running. I can feel it in how Daphne walks. Lighter, like she's already imagining her life in those eighteen-foot ceilings.
South to Coconut Grove, Adrian narrating the change: "Different Miami down here. Older money, bigger trees, the kind of neighborhood where people pretend they don't know where their trust funds came from."
The 1930s coral-rock bungalow sits quiet on a residential street, mature live oak spreading shade across the small front yard. Original mahogany floors visible through the front window. Adrian unlocks with the third key.
Inside, maybe 1,400 square feet. Intimate after the Wynwood loft.
Daphne walks through slowly. Living room with built-in shelves, small kitchen with a window over the sink, two bedrooms. One she could use as a studio, I register.
The other for us. She's reading each room differently than Wynwood: the loft for the dancer, this for the woman.
The Florida room at the back opens onto the garden. Postage-stamp sized, overgrown, neglected. Patchy lawn, bougainvillea against the back fence, a mahogany tree in the corner. And there, a mature lemon tree near the back fence, heavy with fruit, some yellow, some still green.
Daphne walks straight to it. Picks a lemon, rolls it between her palms, releasing oils that make the air sharp and bright. The green-yellow skin catches the afternoon light as she smells it, then starts talking.
"Meyer lemon. See the shape? More round than oval.
They're sweeter than Eureka, less acidic.
Fifteen years old, maybe more." She's planning aloud now, her voice carrying the same certainty she had teaching eight-year-olds ballet.
Complete authority over something she loves.
"I'd put rosemary along the south fence.
It needs full sun. Herbs by the kitchen door for easy cutting.
This tree needs pruning, see how the interior branches cross?
That blocks air flow, encourages disease. "
She gestures where things would go, sketching a garden that doesn't exist yet with her hands. "The light comes through here in the evening, probably gorgeous in December. Basil would do well in that corner. Maybe tomatoes if we amended the soil."
I stop hearing the words. Just watch her face move when she talks about lemons, her hands drawing herb beds in the air.
She's planning a garden in a life where I might not survive the week.
The Hallstein operation could end with me in federal custody or a Miami canal, and she's talking about tomatoes like we have seasons ahead of us.
The realization lands: I'm going to spend the rest of my life finding excuses to watch her talk about lemon trees. However long that turns out to be.
"I love you."
The words scrape my throat raw. Nine years of silence, and these are the words that finally matter.